Laura Brewer

Professor Dean Leonard

English 1201
14 October 2019

Annotated Bibliography

My essay will try and find out whether Monsanto is genuinely trying to solve world hunger or

just a greedy corporation, caring nothing about the consequences of their innovations. I want to

know, have they purposely thwarted research on their weed killer to protect themselves? Have they

knowingly continued to market and sell Roundup (aka glyphosate), calling it safe when the evidence

points in the opposite direction? My desire is to shed some light on this for myself and others who

know little about Monsanto and glyphosate.

Elmore, Bartow J. “The Commercial Ecology of Scavenger Capitalism: Monsanto, Fossil Fuels, and

the Remaking of a Chemical Giant.” Enterprise & Society, vol. 19, no. 1, July 2017, pp. 153–

178., doi:10.1017/eso.2017.22. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/ejournals/article/351998312.

The author of this source, Bartow J. Elmore, wrote this article that appeared in the Enterprise &

Society Journal in 2017, to discuss how Monsanto started out building their empire using the

byproducts of other companies’ resources. He called this “scavenger capitalism.”

A druggist named John Francis Queeny incorporated Monsanto in 1901. He became

interested in saccharin about 10 years prior while purchasing products for Meyer Brothers drug

company. At that time, there was no one in the US who manufactured saccharin and Queeny

believed he could make a lot of money if he could be the first one to do so. With the help of three
swiss chemists, $1,500 of his own money, and $3,500 from a loan, Queeny was able to get the plant

up and going. He named it after his wife, Olga Mendez Monsanto. The company’s first major client

was the Coca-Cola company, who purchased nearly all their saccharin. Saccharin was made from

coal tar,’ a syrupy byproduct from coal mining.

Elmore goes onto to discuss how Monsanto soon found another byproduct to produce from

wasted tea leaves – caffeine. This came from damaged tea leaves that tea traders didn’t want.

Monsanto took this waste, recycled it and processed the caffeine out of it. They supplied this to the

soft drink industry as well. Well into the mid-twentieth century, Monsanto went on sifting through

the stockpiles of raw materials that other businesses generated. Elmore discussed in depth the major

transformation and restructuring of Monsanto at a time when dependency on fossil fuels and rising

oil prices forced them to shift into changing things (otherwise known as genetic engineering), rather

than continuing to try to create things.

I believe the intended audience of this article is for scholars. The author feels scholars need to

pay close attention to the link between a company’s access to limited natural resources and

corporate restructuring that followed within that period.

Elmore is an author, assistant professor of environmental history, and a member of the

Sustainable and Resilient Economy Discovery Group. He provides a vast amount of references in

this article.
 I will be using his information in my report to discuss how Monsanto evolved from making

chemicals into genetically engineering.

“Food, Inc.” Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2009.

The director of this film is an award-winning filmmaker, producer, and writer named Rob

Kenner whose film places the United States corporate farming under the scope, concluding that

agricultural business generates food that is not healthy, and they produce it in a way that is harmful

to the environment and abusive to employees and animals. It was released in 2009 and nominated

for several awards. Kenner spent six years speaking with food industry employees, families, and

farmers, along with a mere few industry representatives that would agree to talk with him. This

documentary included interviews from farmers and undercover video of practices in the meat

industry, which was very disturbing to say the least. The film takes you behind the scenes at a

factory farm where cows would be standing ankle deep in manure. so that if one had e-coli, others

could get it, too. After some people became sick and died with e-coli, some changes were made.

They began the process of “cleansing” the meat by dousing it with ammonia to kill the e-coli. So,

most of the traditional meat we purchase at the store is “seasoned” with ammonia. Chickens were

also pumped up with tons of growth hormones that they became so large they could barely take two

steps without falling. Hundreds of chickens were crammed in dark storehouses, many of which were

very ill. They would all go to the slaughterhouse without being checked for illness or diseases.
 The film then went on to talk about the company Monsanto. Monsanto is an agricultural,

biotechnology, and chemical corporation based in the U.S. They produced DDT, and Agent Orange

in Vietnam, and rBGH, the growth hormone that many animals were given to make them grow

much larger. They are the leading producer of Roundup, a weed killer with the active ingredient

called glyphosate. Monsanto also began genetically engineering soybeans that were able to resist the

roundup they created. They could spray roundup right on it and it would kill all the weeds, but not

the soybeans. Monsanto was able to get a patent on the seed itself. Following this, farmers who use

to be able to save their best seeds for next year’s crop were no longer allowed to save their own

seeds. If they got caught doing it, they could get sued by Monsanto. Hearing different farmers

stories was so disheartening. Some of them lost so much in legal fees and were forced to quit

altogether. The film touched a lot on this and on how that legally Monsanto has been able to gain

more control because they have legislatures and lobbyists assisting them.

