Monsanto vs The People

Lyric Hildner
Think of all the food in your kitchen. You have fruits and vegetables, snacks in the
pantry, meat in the fridge or freezer, food almost everywhere in there. 80% of it is
genetically modified. The reason this is, is because huge companies, such as
Monsanto, have flooded the food markets with their genetically modified organisms.
Crops, food, and herbicides have become much more prevalent in the past fifteen
years, and humans have ingested a lot more of them as well. That means that there is a
huge market for it.
Monsanto, currently the biggest producer of GM herbicides/pesticides/crops, started up
in the 90s and has grown ever since. One of their biggest products, seeds and crops,
has grown exponentially and they have started to copyright them. Once their specific
seed is copyrighted, you can buy it and plant it. But for the farmers who grow organic
crops, they cant control the Monsanto seeds from mixing/pollinating with the organic
seeds. If Monsanto finds out that their seeds are some other farmers land, then they
can sue them, and very often, Monsanto does sue the farmers. It isnt even the farmers
fault that the seeds got mixed together. Its the wind and the natural spreading of the
seeds that get them mixed together.
In the article Ten Reasons to Avoid GMOs, author Jeffrey Smith states: GMOs cross
pollinate and their seeds can travel. It is impossible to fully clean up our contaminated
gene pool. Self-propagating GMO pollution will outlast the effects of global warming and
nuclear waste. The potential impact is huge, threatening the health of future
generations. GMO contamination has also caused economic losses for organic and
non-GMO farmers who often struggle to keep their crops pure. This is exactly what I
was saying. Not only does it hurt the lives of the natural farmers, it can threaten and hurt
future generations. I believe this can happen because the genetically engineered parts
of the crops and seeds could mutate over time and be resistant to digestion or some
weird thing. One of the best examples of chemicals that could mutate at some point, is
Monsantos RoundUp herbicide.
Between 1996 and 2008, US farmers sprayed an extra 383 million pounds of herbicide
on GMOs. Overuse of Roundup results in superweeds, resistant to the herbicide. This
is causing farmers to use even more toxic herbicides every year. Not only does this
create environmental harm, GM foods contain higher residues of toxic herbicides.
Jeffrey Smith added. The chemicals in RoundUp are bad for mammals, which are the
primary animals that ingest crops that have been sprayed with RoundUp.
In fact, glyphosate, one of the ingredients in RoundUp, has been linked to multiple
diseases. The discovery that glyphosate directly inhibits CYP enzyme activity is
noteworthy, as this class of enzymes is responsible for regulating proper metabolism,
which in turn can lead to inflammatory bowel disease and other chronic gastrointestinal
disorders. Such disorders, as you may already know, are often linked to autism
spectrum disorders and various other brain conditions. Beyond this, glyphosate has also
been shown to directly interfere with reproductive function. A known chelator, the
spraying of RoundUp on crops has been shown to not only deplete nutrients from crops,

but also block their absorption from soil. When ingested, glyphosate and glyphosate
residues can cause similar damage in humans, as it both depletes and decreases the
bioavailability of important reproductive nutrients like cholesterol sulfate and zinc.
Glyphosate has also been shown to cross the placental barrier and damage developing
human life in mothers' wombs.
Between the possible diseases and lawsuits that can come to fruition, it just seems to
risky to continue to use GMOs. Monsanto is a huge corporation that only wants more
money and doesnt care about the people they affect. Biotech companies like Monsanto
told us that Agent Orange, PCBs, and DDT were safe. They are now using the same
type of superficial, rigged research to try and convince us that GMOs are safe. More
specifically, Monsantos RoundUp herbicide. They like to go around saying that
glyphosate is harmless. Contrary to the current widely-held misconception that
glyphosate is relatively harmless to humans, the available evidence shows that
glyphosate may rather be the most important factor in the development of multiple
chronic diseases and conditions that have become prevalent in Westernized societies,
as I discussed earlier. Genetically modified anything is a bad idea. People are messing
with things that dont need to be messed with. Even when they do make some
improvement, it just creates a larger problem.
Works Cited

Smith, Jeffrey. "10 Reasons to Avoid GMOs." IRT: Institute for Responsible Technology.
The Institute for Responsible Technology, 25 Aug. 2011. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
<http://responsibletechnology.org/10-reasons-to-avoid-gmos/>.
Farm, Wood Prairie. "Organic Farmers vs. Monsanto: Final Appeal to U.S. Supreme
Court to Protect Crops from GMO Contamination." EcoWatch. EcoWatch, 24
Dec. 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2016.
<http://ecowatch.com/2013/12/24/farmers-monsanto-gmo-contamination/>.
Huff, Ethan A. "Roundup Herbicide Causes Smorgasbord of Fatal Diseases, New Study
Concludes." NaturalNews. Natural News Network, 7 May 2013. Web. 24 Feb.
2016.
<http://www.naturalnews.com/040226_Monsanto_Roundup_glyphosate.html>.
Gleiser, Marcelo. "Genetically Modified Organisms: To Eat Or Not To Eat?"NPR. NPR,
31 July 2013. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/07/31/206969863/genetically-modified-org
anisms-to-eat-or-not-to-eat