The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

192 the world according to monsantopicked. Since I was very pro-GMO, I said we should be able to sell it at theprice of ‘premium California,’ because after all there was only one gene’s differencefrom the original variety. That’s when he told me: ‘No, there areother differences; transgenic cotton plants produce not only the Roundupresistance protein but also other unknown proteins as a product of the manipulationprocess.’“I was flabbergasted. There was a lot of talk at the time about mad cowdisease—bovine spongiform encephalitis, and its human counterpart, variantCreutzfeldt-Jakob disease, severe pathologies caused by macroproteinsknown as prions. I knew that our transgenic cotton seeds would be sold ascattle fodder, and I said to myself that we hadn’t even bothered to find outwhether those ‘unknown proteins’ were prions. I told the Monsanto scientistabout my concerns, and he answered that they didn’t have time to worryabout such things. I later tried to alert my colleagues, and bit by bit I waspushed to the sidelines. I also contacted the University of California and representativesof the state agriculture department, but I met nothing but indifference.I was so disturbed that I finally decided to resign so I wouldn’t be anaccomplice to such irresponsible conduct. But it wasn’t an easy decision tomake. When I left, I gave up a very good salary and I sacrificed tens of thousandsof stock options. In fact, Monsanto buys its employees’ silence.”“Now what do you think of Shapiro’s speech?”“It was hot air. When I recall the way we worked at the time, it was a constantrace against the clock, and the only goal was to dominate the seed market.If you really want to save the world, you start by carefully verifying thesafety of the products you’re making.”The Race for SeedsOne thing had to be acknowledged about Robert Shapiro: the “visionary”was also a formidable businessman who had managed in record time totransform a chemical giant into a near monopoly operator in the internationalseed market. But the battle was far from over, because when StephenPadgette’s team finally had its Roundup Ready soybeans in 1993, no one atMonsanto knew what to do with them. Of course, the first instinct was tofile a patent on the precious gene, but then what?Monsanto was not a seed company, and the only solution was to sell its