The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

138 the world according to monsantoIn the meantime, on January 18, 1983, at the symposium on moleculargenetics in Miami, representatives of three laboratories—one Belgian andtwo Americans, one of whom was Rob Horsch of Monsanto—announcedthat they had succeeded in inserting a genetic construct, a kanamycin resistancegene to be exact, into cells of petunia and tobacco plants (two plantssusceptible to Agrobacterium tumefaciens). The three laboratories had filedpatents on their simultaneous discoveries. For Monsanto, serious work wasbeginning and the call to battle had sounded.The “Artificial Cassette” of Roundup Ready Soybeans“I’ll never forget the first time I used the phrase ‘We are not in the businessof the pursuit of knowledge; we are in the business of the pursuit of products.’You could have heard a pin drop. They were furious.” 9 The words arethose of Richard Mahoney, who, as soon as he was appointed CEO of Monsantoin 1984—a position he held until 1995—decided to shake up theUphoria troops. The end had come for lavishly funded research on tinkeringwith petunias, and the aim was now clear: to create transgenic plants thatbrought in money. Called by Fortune one of “America’s toughest bosses,”Mahoney was an unselfconscious businessman who bluntly declared: “Forgivenessis out of style, shoulder shrugs are out of fashion. Hit the targets ontime without excuses.” 10Subjected to unprecedented stress, Ernest Jaworski’s team understoodthat the laboratory’s success was a question of life or death and that a failurewould signal the victory of the pure chemists. From then on, all research wasfocused on the production of plants resistant to Roundup, which, ten yearsafter its introduction, had become the most widely sold herbicide in theworld. Furthermore, the implacable boss reminded everyone that the patentguaranteeing a monopoly on glyphosate derivatives would expire in 2000and that GMOs soon to be known as “Roundup Ready” would be a good wayof pulling the rug out from under manufacturers of generics. This was a concreteobjective that delighted Jaworski, because in the end this had been hisoriginal idea: to manipulate plants so that they could survive the use of herbicides,which could therefore be sprayed at any time on crops—corn, soybeans,cotton, rapeseed, and why not wheat?—to destroy only weeds.But they hadn’t gotten there yet. In 1985, the Monsanto researchers were