MaggieMae
Reality bits
- Apr 3, 2009
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I'm sorry MaggieMae you can't win this fight. I've spent most of my day scouring the web looking for legitimate sites that these two would take into consideration but to no avail I can't find any. So it comes to this either the company has successfully covered their asses or there isn't any. As Doc has said if the farmers signed an agreement and they broke it then they deserve to have the "book" thrown at them, matter of fact most of the cases I read the farmers did breach their contract(there is a case or two out there where I believe the farmer though).
That said I still see Monsanto as an unethical corporation, I still can't get pass this;
Monsanto and the 'Drug War'In December 2000, Dutch journalist Marjon Van Royen investigated local health reports in Colombia and found that there had been "consistent health complaints," including "burning eyes, dizziness and respiratory problems."
According to Elsa Nivia, a Colombian agronomist who works with the Pesticide Action Network, local authorities reported 4,289 humans suffering skin or gastric disorders in the first two months of 2001. Some 178,377 animals (cattle, horses, pigs, dogs, ducks, hens and fish) were reported killed by the spraying.
Digging further, Van Royen found something alarming: another additive called Cosmo-Flux 411 F was being added to increase the toxicity of Roundup Ultra The Roundup/Cosmo-Flux mixture has never been scientifically evaluated nor has the public - either in the US or in Colombia - been informed of this practice.
In a talk at the University of California at Davis in May 2001, Nivia said: "The mixture with the Cosmo Flux 411 F surfactant can increase the herbicide's biological action four-fold, producing relative exposure levels which are 104 times higher than the recommended doses for normal agricultural applications in the United States; doses which, according to the study mentioned, can intoxicate and even kill ruminants." The use of this enhanced Roundup would not be acceptable in the US without prior testing and scientific evaluation.
The Roundup label warns: "Do not apply this product in a way that will contact workers or other persons, either directly or through drift. Only protected handlers may be in the area during application."
"Drift" is a major issue, as Senator Wellstone discovered first hand. The small crop duster airplanes and helicopters that spray chemical herbicides in Colombia often fly too high to accurately target the drug crops. Labels warn that spraying must be done on windless days. But nature does not often provide windless days in the tropical Andean valleys. A small plane flying as low as 65 feet is subject to high crosswinds that characterize rainforest ecology. These winds easily blow the herbicide toward non-target areas, contaminating crops, rainforests or bodies of water.
Last spring, the German government lodged complaints against the fumigation program when chemical "drift" destroyed Colombian aquaculture projects they had underwritten- fishponds meant to provide protein for campesino subsistence.
Covering their asses says it all. They get to unenlightened farmers by sharp sales practices, sell them a "license agreement" written, of course, by a team of lawyers, and therein it states in a long paragraph of fine print that said farmer must buy from Monsanto every succeeding year. When said farmer doesn't comply, said farmer gets sued. Monsanto - Typical All American Company. Bullshit.