GM Foods and what they are doing to us...

[HorseFeathers]

my mom watched this 2 hour thing (shame on you, morelcabin, for making her not have quality family time with dad and I

)... REALLY SCARY!!! I watched a little and all I can say is that I'm thankful I don't eat that stuff, just organic, free-range foods.

 

[rebecca10782]

Quote:
In Europe it is illegal to use hormones in farm animals

 

[dlhunicorn]

... put simply , too much of a "good" thing... is a bad thing...

somehow ppl including farmers are not using the "good" thing responsibly (this goes for GM technology as well as the every day use of ROUNDUP) or simply are not aware of the possible repercussions or how it should be used >responsible use can only occur when all factors incl toxicity issues are researched and that information utilized... . I did not understand the connection of the GMO crops with the ROUNDUP product until I saw that documentary.
This is the reason I posted the documentary and the additional info (not to trash the GM technology, Monsanto or herbicides per se)

In Summary: (prepared by a proper scientist listing proper scientific studies):
New Science on Roundup: (Prepared by Rachel Massey, June 2005 ([email protected], 617-627-6793)
"Threats to Human Health and Wildlife
Since 2000, the U.S. government has financially supported and partially operated a massive aerial eradication program in Colombia. Over 1.3 million acres of Colombian farm, range, and forest land have been sprayed with an herbicide mixture, the active ingredient of which is glyphosate. The program aims to destroy coca and poppy crops, the raw materials for cocaine and heroin respectively, though the spray can destroy food crops as well.

Herbicide formulations containing glyphosate are sold in the US under the commercial name Roundup. Recent scientific studies have raised new questions about Roundup’s health and environmental effects, and suggest that Congress should re-evaluate its support for the crop eradication campaigns.

New science on the herbicide Roundup suggests that it can disrupt key hormonal processes in the human body, potentially affecting pregnancy. New research also shows that Roundup is lethal to some amphibians.

Background: Active Ingredients and “Inerts”
Herbicides often contain an active ingredient plus additional chemicals that are referred to as “inerts.” “Inert” in this context does not mean biologically inactive. It simply refers to everything other than the active ingredient. “Inerts” can be more toxic to humans and wildlife than the active ingredient. The combination of an active ingredient plus an “inert” may sometimes be more toxic than either chemical on its own.
A number of studies have found that Roundup is far more toxic than glyphosate alone. This is often due to the presence of an “inert” ingredient called polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA. POEA is added to help the herbicide penetrate into the plant leaves. The herbicide mixture used in Colombia contains POEA.

New Science on Human Health: Hormone Disruption
A study published in the June 2005 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, the journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, tested the effect of glyphosate and Roundup on cells from the human placenta.1 The researchers found that Roundup was significantly more toxic to these cells than glyphosate on its own, and affected cells even when used at concentrations ten times lower than those commonly used in agriculture.

The researchers also tested the herbicide’s effect on the activity of an enzyme that is crucial to sex hormone production (aromatase). Roundup caused a significant decrease in activity of this enzyme after eighteen hours of exposure. The scientists concluded that “Roundup may be thus considered as a potential endocrine disruptor.” They also state that Roundup could cause “some reproduction problems.”

This study reinforces other research that has suggested Roundup can disrupt normal hormone functions and affect pregnancies. One study found that Roundup exposure caused a 94% reduction in sex hormone production by testicular cells.2 Another study found that glyphosate exposure in the three months before conception was associated with an increased risk of late miscarriage.3

Other studies have linked Roundup to genetic damage in laboratory experiments, and to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a kind of cancer. Acute effects of Roundup exposure can include breathing problems and severe irritation of the eyes and skin, among other symptoms.4

New Science on Biodiversity: Toxicity to Frogs
Colombia has the second highest amphibian biodiversity in the world.5 There are hundreds of endemic species of amphibians in Colombia, meaning that these species are not found anywhere else in the world. Many are endangered. The desire to protect these and other unique organisms has inspired international conservation efforts, which the aerial eradication campaigns threaten to undermine.

A number of studies have documented toxic effects of Roundup in amphibians, including causing genetic damage and disrupting normal development.6 In 2005, two new studies have added to the evidence on how Roundup affects frogs.

