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Comment by perakojotgenije | Hacker News Reader

From wikipedia: "Agent Orange was manufactured for the U.S. Department of Defense primarily by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical. It was given its name from the color of the orange-striped barrels in which it was shipped, and was by far the most widely used of the so-called "Rainbow Herbicides".[4] The 2,4,5-T used to produce Agent Orange was contaminated with 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD), an extremely toxic dioxin compound. In some areas, TCDD concentrations in soil and water were hundreds of times greater than the levels considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."

When someone asks me why I don't want Monsanto to grow my food I think I need no other answer.

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First of all, weren't Monsanto a) just manufacturing this stuff on the request of DoD and b) the ones who discovered it's contaminated and warned the Government about it? It's like the very next occurrence of the word "Monsanto" in the Wiki article.

Secondly, and I apologize for Godwining the thread, you probably know that IBM built and sold machines to Nazi Germany, having full knowledge that they will be used for oppression and murder. They even found a way to avoid the business ban during wartime. Hell, ever seen the serial numbers tattooed on the arms of concentration camps' prisoners? You can thank IBM punch-card systems for that.

And yet I'm willing to bet that you don't avoid IBM computers, servers and software for that reason. Because what they did during WWII has little to do with the quality of hardware they manufacture now. And so is with Monsanto. The fact that they did work on herbicides-turned-chemical-weapons for USGOV doesn't mean anything about their ability to put healthy food on your table.

If you want someone to blame for Agent Orange, blame the DoD.

The point is, the company profited grandly from the effort and used that profit to propel itself into its current grandeur position of gatekeeper to a significant portion of humanitys' food supply, and considers the literal mass manipulation of food supply key to its continued survival as an entity.

An entity which has no moral issue from profiting, immensely, from the production of poison.

There's plenty of reasons to dislike Monsanto for even today, they do have some shitty ways of doing business. But I see no reason to single out Monsanto in the story of Agent Orange, especially that they were the ones to warn everyone about the contamination issues.

I'm not a fan of Monsato, but I'm a fan of putting the blame in a precise way, on those responsible and only for the things they're actually responsible for.

Monsanto wouldn't be where it is today if it wasn't for its production of previous poisons which continue to plague the world with death and mayhem. The point is to remember this fact, in considering "The Monsanto of Today", because - just like in the 60's, the Scientists in the Company Producing Foods and Poisons, telling you 'everything is okay' here and now today, was wrong.

The people involved have a moral duty to refuse to supply materials to be used in war crimes.

Indeed - funny how you don't hear people complaining about Volkswagen when they were pretty much founded by the Nazis.

So many companies and countries have regrettable histories that pointing fingers seems redundant to me.

> The fact that they did work on herbicides-turned-chemical-weapons for USGOV doesn't mean anything about their ability to put healthy food on your table.

Monsanto & healthy food is an oxymoron. Try drinking some Roundup. I hear it's "safe" ;-)

If you're referring to that interview then keep in mind that it was just a crappy "journalist" trying to make a show out of what was supposed to be an interview on a topic completely not related to Monsanto.

Apparently he succeeded. I guess it's a lesson in designing propaganda - be an asshole, people will believe you.

Also, I'm not particularly convinced that the insane amount of stuff farmers dump on their crops is really better than replacing all of it with just one pesticide.

> If you're referring to that interview then keep in mind that it was just a crappy "journalist" trying to make a show out of what was supposed to be an interview on a topic completely not related to Monsanto.

Well, it's supposed to be "safe". Why didn't he drink it?

And the interview was originally about Golden Rice.

> Also, I'm not particularly convinced that the insane amount of stuff farmers dump on their crops is really better than replacing all of it with just one pesticide.

Actually, in a functioning ecosystem, no pesticides are needed. Insects & other microorganisms are natural parts of the food web.

http://www.permaculture.com/node/140

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk&feature=youtu.be

> Well, it's supposed to be "safe". Why didn't he drink it?

Urine is also safe. Would you drink your own in front of a camera if I asked you to during an interview on water purification systems?

Most people react negatively to such weird requests, especially if they're out of the blue, in front of a camera, and asked by person who evidently tries to prove some point at your expense.

> And the interview was originally about Golden Rice.

Yes, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Roundup. Golden rice is a cool piece of biotech created to save more than half a million lives of children annually (and save many more from blindness) and is given away for free to grow (and replant) by people that need it. Bringing up Monsanto's pesticide in that interview was disingenuous, not to mention off-topic.

> Actually, in a functioning ecosystem, no pesticides are needed. Insects & other microorganisms are natural parts of the food web.

First of all, not really. That is, sure if you don't mind half your crops being rotten. I've never seen the evidence that you can successfully run a high-yield zero-pesticide farm. But I'm not that into farming and I'll be more than happy to learn I'm wrong.

But more importantly, even if possible, apparently almost no one does that. Especially not organic farmers, who dump even more chemicals on food than usual, with only difference is that those chemicals have "organic-certified" label. So between "a lot of pesticides", "even more pesticides applied by industry that tries to cheat you into thinking they're not using pesticides" the "one pesticide" solution suddenly doesn't sound that bad.

