The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

124 the world according to monsantogroup, to testify honestly and directly without fear of reprisal. Do you feelcomfortable with that letter?”“If I have sworn an oath in the presence of God, then I am supposed totell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” answered Chopra.“Then my question to myself was what truth am I going to tell—the one Iknow or what the minister is telling me to tell? That is my conflict. . . . It hasbeen said that there is a guarantee that there will be no repercussions,but...that remains to be seen because I am still under a complete gag order,to the extent that I cannot even attend meetings. If I said something ata dinner meeting and somebody heard and reported to the [Human Safety]department [of the BVD], I could be in trouble.”“Finally, it does not appear to me that you have a lot of confidence in theprocess, obviously,” answered Stratton. “One thing I would like to impressupon you, if you do have a problem with respect to grievances or with respectto threats from management, this committee would be delighted tohear from you.”“The department is saying all over the place that the client—and this is inwriting—the client now is the industry and we have to serve the client,” saidChopra. “The conflict was that our concern at the BVD, particularly in theHuman Safety Division, has been that we have been pressured and coercedto pass drugs of questionable safety, including rBST. ...I stuck my neck outand I wrote to the previous Minister of Health and the current Minister ofHealth as well as all the way to the Deputy Minister complaining aboutthese very serious problems of secrecy, conspiracy ...and saying that somethingneeds to be done. I specifically wrote to Minister Dingwall. I urgedhim to intervene to safeguard the public interest. I never received a reply. InNovember 1997, we met with Dr. Paterson, one executive of HealthCanada, and we told him we wanted a scientific gaps analysis of the recordsto be done. . . . When we got them, there were no raw data, only a summarysent by the FDA. . . . [The raw data] are locked up. They are kept in the personalcustody of Dr. Ian Alexander, who is called the file manager of rBST.No one else is supposed to look into it.”Next to be questioned was Margaret Haydon, who had been given thetask of examining the request for approval from 1985 to 1994, until it wastaken away from her. “My files were stolen in May of 1994 from my lockedcabinets,” she testified in a delicate voice. “I discovered that there appearedto be a lot of things missing, so I was quite shocked. . . . It amounted to most