5 Pieces of Monsanto’s Corporate History We’re Not Supposed to Think About
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Monsanto’s First Product Was a Toxic Chemical Sweetener called Saccharin
When Monsanto was first created in 1901, its main purpose was to sell a chemical called saccharin to the Coca-Cola corporation as an artificial sweetener. Having known it to be a dangerous carcinogen, a government body called the Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts, created under president Roosevelt in 1910, sued Monsanto to stop the production of the new chemical sweetener. It decided that the levels of saccharin people were consuming were over they considered ‘safe’ limit, and in 1912 the use of saccharin was prohibited in processed foods. Monsanto’s industry lawyers fought back, and the ban was over-turned, marking the first of many legal incidents that would pave the way for Monsanto’s current multi-faceted chemical onslaught on humanity.
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Monsanto Hid Evidence of Toxic PCB’s
Commonly used in lubricants, hydraulic fluids and liquid sealants, PCB’s have been linked to immune system, developmental, and reproductive disorders and are quite potent carcinogens. Although PCB’s were banned in 1979, they can still be found in nearly all animal and human blood and tissue samples around the globe, and because they are so persistent in the environment, they are considered to be “one of the most gravest chemical threats on the planet.” But the company’s own documents show that great lengths were undertaken to make sure the public was uninformed about the dangers of PCB’s, even going so far as to start, “urging scientists to change their conclusions to downplay the risks of PCB exposure.” Even the Navy in 1956 refused to use one of Monsanto’s products that contained PCB’s claiming that it was “just too toxic to use in a submarine.”
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Monsanto Helped Develop the Atomic Bomb
In 1943, Monsanto began working on a subsidiary research and development sector of the Manhattan Project in Dayton, Ohio, called the Dayton Project. This project was primarily focused on the purification and production of plutonium, which was used to begin the chain reactions in atomic bombs, ultimately resulting in the widespread radioactive pollution of testing sites, and the deaths of an estimated 129,000 people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Dayton Project ended up costing $3,666,507 ($44.5 million in today’s dollars), and the world is still engaged in a nuclear arms race.
https://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/03/24/5-pieces-of-monsantos-corporate-history-were-not-supposed-to-think-about/