Why I Protested at Monsanto

Although I don't admit this much, technically I am a child. As the U.S. Supreme Court has declared corporations like Monsanto as "people" with the same rights as us, it must mean that Monsanto was once a child, too. His parents clearly had high...

March 22, 2012 | Source: The Davy Enterprise | by Ci Yin Oliveira

For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Genetic Engineering page and our Millions Against Monsanto page.
Although I don’t admit this much, technically I am a child. As the U.S. Supreme Court has declared corporations like Monsanto as “people” with the same rights as us, it must mean that Monsanto was once a child, too. His parents clearly had high hopes, as his name implies – Mon Santo, or “My Holy.”

However, I am pretty sure from what I have discovered about Monsanto that he is not a child I would like to have known.

As a child, BOYsanto began to make creations that copied the natural world. One of his first products was the artificial sweetener saccharin. That was just the beginning. As a teenager, BOYsanto was given a license by the U.S. military to help kill more than 200,000 men, women and children when its executive Charles Allen Thomas helped make the atomic bomb.

After World War II, this supposedly “holy” corporation turned its disturbed mind to making chemicals, particularly those that destroy vegetation such as Agent Orange. Monsanto’s own internal memos show he knew that Agent Orange could deform or even kill humans, but that didn’t stop him from producing millions of gallons of the toxic stuff for the U.S. Army. Half a million Vietnamese children have been born deformed by Agent Orange, yet Monsanto and his close relatives still refuse to pay compensation.

Monsanto, or I should now say MANsanto, has since found a way of sneaking his products into almost every bag and box in grocery stores – from PCBs to bovine growth hormones to its top-selling product Roundup that is sprayed everywhere in the U.S. and many countries worldwide.

I have never really dissected a frog in school, but MANsanto not only did that, but didn’t seem to mind when studies showed that Roundup changed male frogs into females and killed many tadpoles. In 1995, the Environmental Protection Agency said Monsanto was responsible for 37 million toxic pounds leaking into our land, air and water.