In one study, scientists created small experimental ponds with multiple organisms such as tadpoles, snails, and insects.7 They tested the effects of various chemicals on these miniature ecosystems. Small ponds like these are likely to be sprayed routinely in the aerial eradication campaign, even though the pilots are instructed to avoid larger bodies of water.

The scientists found that treating a pond with Roundup led to a 22% decrease in the total number of animals living in the pond. Roundup did not affect all species, but it killed all the leopard frog and tree frog tadpoles, and almost eliminated the population of wood frog tadpoles. The authors suggest that Roundup’s toxicity to the tadpoles was probably due primarily to the toxicity of POEA, rather than the active ingredient. They suggest that “contrary to conventional wisdom, current application rates of Roundup can be highly lethal to many species of amphibians.”

Another study found that the toxicity of Roundup to some tadpoles increased in the presence of natural predators (newts that normally feed on tadpoles). The reason is not known, but when the water contained chemical signals from these newts, Roundup had a stronger effect on some tadpoles.8

Other studies in the past have documented Roundup’s toxicity to animals including fish, birds, and amphibians. Roundup can cause severe ecological damage due to drift, can contaminate water sources, and can persist in soil for substantial periods of time.9

A recent report prepared for the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission of the OAS raised concerns about the impact of the spray mixture on aquatic organisms and amphibians. The study recommends that the spray program “identify mixtures of glyphosate and adjuvants that are less toxic to aquatic organisms than the currently used mixture.”10

In summary, scientific evidence suggests that the crop eradication campaigns, and especially the use of herbicide formulations containing POEA, are a threat to human health and biodiversity in Colombia.

Prepared by Rachel Massey, June 2005 ([email protected], 617-627-6793). Notes:
1. Sophie Richard et al., “Differential Effects of Glyphosate and Roundup on Human Placental Cells and Aromatase,” Environmental Health Perspectives 113:6 (June 2005), 716-720.
2. L.P. Walsh, “Roundup inhibits steroidogenesis by disrupting steroidogenic acute regulatory (StAR) protein expression,” Environmental Health Perspectives 108 (2000), 769-776.
3. T.E. Arbuckle, “An Exploratory Analysis of the Effect of Pesticide Exposure on the Risk of Spontaneous Abortion in an Ontario Farm Population,” Environmental Health Perspectives 109 (2001), 851-857. 4. For an overview of these studies, see Caroline Cox, “Herbicide Factsheet: Glyphosate,” Journal of Pesticide Reform 24:4 (Winter 2004), 14. 5. NatureServe, “Disappearing Jewels: The Status of New World Amphibians,” available at http://www.natureserve.org/publications/disappearingjewels.jsp, viewed June 2005.
6. C.M. Howe et al., Toxicity of Glyphosate-based Pesticides to Four North American Frog Species.” Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 23 (2004), 1928-1938; C. Clements et al., “Genotoxicity of select herbicides in Rana catesbeiana tadpoles using the alkaline single-cell gel DNA electrophoresis (comet) assay,” Environ. Mole. Mutagen. 29 (1997), 277-288,; R.C. Lajmanovich et al., “Induction of mortality and malformation in Scinax nasicus tadpoles exposed to glyphosate formulations.” Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology 70:3 (March 2003), 612-618, 46;, all cited in Cox 2004.
7. Rick A. Relyea, “The Impact of Insecticides and Herbicides on the Biodiversity and Productivity of Aquatic Communities,” Ecological Applications 15:2 (2005), 618-627.
8. Rick A. Relyea, “The Lethal Impacts of Roundup and Predatory Stress on Six Species of North American Tadpoles.” Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 48, pp. 351-357 (2005).
9. See Cox 2004. 10. http://www.cicad.oas.org/en/glifosateFinalReport.pdf

 

[SeaChick]

I cannot even begin to explain how angry this all makes me. I watched the documentary last night (as Envirogirl said) and read dlhunicorn's post. I knew about Roundup concerns before (during my research when I had breast cancer, it came up seveal times)and it just makes my blood boil.

I cannot fahtom that corporate leaders -who are in fact people, are they not, with families and loved ones?- could be so GREEDY as to ignore known SERIOUS health issues in pursuit of another dollar. And that regular folks are blithely buying up Roundup so they can have a PRETTIER LAWN, when it is so toxic, is just mind-blowing.

