Monsanto Notable Quotes
"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A.'s job" - Philip Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications. "Playing God in the Garden" New York Times Magazine, October 25, 1998.
"Ultimately, it is the food producer who is responsible for assuring safety" — FDA, "Statement of Policy: Foods Derived from New Plant Varieties" (GMO Policy), Federal Register, Vol. 57, No. 104 (1992), p. 229
"It is not foreseen that EFSA carry out such [safety] studies as the onus is on the applicant to demonstrate the safety of the GM product in question". [1]. Comments from the European Food Safety Authority
"Wait a second. What Robert Shapiro says is one thing. But what we do is something else. We are here to make money. He is the front man who tells a story. We don’t even understand what he is saying" - Unnamed Monsanto Vice President speaking to Kirk Azevedo, one time facilitator for GM cotton sales in California and Arizona and later turned whistleblower. [2]
"These Monsanto scientists are very knowledge about traditional products, like chemicals, herbicides and pesticides, but they don’t understand the possible harmful outcomes of genetic engineering, such as pathophysiology or prion proteins. So I am explaining to him about the potential untoward effects of these foreign proteins, but he just did not understand.... Anything that interfered with advancing the commercialization of this technology was going to be pushed aside." - Kirk Azevedo
"What you are seeing is not just a consolidation of seed companies, it’s really a consolidation of the entire food chain" - Robert Fraley, co-president of Monsanto's agricultural sector 1996, in the Farm Journal. Quoted in: Flint J. (1998) Agricultural industry giants moving towards genetic monopolism. Telepolis, Heise.
"People will have Roundup Ready soya whether they like it or not" - Ann Foster, spokesperson for Monsanto in Britian, as quoted in The Nation magazine from article "The Politics of Food" [3] by Maria Margaronis December 27, 1999 issue.
"'It's important for countries around the world to adopt a uniform standard' of acceptable levels of contamination" - Biotechnology Industry Association's Lisa Dry [4]
"The hope of the industry is that over time the market is so flooded [with GMOs] that there's nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender" - Don Westfall, biotech industry consultant and vice-president of Promar International, in the Toronto Star, January 9 2001.
"The total acreage devoted to GM crops around the world is expanding. That may be what eventually brings the debate to an end. It's a hell of a thing to say that the way we win is don't give the consumer a choice, but that might be it" - Dale Adolphe, biotech booster and President of the Canadian Seed Growers Association and previous president of the Canola Council of Canada (Western Producer, 4/4/02).
"I recognized my two selves: a crusading idealist and a cold, granitic believer in the law of the jungle" - Edgar Monsanto Queeny, Monsanto chairman, 1943-63, "The Spirit of Enterprise", 1934.
"Genetically engineered food constitutes a massive experiment on the planet, with potentially devastating effects on human health and the global environment" - Adam Kapp, Columnist for the Penn State Digital Collegian, Nov. 7, 2002.
"Stark denials in the face of documented evidence to the contrary have been corporate policy at Monsanto and GE for decades" - Eric Francis author of Conspiracy of Silence [5]
"For years, these guys said PCBs were safe, too. But there's obviously a corporate culture of deceiving the public" - Mike Casey of the Environmental Working Group
"The thing I'm most proud of is the industry's impeccable environmental and safety record" - Robert Fraley, Monsanto's technology chief [6]
"That is what drives a lot of people crazy. The scope of the fraud, if you will--I know that's a harsh word--the scope of the fraud that's being sold to the American public about this technology is almost unprecedented" - Interview with Dr. Charles Benbrook on GMOs
"They molest people", "They're brutes", "the company sues 'totally innocent people'", they are "the world's most hated corporation", "They have a pretty sordid history" - The Organization for Competitive Markets Executive Director Fred Stokes [7]
"I'm not a religious person, but I think there's something just inherently wrong with this-that they can take different species and combine 'em the way they wanna combine 'em" - Phil Geertson, who runs a small seed business in Idaho [8].
"I have the feeling that science has transgressed a barrier that should have remained inviolate" - Dr Erwin Chargaff, biochemist and the father of molecular biology in his autobiography
"What I saw generically on the pro-biotech side was the attitude that the technology was good and that it was almost immoral to say that it wasn't good because it was going to solve the problems of the human race and feed the hungry and clothe the naked. And there was a lot of money that had been invested in this, and if you're against it, you're Luddites, you're stupid. There was rhetoric like that even here in this department. You felt like you were almost an alien, disloyal, by trying to present an open-minded view on some of the issues being raised. So I pretty much spouted the rhetoric that everybody else around here spouted; it was written into my speeches" - Dan Glickman, United States Secretary of Agriculture from 1995 until 2001 [9]
"Consumers in Scotland, the UK, Europe and across the world are opposed to GM. It is up to their Governments to listen to them and take action to keep GM at bay. We are ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with other nations who are opposed to GM and fight for what our people want" - Scottish Environment Minister Roseanna Cunningham [10]
"If Spain falls, the rest of Europe will follow" WikiLeaks: US targets EU over GM crops
"Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits. The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices" - Craig Stapleton (former United States ambassador to France and co-owner with his friend George W. Bush of the Dallas/Fort Worth based Texas Rangers baseball team) in response to the French and other European countries growing opposition to GM crops [11]. Note: according to "The Official Wikileaks Forum" Country team Paris is Stapleton’s code name
"Genetic Power's the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid who's found his dad's gun.... and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunch box, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it" Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park