> Urine is also safe. Would you drink your own in front of a camera if I asked you to during an interview on water purification systems?

The differences are I'm not trying to peddle my urine as the "only" way to grow food and urine actually is safe. Roundup is not safe.

Btw, urine is a wonderful fertilizer. It's more effective & more environmentally friendly than the petrol biz solutions.

It's funny that the people spraying pesticides need to wear haz mat suits. If it were so safe, why wear the suits?

Here's some of the effects that these "safe" pesticides have on people.

http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/argentina-the-country...

IMO, this whole notion that we accept poisons on our food is ridiculous. But ymmv. Many people are content getting fat & diabetic eating McDonalds.

> That is, sure if you don't mind half your crops being rotten.

Sorry, but that's a load of BS. Local farms don't really have this issue. Also note there is a huge problem of waste with conventional farming & animal meat production.

Re: "pests". Pests have predators. If you encourage the predators to thrive, you don't have a pest problem. Conventional monoculture chemical agricultural practices are prone to disease & pests because the natural food web & community is disrupted. It's an unsound architecture that requires expensive & destructive inputs to maintain. It's the industrial model fighting nature.

Why not work with nature instead?

> I've never seen the evidence that you can successfully run a high-yield zero-pesticide farm.

See the links I posted above. Both high-yield farms use zero-pesticides.

> But I'm not that into farming and I'll be more than happy to learn I'm wrong.

Maybe you should look more into it before stating such a strong opinion...It sounds like you are heavily influenced by propaganda from large chemical & petrol companies. I don't blame you, they have huge marketing budgets & are owned by the same interests that run the major media outlets. Too bad nature doesn't have a marketing department, huh?

> But more importantly, even if possible, apparently almost no one does that.

That's untrue. Natural methods are still dominant in most of the world. America is an outlier.

America subsidizes petrol chemical centralized agriculture. We don't subsidize natural methods. Lobbying & corporate interests drive this behavior.

> Especially not organic farmers, who dump even more chemicals on food than usual, with only difference is that those chemicals have "organic-certified" label.

The USDA Organic label is pretty asinine. Many think it's a way of sabotaging natural chemical free methods.

Note that natural food webs don't need chemicals. It has been done successfully but does not receive much attention on a large scale because it does not suit large scale corporate interests. If you take an interest in chemical free gardening, you can try it out yourself.

Natural methods emphasizes small, autonomous farms. It's also better for the environment since natural ecosystems are built (serving a variety of functions), instead of the monoculture pesticide drenched, petrol subsidized, environmentally destructive system that we have today.

It's also safe to drink dish soap, but I wouldn't want to do it on TV. This was a silly attempt at a "gotcha." I wouldn't hang your hat on it.

> When someone asks me why I don't want Monsanto to grow my food I think I need no other answer.

Monsanto had told the US government about dioxin contamination of 2,4,5-T as early as 1952.

It's a mistake to treat corporations like people (no matter what the SCOTUS has to say on the matter). Corporations are just the people who work there. And none of the people involved with Agent Orange are working on GMOs today. They have nothing to do with one another.

Besides, Monsanto long ago spun off their chemical division as Solutia. We're not even talking about the same company.

In the end, you're confusing the name of something with the actual something.

Yeah... This was for WARFARE not agricultural purposes..

An alternate interpretation is that the OP doesn't want Monsanto to grow their food because of their involvement in the military-industrial complex and poisoning of the environment, not because their defoliant was contaminated.

That's fine. Don't tell him about Boeing and Airbus next time he is flying :)

Or IBM.

But if you do and his head starts to hurt so he grabs some Aspirin, don't ever bring up Bayer. ;).

Or Fanta. ;)

All of these companies should have been shut down for immoral practices. If somebody acts shady in the past, it doesn't exactly reassure me to trust them in the present.

It's a view I used to hold, but now I'm not that sure of it. First, a company today is not run by the same people as it was 40 or 80 years ago. So the question is, how much of that immoral past is in the "company DNA", and how much of it was just the old management? Secondly, shutting down such company would work if and only if you went and jailed people responsible for atrocities. Otherwise, they'll just join other companies or start new ones and continue to do evil. And since what you really need is bad people in jail, you may as well just leave their company be.

The ecosystem of the company is what creates the immoral behavior. It's the combination of the management, shareholder expectations, etc.

If the shareholders are lax in demanding moral behavior, then immoral behavior will result. The company should absolutely be shut down.

> Otherwise, they'll just join other companies or start new ones and continue to do evil

Actually, nobody will want to hire them. After all, nobody wants to lose their money in a company that was shut down.

Bayer has got to have the worst history of any company still around. They used concentration camp slave labor and performed medical experiments on them as well. Then someone who went to prison for 7 years for war crimes was appointed the head of the board when he got out of jail. Of course they also invented heroin as a "non-addictive substitute for morphine."

Opposition on moral ground would be fair, but in case of Agent Orange there's enough blame to go around that one should probably put more blame on the US government, and to be consistent, avoid food advertised by them.

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