On the surface, the news that Monsanto soon may be dead and
buried seems too good to be true. Indeed, German pharmaceutical and industrial
chemical beast Bayer wants to buy out the American corporation for the immodest
sum of $62 billion.
When I first heard the news, my heart filled with joy. To
me, the pesticide- and seed-producing giant is more than just a massive,
Hydra-like, comic-book-evil organization that doesn’t even bother trying to
improve its public perception—specifically that it favours profit over human and
environmental health. The very name “Monsanto” represents—to me—a real-life manifestation
of every morally corrupt, monopolistic, money-grubbing, power-hungry company populating
sci-fi movies of the last thirty years: Soylent Corporation, Cyberdyne Systems and
Umbrella Corporation all wrapped up in one malignant entity.
Whether this bad reputation is earned is another story. Among
its “achievements,” Monsanto basically perfected the GMO process. But contrary
to what conspiracy theorists and anti-GMO factions will have us believe,
evidence that GMO foods are unhealthy is inconclusive, and opinions
on the subject are likely more emotional than fact-based. Nonetheless, Monsanto
has managed to nurture the bad taste in the mouth left by GMO’s and the unholy
stigma associated with its seed patents, if only due to newsworthy stories like
its proclivities for swallowing up business competitors and suing small-scale
farmers who wittingly or otherwise infringe on patent rights. The fact that it
wields incredible corporate influence over government food policy assuages no fears.
Who likes to see so much power concentrated in so few hands?
More recently, the debate over Monsanto’s signature weed
killer product, Roundup, and the possible
carcinogenicity of its active ingredient, glyphosate, has gotten very
contentious indeed. I can just imagine a bunch of white-coated scientists
standing in a tight circle around an unseen slugfest, chanting “Fight, fight,
fight, fight!” With regards to GMO and glyphosate safety, why can’t both sides
of these fights see eye to eye? For the intertwined sakes of human and
environmental health, some agreement must occur between industry and
anti-industry scientists, or at least between non-partisan parties. Mustn’t it?
I mean, what’s the point of profit if you have no children to pass it on to once
you’re gone?
Back to the possibility of a Monsanto buyout. It seems more
of a glass-half-empty kind of good news. Because whatever Monsanto does to
incur such acrimony—from anti-GMO and organic food activists, from
environmentalists, from anti-corporate activists, from me—it certainly doesn’t operate
in a vacuum. If or when Monsanto disappears down Bayer’s massive gullet, the German
conglomerate will own a monopoly over the seed and industrial pesticide
markets, and will surely do its best to perpetuate Monsanto’s destructive
legacy. And I haven’t even mentioned Syngenta, the world’s largest seller of
agricultural chemicals. If ever Monsanto as an entity ceases to exist, the
evils perpetrated on this planet and its food-producing and -consuming denizens
by massive corporations will doubtless continue.
The situation reminds me of that old Newfie joke, where the
waiter asks the Newfie if he wants his large pizza cut into six or eight
pieces. “Oh, six, please,” the Newfie says. “I couldn’t eat eight.” Whether six
or eight pieces, a large pizza is still a large pizza. Bayer may sound better
than Monsanto, but an agro-chemical company is still an agro-chemical company,
perpetuating more environmental harm than good. (Incidentally, Bayer is the
largest vendor of neonicotinoid insecticides, so the bee genocide will
certainly continue.) Monsanto’s possible relegation to the land of dead
companies (or at least to footnote status) is indeed too good to be true.
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