And that we who know the risks and choose to avoid them cannot really avoid them is so appalling. Here in Maine organic farmers are very concerned about cross-contamination of Roundup-REady corn with their crops. With good reason, if you saw the documentary in the first post. The gov't is writing legislation to require a buffer zone (an inadequate on, like a hundred yards or something) and the farmers who us the GMO crops are trying to make it the SMALL ORGANIC FARMERS' burden to provide the buffer on their own land. What?!?!?!?!!? it's the Roundup-Ready corn that is causing the problems!!!! Shouldn't THOSE farmers be responsible for providing the buffer! Argh!!!

Grrrrrrr.

 

[tiki244]

Quote:
1) Monsanto has sued farmers for using their products with out paying. My statement was they have SUED no one for cross pollination, that is a true statement. Again, farmers want to use RR technology with out paying for it, how is that not stealing? Would you be OK, if anyone came and borrowed your car and never paid or returned it? If they did pay, it was what they wanted to pay, you have no say so.

2) You disagree that the world is facing a food shortage? You believe that non-GMO's outyield GMO's? How many plots have you put out where they are side by sides? Same environment, just the hybrids change. If you believe that open pollinated corn will yield w/hybrid seed, we need to no longer discuss anything.

3) GMO's are controversial in some circles, in those that actually work in Ag, there is very little left to discuss.

4) As far as someone getting a "video" showing how bad glysophates are, that is a joke on line w/space aliens. Want to farm w/o chemicals, go ahead. Want farmers to not use chemicals, pay more for your food (in real terms, expect $12 corn, etc).

I don't like where Ag is headed, but the rest of you need to talk to people involved in real ag to understand our frustrations with uninformed people who are well intentioned.

just to clarify a couple of things,,,,,,,

1)Monsanto has sued farmers when Monsanto found a stalk or two of their plant in a farmer's field and it was not the fault of the farmer, it was because a truckload of Monsanto "product" drove by and contaminated the farmer's field; Also rendering the farmer's seed that had been developed for generations unusable (this would be clasified as using Monsanto's product without paying). This is no fault of the farmer.

2)I do not disagree that the world is facing a food crisis,,,,,,,,what I disagree with is the "logic" of GMOs being the one and only solution,,,,as I stated originally, there are various and some PROVEN solutions to food shortages in areas of the world that were once totally dependent upon aide for their food supply; I also stated( or tried to, I may have been a little short on words) that I think the reason the food shortages are in some of these areas is because of the practices of the "modern" western farming methods. IE:no diversity, overuse of chemicals(synthetic),overuse of land,using food for fuel amongst many others

3)(About being Passionate) I was defending a point that someone had said that the only people that reacted strongly to the subject were somehow not knowledgeable or unscientific or had no knowledge in science. A person can be passionate about something because they have strong idea, which I do, and I believe I am knowledgable enough to have an educated opinion and do not appreciate it that people find the need to put me down. I am not in a classroom nor graduate school at this time, nor do I want to be. And I do not feel I need to be in order to state my thoughts. (in response to poster above a few posts

4) People do not necassarily have to be scientists with a graduate degree and working in the field (or fields) to be knowledgeable. There are people that are very smart that can have strong opinions based on facts(evidence).

4) this is by no means all inclusive

 

[tiki244]

I meant to say thank you dlhunicorn for the Referenced Evidence

 

[seedcorn]

1)Monsanto has sued farmers when Monsanto found a stalk or two of their plant in a farmer's field and it was not the fault of the farmer, it was because a truckload of Monsanto "product" drove by and contaminated the farmer's field; Also rendering the farmer's seed that had been developed for generations unusable (this would be clasified as using Monsanto's product without paying). This is no fault of the farmer.

Name one case where this has happened. I can give you case loads where Monsanto has went after people who bin run RR beans. I know of NO cases where Monsanto has sued anyone for what you indicated. In fact, I know of NO case where a truckload of product drove by and contaminated the field--that is physically impossible. Easy to prove me wrong give me the first case. I'll start a new thread to say I was wrong or attach it to this one your call.

Don't like GMO's, glysophates I get it just stop making things up. Don't use them or buy them.

