Monsanto

While we’re on about corporate baddies, here’s a beauty from Monsanto, the company that enabled armies to use Agent Orange and is now busy pushing genetically engineered foods. For a long time, there has been a move to insist that these foods should be labelled as such, so that people can choose whether or not they want to eat them, which seems fair enough. In California, a recent ballot on the subject won support from more than 65% of residents in the state.

Monsanto was not having that. Backed by other companies in the agrochemical and processed foods fields, it raised $46 million to run an advertising campaign, implying, with no foundation whatever, that the World Health Organisation had endorsed GM (genetically modified) foods as safe. So the demand for labelling faltered and was defeated.

Why, we may ask, was Monsanto so defensive about labelling their foods? We can only assume they feel the less the public knows, the better.