http://agentorangezone.blogspot.com/2010/05/dow-chemical-says-agent-orange-is.html

They did hand me a statement that was outrageous and untrue, and I told them so. I had it published in some online newspapers.

The last two lines of the statement read: “Today, the scientific concenus is that when the collective human evidence is reviewed, it doesn’t show that Agent Orange caused veteran’s illnesses.”

If Dow Chemical can make that statement, how can anyone ever believe what they say on any other matter.

I totally agree. Let these dinosaurs die off already

Also, I highly recommend you all watch The Future of Food.

We as a people need to ask ourselves “do we really need to rely so heavily on petrochemicals?” Look at what they do to the to the ground via chemical fertilizers, look at what they do to your body via prescription drugs. Take a deep breath in a polluted city. Go swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. ( too soon? sorry BP) We could have achieved any (of the many) forms of alternative energy long ago, but the people who make the decisions apparently love to destroy the environment, while pretending that they are helping all of us.

For the EIGHT herbicide-tolerant crops awaiting rubber-stamp approval by our USDA, see Petitions for Nonregulated Status Pending at http://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/not_reg.html.

For Roundup’s extreme toxicity to frogs, see: http://www.pitt.edu/~relyea/Site/Roundup.html.

Ken, I agree with you. Farmers get jacked around by everybody, especially Monsanto. Monsanto has persecuted THOUSANDS of farmers for (allegedly) saving and replanting its patented Roundup Ready soybean seeds, and collected tens of millions of dollars from them. See http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/Monsantovsusfarmersreport.cfm. Yes, this has got to be one of the most unethical companies ever.

There are non-chemical methods to control weeds – some cover crops (rye, black oats) do a great job of suppressing weeds in follow-on crops. See Matt Liebman, ISU agronomist, for more. http://www.agron.iastate.edu/personnel/userspage.aspx?ID=646

Thousands of Vietnamese have died from Agent Orange and today there are over 4,000,000 suffering from various illnesses and severe deformaties. Monsanto’s Agent Orange has affected three generations and will, if not already, affect the fourth.

There are many thousands of American Veterans who served in Vietnam and are also affected by Agent Orange. Now we read how wonderful Roundup is??????
I do wish that employees and supporters of Monsanto would wake up to the real world and see the horrific damamge that products of Monsanto has and continues to do to the people and land of many countries, the sooner a world-wide embargo is placed on their products the safer the world will be.

Every farm family that I know has great concern for the environment, and their practices are much improved over the past few decades. Their biggest issue is that they must continue to scale their operations up to compete for profitability. Most farmers yern for the more simple operations of the past, but they know that to earn a living they need to keep growing – just like any business.

This is the problem in every industry in the US and most of the developed world. Large scale anything leads to a concentration of inputs, products and bi-products. Anything too concentrated has negative effects on the environment – even natural products.

The answer lies with “us,” the consumer. If we all demand organic, natural foods we could eliminate the effects of concentration, pesticides, herbicides…have cleaner water, live healthier lives, decrease cancers, obesity, etc. The farmers would like nothing better! However, then the question becomes, “who is going to feed the rest of the world?”

Their scientists assured us for many years that weeds harboring mutations that make them Roundup-resistant were so rare that resistant weeds would never evolve in any significant way. These assurances have proven quite profitable for the company. Monsanto has changed its tune now, but clearly bears a big share of the blame for the Roundup-resistant weed epidemic.

Roundup Resistant “Superweeds” in the News – Beyond the Rows

Thanks so much,

Kathleen
Monsanto Company

Loose a crop to an invasive plant or insect, with all the hard work you invested along with it, then come back and tell us how “greedy” farmers are.

as you so eloquantly said “please, do some research on that”

The issue with blaming Monsanto and not the farmer’s who use it, is that farmer’s weren’t made aware in all cases of the possible risks associated with breeding these crops. Monsanto has sold them a product to help make their farming easier, and gifted them with large plots of weeds that are potentially invulnerable to chemical warfare. And there’s no doubt that the next scientific advance that will be able to wipe out these weeds will come from the mouths of Monsanto, will cost more, and feed more and more profits their way.

It’s wild. I mean, it’s starting to sound like a super-villain plot.

Roundup was and is a biotoxin. It was developed to sterilize soils of all plant life. My grandparents were farmers and it was well known in the farming communities that, for certain tough weeds, Roundup was the only effective treatment. However don’t expect to grow anything else there for a while! When you used Roundup you were dropping the hammer, so to speak.

Roundup Ready was a concept that you create one, single exception to the sterilization process. It’s the farming monoculture taken to the extreme. You spray a field and wipe out everything except your Roundup Ready crop.

Just one problem. You cannot control pollen, nor gene swapping, cross-fertilization, mutation, nor any of the other aspects of nature in an open field. What do you think Wild Oats are? Rice?? Wild Oats are closely related to tame oats and that is just one example of a possible cross-pollination scenario.

The case study of antibiotic resistance was already well known and scientifically studied. It’s a fine analogy. If you saturate an environment with a toxin and leave even 1 survivor, you promote resistance. Biology 101. With spray drift and volunteer seeding, low level exposure to Roundup and survivors were a dead certainty. There were multiple mechanisms at work to promote Roundup resistance. Roundup Ready was doomed to fail from the beginning.

Monsanto might as well have made their slogan “Spray poison and watch your field thrive! Together we’ll destroy Roundup!”