The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

prefacexirifying reality. For, in the course of many years of marketing its products—PCBs, herbicides, dioxin, bovine growth hormones, Roundup—Monsantowas fully aware of their harmfulness. The documents that the book revealsleave no doubt on that subject. Monsanto developed the habit of publiclyasserting the opposite of what was known inside the company. Thanks toRobin, we now know what Monsanto knew. The company was aware of thetoxic effects of its products. It persevered nonetheless, and it was allowedto go on.Monsanto is now coming back in force and claims that the GMOs forwhich it is the principal seed producer have been developed out of its concernto help the farmers of the world to produce healthier food while at thesame time reducing the impact of agriculture on the environment. The companyclaims that it has changed and that it has broken with its past as an irresponsiblechemist. I don’t have the scientific competence to assess thetoxicity of certain molecules or the risks incurred by genetic manipulation. Ionly know that the scientific community is sharply divided about the effectsof transgenesis and that the results of experiments with cultivated GMOshave not provided proof that they cause no harm to health or the environmentor that they are able to intensify food production to conquer hunger.The balance sheet Robin draws up for Mexico, Argentina, Paraguay, theUnited States, Canada, and India is in any case distressing. I also know thatthe use of Monsanto 810 corn seeds, the only variety grown in France forcommercial purposes, was wisely suspended by the French government inJanuary 2008, after an administrative authority set up in the wake of the majorenvironmental conference held in October 2007 pointed to new scientificfindings and raised troubling questions. More generally, I know, as doesany citizen on Earth with a grain of common sense, that one has to call a haltwhen it is obvious that industrial and commercial considerations have gonebeyond the limits of the most basic precautions.Today, while a real scientific, economic, and social debate is stirringFrance and Europe about the health and environmental effects of GMOs, aswell as their consequences for the condition of farmers and the question ofpatents of living things, Marie-Monique Robin’s book is timely. It should beconsidered a work promoting public health and read with that in mind.The global ecological crisis calls for a major transformation of the economicand social organization of human communities. It calls into question