 

[SeaChick]

Here are the Facts:
Multi-Billion $$ Monsanto Sues More Small Family Farmers
Percy Schmeiser
Percy Schmeiser is a farmer from Saskatchewan Canada, whose Canolafields were contaminated with Monsanto's genetically engineered Round-Up Ready Canola by pollen from a nearby farm. Monsanto says it doesn't matter how the contamination took place, and is therefore demanding Schmeiser pay their Technology Fee (the fee farmers must pay to grow Monsanto's genetically engineered products). According to Schmeiser, "I never had anything to do with Monsanto, outside of buying chemicals. I never signed a contract. If I would go to St. Louis (Monsanto Headquarters) and contaminate their plots--destroy what they have worked on for 40 years--I think I would be put in jail and the key thrown away."​

 

[SeaChick]

And this is very close to home. This is our local MAINSTREAM dairy... not organic or fancy-pants in any way. This is a MAINSTREAM dairy.

In 2003, Monsanto sued Oakhurst Dairy in Maine for advertising that its milk products did not come from cows treated with bovine growth hormone, claiming that such advertising hurt its business. The president of Oakhurst responded by saying, "We ought to have the right to let people know what is and is not in our milk."

Monsanto Brings Small
Family Dairy to Court

Oakhurst Dairy has been owned and operated by the same Maine family since 1921, and Monsanto recently attempted to put them out of business. Oakhurst, like many other dairy producers in the U.S., has been responding to consumer demand to provide milk free of rBGH, a synthetic hormone banned (for health reasons) in every industrialized country other than the U.S. Monsanto, the number one producer of the rBGH synthetic steroid, sued Oakhurst, claiming they should not have the right to inform their customers that their dairy products do not contain the Monsanto chemical. Given the intense pressure from the transnational corporation, Oakhurst was forced to settle out of court, leaving many other dairies vulnerable to similar attacks from Monsanto.​

 

[SeaChick]

If you watch the documentary, you will get many answers to the questions you've posed here seedcorn. For example, the "shady business" referred to in early pages of this thread is detailed in this Washington Post article:

Monsanto Hid PCB Pollution for
Decades
By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 1, 2002; Page A01

ANNISTON, Ala. -- On the west side of Anniston, the poor side of Anniston,
the people ate dirt. They called it "Alabama clay" and cooked it for extra
flavor. They also grew berries in their gardens, raised hogs in their back
yards, caught bass in the murky streams where their children swam and
played and were baptized. They didn't know their dirt and yards and bass
and kids -- along with the acrid air they breathed -- were all contaminated
with chemicals. They didn't know they lived in one of the most polluted patches
of America.

Now they know. They also know that for nearly 40 years, while producing the
now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto
Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped
millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of
pages of Monsanto documents -- many emblazoned with warnings such as
"CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy" -- show that for decades, the corporate
giant concealed what it did and what it knew.

In 1966, Monsanto managers discovered that fish submerged in that creek
turned belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood and shedding skin as if
dunked into boiling water. They told no one. In 1969, they found fish in
another creek with 7,500 times the legal PCB levels. They decided "there is
little object in going to expensive extremes in limiting discharges." In
1975, a company study found that PCBs caused tumors in rats. They ordered
its conclusion changed from "slightly tumorigenic" to "does not appear to
be carcinogenic."

Monsanto enjoyed a lucrative four-decade monopoly on PCB production in the
United States, and battled to protect that monopoly long after PCBs were
confirmed as a global pollutant. "We can't afford to lose one dollar of
business," one internal memo concluded.

Lastmonth, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered General Electric Co.
to spend $460 million to dredge PCBs it had dumped into the Hudson River in
the past, perhaps the Bush administration's boldest environmental action to
date. The decision was bitterly opposed by the company, but hailed by
national conservation groups and many prominent and prosperous residents of
the picturesque Hudson River Valley.

In Anniston, far from the national spotlight, the sins of the past are being
addressed in a very different way. Here, Monsanto and its corporate
successors have avoided a regulatory crackdown, spending just $40 million
on cleanup efforts so far. But they have spent $80 million more on legal
settlements, and another lawsuit by 3,600 plaintiffs -- one of every nine
city residents -- is scheduled for trial next Monday. David Carpenter, an
environmental health professor at the State University of New York at
Albany, has been a leading advocate of the EPA's plan to dredge the Hudson,
but he says the PCB problems in Anniston are much worse.

"I'm looking out my window at the Hudson right now, but the reality is that
the people who live around the Monsanto plant have higher PCB levels than
any residential population I've ever seen," said Carpenter, an expert
witness for the plaintiffs in Anniston. "They're 10 times higher than the
people around the Hudson."

