The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

introduction 3as “an agricultural company” whose purpose is “to help farmers around theworld produce healthier food, while also reducing agriculture’s impact onour environment.” But what it did not say is that before getting involved inagriculture, it was one of the largest chemical companies of the twentiethcentury, specializing particularly in plastics, polystyrenes, and other syntheticfibers.Under the heading “Who We Are”/ “Company History,” one finds not aword about all the extremely toxic products that made its fortune for decades:the PCBs, chemicals used as insulators in electrical transformers formore than fifty years, sold under the brands Aroclor in the United States,Pyralène in France, and Clophen in Germany, the harmfulness of which wasconcealed by Monsanto until they were banned in the early 1980s; 2,4,5-T,a powerful herbicide containing dioxin, which was the basis for Agent Orange,the defoliant used by the American army during the Vietnam War, thetoxicity of which Monsanto knowingly denied by presenting falsified scientificstudies; 2,4-D (the other component of Agent Orange); DDT, which isnow banned; aspartame, the safety of which is far from established; andbovine growth hormone (banned in Europe because of the risks it poses toanimal and human health).These were all highly controversial products, and they have simply disappearedfrom the firm’s official history (except for bovine growth hormone,which I will deal with at length in this book). A careful examination of internalcompany documents reveals, however, that this nefarious past continuesto burden its activities, forcing it to set aside considerable sums tocover the judgments that regularly cripple its profits.A Quarter Billion Acres of GMOsThese discoveries led me to propose a new documentary to Arte entitled TheWorld According to Monsanto, the research for which forms the basis for thisbook. The idea was to narrate the history of the multinational company andto try to understand to what extent its past might shed light on its currentpractices and what it now claims to be. In fact, with 17,500 employees, revenueof $7.5 billion in 2007 (and profit of $1 billion), and facilities in fortysixcountries, the St. Louis company claims to have been converted to the