This documentary will be used in my report to discuss how I discovered Monsanto and exposing

their unethical treatment towards farmers selling their seed and what all has transpired since then.

Gillam, Carey. Whitewash: the Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science. Island

Press, 2019.

Carey Gillam is an investigative journalist who wrote this book in 2019 to expose new

evidence of Monsanto’s influence over many areas. She has researched and written about Monsanto

for well over a decade. She has won several awards for this book. Gillam discloses many of
Monsanto’s corrupt practices, like how they’re able to convince regulators to sign off on things that

are supposed to assure safety, all the while they are permitting higher residues of the pesticide to be

allowed in food. This is one example of many where she provides credible evidence of as she

reveals secrets this industry has kept from the public. She has faced scrutiny over this, but

she’s determined to get the truth out to the public.

This book will be used to site evidence for the many cover-ups that have long been hidden from

the public.

“It's Confirmed: Ethics Go out the Window at a USDA under Perdue.” Center for Food Safety, 24

Apr. 2017, https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/press-releases/4919/its-confirmed-ethics-go-out-

the-window-at-a-usda-under-perdue.

This press release from 2017 is about the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) appointing former

Georgia governor, Sonny Perdue as secretary. Perdue has very strong ties to corporate Agri-

business. During his political career as governor in Georgia, Perdue accepted over $950,000 in

campaign contributions from food and agriculture businesses, including Monsanto. He is also

responsible for massive expansion of factory farm poultry operations and has 13 ethical complaints

from his tenure as governor, some of which were regarding his discrimination against minority

farmers. This press release was from April 2017, by the Center for Food Safety.

I will refer to this article when I discuss the different people in the government who have ties to

Monsanto.
Mattera, Phillip. “Monsanto: Corporate Rap Sheet: Corporate Research Project.” Corporate

Research Project, Good Jobs First, 23 June 2018, https://www.corp-research.org/monsanto.

The author of this article, Phillip Mattera wrote this article in 2018 to inform the public about

Monsanto and their corrupt practices through the years. It appeared on the Corporate Research

Projects website. They are a non-profit alliance that helps various organizations with studying and

investigating companies and industries, which is essentially the main point of Mattera writing about

Monsanto.

Mattera gives a very brief account of how Monsanto got started. Following this, Mattera

discussed how Monsanto sold off a lot of their industrial chemical business in the 1980’s to focus

more on agricultural biotechnology. It’s first focus was to create crops that wouldn’t be damaged

when their herbicide, Roundup was applied to kill the weeds.

Mattera then discuss how Monsanto went on to create their first genetically engineered

product. This was a growth hormone, called bovine somatotropin, or Posilac. This hormone helped

increase milk productions in cows. The FDA approved this in 1993. The following year it went on

sale, which created protests from all over, causing some larger grocery chains to try and find milk

from dairy farms that did not carry this hormone. However, this did not deter Monsanto from

creating more genetically engineered products. They developed bioengineered potatoes, genetically

modified cotton seed and Roundup Ready soybeans. They also acquired a few companies along the

way and mergers, as well. Monsanto continued to focus on the seed business and purchased
regional firms, a large cotton seed company, fruit and vegetable seed companies. In Europe,

there was growing opposition to GMO’s. The US called for labeling genetically modified foods at

the resistance of the FDA. Monsanto pressed on despite opposition from various outlets.

Mattera discussed how in San Francisco, a federal judge ordered Monsanto in 2007 to suspend

sales of genetically engineered alfalfa due to the USDA approving it without doing an assessment of

the environmental impact. This was the first time a court had ever done this to Monsanto and the

company appealed the case up to the US Supreme Court, where they ruled in Monsanto’s favor in

2010.

Mattera goes on to discuss the revolving door, lobbying, and public relations. How Monsanto

was able to get members of the Bush, Clinton, & Obama administrations to lobby against European

restrictions on GMO’s. Monsanto frequently hired former federal government employees to lobby

for them.

In 2013, there was an agricultural bill passed by Congress that basically had a provision in it

that restricted federal courts from being able to stop selling GMO seeds that were thought to pose a

health risk. Critics called this the Monsanto Protection Act.

The intended audience for this article are organizations, such as community, environmental and

labor alliances. This article is very relevant and credible, along with current information on

Monsanto. It briefs the early history of Monsanto but delves more into the biotechnology side.
Mattera provides many citations for his information. I will be using this on my report to discuss the

timeline of Monsanto during all their biotechnological endeavors.