The Anniston lawsuits have uncovered a voluminous paper trail, revealing an
unusually detailed story of secret corporate machinations in the era before
strict environmental regulations and right-to-know laws. The documents --
obtained by The Washington Post from plaintiffs' attorneys and the
Environmental Working Group, a chemical industry watchdog -- date as far
back as the 1930s, but they expose actions with consequences that are still
unfolding today.

Officials at Solutia Inc., the name given to Monsanto's chemical operations
after they were spun off into a separate company in 1997, acknowledge that
Monsanto made mistakes. But they also said that for years, PCBs were hailed
for preventing fires and explosions in electrical equipment. Monsanto did
stop making PCBs in 1977, two years before a nationwide ban took effect.
And the current scientific consensus that PCBs are harmful, especially to the
environment, masks serious disputes over just how harmful they are to
people.

Today, the old plant off Monsanto Road here makes a chemical used in
Tylenol. It has not reported a toxic release in four years. Robert Kaley,
the environmental affairs director for Solutia who also serves as the PCB
expert for the American Chemistry Council, said it is unfair to judge the
company's behavior from the 1930s through 1970s by modern standards.

"Did we do some things we wouldn't do today? Of course. But that's a little
piece of a big story," he said. "If you put it all in context, I think
we've got nothing to be ashamed of."

But Monsanto's uncertain legacy is as embedded in west Anniston's psyche as
it is in the town's dirt. The EPA and the World Health Organization classify
PCBs as "probable carcinogens," and while no one has determined whether the
people in Anniston are sicker than average, Solutia has opposed proposals
for comprehensive health studies as unnecessary. And it has not apologized
for any of its contamination or deception.

In the absence of data, local residents seem to believe the worst. The
stories linger: The cancer cluster up the hill. The guy who burned the
soles off his boots while walking on Monsanto's landfill. The dog that died after
a sip from Snow Creek, the long-abused drainage ditch that runs from the
Monsanto plant through the heart of west Anniston's cinder-block cottages
and shotgun houses. Sylvester Harris, 63, an undertaker who lived across
the street from the plant, said he always thought he was burying too many
young children.

"I knew something was wrong around here," he said.

Opal Scruggs, 65, has spent her entire life in west Anniston, the last few
decades in a cottage in back of a Waffle House behind the plant. But in
recent years, Monsanto has bought and demolished about 100 PCB-tainted
homes and mom-and-pop businesses nearby, turning her neighborhood into a
virtual ghost town. Now she has elevated PCB levels in her blood -- along with
Harris and many of their neighbors -- and she believes she's a "walking
time bomb."

"Monsanto did a job on this city," she said. "They thought we were stupid
and illiterate people, so nobody would notice what happens to us."

The Model City

Anniston was born at the height of the Industrial Revolution as a
mineral-rich company town controlled by the Woodstock Iron Works,
off-limits to all but company employees. It was named in 1879 for the foundry
owner's wife -- Annie's Town -- but it was nicknamed "The Model City of
the South" because it was supposed to be a kind of industrial utopia, a centrally
planned rebuke to the North's slums after the Civil War. The company would
provide the workers' cottages, the general store, the church, the schools.
It would take care of the community.

Anniston retains its Model City slogan to this day, but its paternalistic
social experiment was quickly abandoned. It soon developed into a
heavy-industry boomtown, dominated by foundries and factories with 24-hour
smokestacks. In 1929, one of those factories began manufacturing
polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

Now that PCBs are considered "probable" human carcinogens by the EPA
and the World Health Organization, it is easy to forget that they were once
known as miracle chemicals. They are unusually nonflammable, and conduct
heat without conducting electricity. Many safety codes once mandated the use
of PCBs as insulation in transformers and other electrical equipment. They also
were used in paints, newsprint, carbon paper, deep-fat fryers, adhesives, even
bread wrappers. The American public had no idea of the downside of PCBs
until the late 1960s.

Monsanto did. Shortly after buying the 70-acre plant at the foot of
Coldwater Mountain in 1935, the company learned that PCBs, in the
doublenegative of one company memo, "cannot be considered non-toxic." A
1937 Harvard study was the first to find that prolonged exposure could cause
liver damage and a rash called chloracne. Monsanto then hired the scientist
who led the study as a consultant, and company memos began acknowledging
the "systemic toxic effects" of Aroclors, the brand name for PCBs. Monsanto
also began warning its industrial customers to protect their workers from
Aroclors by requiring showers after every shift, providing them with clean
work clothes every day and keeping fumes away from factory floors.

One Aroclor manual reveals that "in the early days of development," workers
at the Anniston plant had developed chloracne and liver problems. In
February 1950, when workers fell ill at a customer's Indiana factory,
Monsanto's medical director, Emmett Kelly, immediately "suspected the
possibility that the Aroclor fumes may have caused liver damage."

Two years later, Monsanto signed an agreement with the U.S. Public Health
Service to label Aroclors: "Avoid repeated contact with the skin and
inhalation of the fumes and dusts." The company also warned its industrial
customers about ecological risks: "If the material is discharged in large
concentrations it will adversely affect . . . aquatic life in the stream."
But it did not warn its neighbors. "It is our desire to comply with the
necessary regulations, but to comply with the minimum," an official wrote.

In 1998, a former Anniston plant manager, William Papageorge, was asked in
a deposition whether Monsanto officials ever shared their data about PCB
hazards with the community.

"Why would they?" he replied.

In the fall of 1966, Monsanto hired a Mississippi State University biologist
named Denzel Ferguson to conduct some studies around its Anniston plant.
Ferguson, who died in 1998, arrived with tanks full of bluegill fish, which
he caged in cloth containers and submerged at various points along nearby
creeks. This is what he reported to Monsanto about the results in Snow
Creek: "All 25 fish lost equilibrium and turned on their sides in 10
seconds and all were dead in 3 1/2 minutes."

"It was like dunking the fish in battery acid," recalled George Murphy, who
was one of Ferguson's graduate students at the time and is now chairman of
Middle Tennessee State University's biology department.

"I've never seen anything like it in my life," said Mack Finley, another
former Ferguson grad student, now an aquatic biologist at Austin Peay State
University. "Their skin would literally slough off, like a blood blister on
the bottom of your foot."

The problem, Ferguson concluded, was the "extremely toxic" wastewater
flowing directly from the Monsanto plant into Snow Creek, and then into the
larger Choccolocco Creek, where he noted similar "die-offs." The outflow,
he calculated, "would probably kill fish when diluted 1,000 times or so." He
warned Monsanto: "Since this is a surface stream that passes through
residential areas, it may represent a potential source of danger to children."
He urged Monsanto to clean up Snow Creek, and to stop dumping
untreated waste there.

Monsanto did not do that -- even though the warnings continued.

In early 1967, a group of Swedish scientists demonstrated publicly that
PCBs were a threat to the global environment. The Swedes identified traces
of PCBs throughout the food chain: in fish, birds, pine needles, even their
children's hair. They proved that PCBs are persistent -- which, as one
lawyer drawled in court last spring, "is nothing but a fancy word for
action preparatory to actual cleanup."

"We should begin to protect ourselves," it said.

The Company Committee

In September 1969, Monsanto appointed an Aroclors Ad Hoc Committee to
address the controversies swirling around its PCB monopoly, which was worth
$22 million a year in sales. According to minutes of the first meeting, the
committee had only two formal objectives: "Permit continued sales and
profits" and "Protect image of . . . the Corporation."

But the members agreed that the situation looked bleak. PCBs had been found
across the nation in fish, oysters and even bald eagles. They had been
identified in milk in Georgia and Maryland. They were implicated in a major
shrimp kill in Florida. Their status as a serious pollutant, the committee
concluded, was "certain."

"Subject is snowballing," one member jotted in his notes. "Where do we go
from here?"

One option, as a member put it, was to "sell the hell out of them as long
as we can." Another option was to stop making them immediately. But the
committee instead recommended "The Responsible Approach" -- phasing out its
PCB products, but only once it could develop alternatives.The idea was to
maintain "one of Monsanto's most profitable franchises" as long as possible
while taking care to "reduce our exposure in terms of liability." The
committee even drew up graphs charting profits vs. liability over time, and
urged more studies to poke holes in the government's case against PCBs.