McHenry, Leemon B. “The Monsanto Papers: Poisoning the Scientific Well.” Sinclair College Off-

Campus Authentication Form, International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine, 18 Jan. 2018,

http://sinclair.ohionet.org:80/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct&db=eih&AN=129968459&site=eds-live.

The author of this article is Leemon McHenry and his objective in this article is to examine de-

classified papers of Monsanto in order to expose the affects that Monsanto’s endeavors to influence

the reporting of scientific studies associated with the safety of glyphosate. It appeared in

International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine on January 1, 2018. McHenry provides

many details of the Monsanto papers and e-mail exchanges which revealed so much about

about trusting third-party research.

McHenry begins with an introduction about how scientific testing put on by third-party academic

consultants can be misrepresented in corporations. This misrepresentation can contaminate what is

represented and have negative effects on public health, due to things unknowingly getting passed

through agencies and courts as they depend on results to be accurate and evidence based. This has

been the case with Monsanto in the e-mails and documents that went public and it has shed much

light and proof of their cover-ups.

McHenry discusses how in 2014, a global advisory group of scientist and government officials
called for dozens of pesticides, including glyphosate, to be examined. From this, the International

Agency for Research on Cancer or IARC concluded that glyphosate is a Group 2A Agent, meaning

it is probably carcinogenic in humans. Monsanto vigorously disputed the IARC’s conclusion and

published a response to the report on their own website stating the following. “In evaluations

spanning four decades, the overwhelming conclusion of experts worldwide has been that glyphosate,

when used according to label directions, does not present an unreasonable risk of adverse effects to

humans, wildlife or the environment.” What is interesting about their statement is how they state

“overwhelming conclusion of experts” when their de-classified documents showed that they have

pursued and heavily influenced these third-party consultants to sign off on Monsanto ghost-written

reports that were later published in journals of toxicology. Ghostwriting is essentially when the

name of an author does not appear on a written published article. From the internal Monsanto

documents released during litigation; it appears that ghostwriting has become a regular business

practice for them.

The author, Leemon Mchenry, is a bioethicist and former lecturer in philosophy at California

State University. In this article, he researches and thoroughly discusses many of the 141 documents

that were recently de-classified and made public during litigations over the Roundup product. The

authors own academic and research history, along with citing 53 different references on this article

reflects his credibility and reliability.

Sandford, Lauren. “Why is Monsanto Losing Lawsuits over Roundup?” NationogChange, 24 July

2019, https://www.nationofchange.org/2019/07/24/why-is-monstanto-losing-lawsuits-over-

roundup/.

The author of this article appearing in NationofChange.org in July 24, 2019 is Lauren Sandford

in which she wrote about how Monsanto’s lawsuits are not going to end anytime soon. Sandford

discusses the battles in the courtroom especially in the past year, like when Dewayne Johnson, who

had been a landscaper for years had developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The jury found that the

extended use of Monsanto’s Roundup is what led him to develop this terminal illness and awarded

Johnson a payout of $78 million. Sandford discussed a second trial between Monsanto and a man

named Edwin Hardeman. Hardeman used to spray Roundup to treat his weeds and overgrowth at

his home for many years and recently developed cancer. He was awarded $80 million in damages

and it was reduced to $25 million. Sandford discuss the most recent trial involving Alva and Alberta

Pilliod. They started using Roundup in the 1970’s and were both diagnosed with non-Hodgkins

lymphoma.They were awarded around $2 billion in damages.

Sandford discusses how certain pieces of evidence supported these cancer claims. One of which

was how different combinations of chemicals mixed with glyphosate made Roundup more toxic

than just glyphosate. The concoction of chemicals can impact multiple human cells. Another

study showed the association of glyphosates ability to interrupt the normal flow of cell cycles which

can lead to cancer development. Sandford discusses other studies in this article that led to
different health problems from glyphosate when tested on rats.

Sandford went on to discuss the unethical business practices of Monsanto and how that they tried

to pressure a journal editor to retract a paper on glyphosate. There is also evidence that Monsanto

tried to convince the EPA to convince the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry not to

continue examining the toxicity of glyphosate.

Sandford discusses the future of the cancer cases, including one involving a 12-year-old boy who

suffers from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The parents believe it’s from the child playing in the yard

in areas that were heavily sprayed with Roundup over the years.

The writer, Lauren Sandford writes for NationofChange.org. They are an organization founded

by philanthropist Donna Luca in 2011. She saw that the concerned public needed a way to be

informed and involved on issues that matter the most to them. Sandford includes links to credible

references throughout her article.

I will be using this article to provide information about the recent lawsuits against Monsanto.