But the company's own tests on rats, chickens and even dogs proved
discouraging. "The PCBs are exhibiting a greater degree of toxicity than we
had anticipated," reported the committee chairman. Fish tests were worse:
"Doses which were believed to be OK produced 100% kill." The chairman
pressured the company's consultants for more Monsanto-friendly results, but
they replied: "We are very sorry that we can't paint a brighter picture at
the present time."

The picture was not bright in Anniston, either. Company studies were
finding "ominous" concentrations of PCBs in streams and sediments. In
Choccolocco Creek, Monsanto had discovered deformed and lethargic
fish with off-the-charts PCB levels, including a blacktail shiner with 37,800
parts per million. The legal maximum was only 5 parts per million. "It is
apparent to us that there is a cause-and-effect relationship," the consultants
wrote.

At first, the committee members proposed reducing PCB releases to an
"absolute minimum." But then they removed the word "absolute." They saw no
benefit in a unilateral crackdown on Monsanto's PCBs when Monsanto's
customers were still dumping, too: "It was agreed that until the problems
of gross environmental contamination by our customers have been alleviated,
there is little object in going to expensive extremes in limiting discharges."

And before Monsanto even began to phase out its best-selling PCBs, its top
customer intervened: General Electric, according to a memo by Papageorge,
insisted that it needed to keep buying PCBs to prevent power outages and
that the environmental threat was still "questionable." Monsanto agreed to
slow down its plan, and kept making PCBs until 1977, although only for
closely monitored industrial uses.

And what, Kaley asks, is wrong with that? Corporations, after all, have
obligations to their shareholders, and the federal law banning the
manufacture of PCBs did not take effect until 1979. Monsanto's critics,
Kaley says, do not understand capitalism.

"Look, this was a good product," Kaley said. "Did we try to save it as long
as we could? Absolutely. Was the writing on the wall when we stopped
producing it? Sure. But we did stop."

The Reluctant Regulators

By May 1970, PCBs were a hot topic in the national media. Members of
Congress were calling for hearings. It seemed like only a matter of time
before regulators would notice the river of PCBs spewing out of the
Anniston plant. "This would shut us down depending on what plants or
animals they choose to find harmed," the committee had warned.

So Monsanto decided to inform the Alabama Water Improvement Commission
(AWIC) on its own that PCBs were entering Snow Creek. And AWIC helped the
company keep its toxic secrets.

According to a company memo, AWIC's technical director, Joe Crockett, had
been "totally unaware of published information concerning Aroclors." The
Monsanto executives assured him that everything was under control, and
Crockett, who is now deceased, said he appreciated their forthright
approach. "Give no statements or publications which would bring the
situation to the public's attention," he told them, according to the memo.

"In summary . . . the full cooperation of the AWIC on a confidential basis
can be anticipated," the memo concluded.

That summer, Crockett again came to Monsanto's rescue after the federal
Food and Drug Administration found PCB-tainted fish in Choccolocco Creek.
(There were no fish -- or any other aquatic life -- in Snow Creek.) Monsanto's
managers told him not to worry, saying they hoped to reduce PCB emissions
to 0.1 pounds per day by September.

"Crockett will try to handle the problem quietly without release of the
information to the public at this time," announced a memo marked
CONFIDENTIAL: F.Y.I. AND DESTROY. Crockett explained that if word leaked
out, the state would be forced to ban fishing in Choccolocco Creek and a
popular lake downstream to ensure public safety.

Instead, the public kept fishing. But Monsanto's daily PCB losses, after
dipping from a high of 250 pounds to a low of 16 pounds, ballooned to 88
pounds -- 880 times its goal.

"There is extreme reluctance to report even relatively low emission figures
because the information could be subpoenaed and used against us in legal
actions," wrote an executive at Monsanto headquarters in St. Louis.
"Obviously, having to report these gross losses multiplies, enormously, our
problems because the figures would appear to indicate lack of control. . .
.
Is there anything more that can be done to get the losses down?"

There was. The problem had festered for 36 years, but the Anniston managers
finally began to act that fall, installing a sump, a carbon bed and a new
limestone pit to trap PCBs. And in 1971, facing as much as $1 billion in
additional pollution control costs in Anniston, Monsanto shifted all PCB
production to its plant in Illinois.

Before the year was over, Crockett helped out once more. The Justice
Department was considering a lawsuit against Monsanto over PCBs, and the
EPA wanted it to dredge Snow Creek. So Crockett set up a meeting between
Monsanto and an EPA regulator and helped argue the company's case. The
company's problems disappeared. One executive noted with relief in a memo
that a federal prosecutor had tried but failed to obtain Monsanto's
customer list: "I shudder to think how easily it would have been for someone . . .
to start spilling the beans as to whom we have been selling PCB products."

Monsanto's luck with regulators held in 1983, when the federal Soil
Conservation Service found PCBs in Choccolocco Creek, but took no action.
In 1985, state authorities found PCB-tainted soils around Snow Creek, but a
dispute over cleanup details lingered until a new attorney general named
Donald Siegelman took office in 1988. In a letter that April, Monsanto's
Anniston superintendent thanked Siegelman -- who is now the state's
Democratic governor -- for addressing the Alabama Chemical Association, and
meeting Monsanto's lobbyists for dinner. Then he got to the point: Monsanto
wanted to go forward with its own cleanup plan, dredging just a few hundred
yards of Snow Creek and its tributaries.

The company soon received approval to do just that.

A spokesman for Gov. Siegelman noted that in April 2000, he wrote to
President Bill Clinton about Anniston's PCBs, pointing out "the severity of
the situation" and requesting federal funding. But several state officials
acknowledged that a dozen years earlier, Alabama should have tested a much
larger area for PCBs before approving Monsanto's limited plan.

"It's hard to know how that one slipped through the cracks," said Stephen
Cobb, the state's hazardous waste chief. "For some reason, no one
investigated the larger PCB problem."

The larger problem finally burst into public view in 1993, after a local
angler caught deformed largemouth bass in Choccolocco Creek. After studies
again detected PCBs, Alabama issued the first advisories against eating
fish from the area -- 27 years after Monsanto learned about those bluegills
sliding out of their skins.

By 1996, state officials and plaintiffs' attorneys were finding astronomical
PCB levels in the area: as high as 940 times the federal level of concern
in yard soils, 200 times that level in dust inside people's homes, 2,000 times
that level in Monsanto's drainage ditches. The PCB levels in the air were
also too high. And in blood tests, nearly one-third of the residents of the
working-class Sweet Valley and Cobbtown neighborhoods near the plant were
found to have elevated PCB levels. The communities were declared public
health hazards. Near Snow Creek, the state warned, "the increased risk of
cancer is estimated to be high."

That's when Monsanto launched a program to buy and raze contaminated
properties, offering early sign-up bonuses and moving expenses as
incentives. "Monsanto intends to be a good neighbor -- to those who wish to
leave, and to those who wish to stay," its brochures explained.

Sally Franklin, a 64-year-old retired mechanic with a girlish voice, decided
to stay; she couldn't afford to buy a new home with the money Monsanto was
offering. One spring afternoon, she looked down from her PCB-contaminated
home overlooking what used to be Sweet Valley, now just an overgrown field
around an incongruous stop sign. So much for good neighbors, she grumbled.

"They must not think we know a black cow can give white milk," she said.


The Dredged-Up Past

Anniston is not much of a model city anymore. The EPA officials who set up
an Anniston satellite office to deal with the PCB problem are now alarmed
about widespread lead poisoning as well. The Army is building an
incinerator here to burn 2,000 tons of deadly sarin and mustard gas. And
the Anniston Star has been questioning Monsanto's past mercury releases.

Duane Higgins runs the Chamber of Commerce here in Calhoun County --
motto: "Near Atlanta . . . Near Birmingham . . . Near Perfect" -- and like
many civic leaders here, he's sick of headlines about pollution. "I'm tired of
paying for the sins of our fathers and grandfathers," he said. "I don't see
the point of dredging this stuff up."

He meant that literally, too. Local activists want Monsanto to dredge all
its PCBs out of Anniston's creeks and move all its buried PCBs to
hazardous-waste landfills. That could cost billions of dollars. But state
and EPA officials do not agree that such drastic measures are necessary.
They have no evidence that PCBs have escaped from the dumps since Monsanto
was required to cap them after a spill in 1996; they believe most of
Anniston's PCBs spread from the creeks during floods. And dredging projects
such as the one approved for the Hudson River remain scientifically as well
as politically controversial.

"There's a very pervasive problem in Anniston, but so far we haven't seen a
need for those kinds of dramatic actions," said Wesley Hardegree, an EPA
corrective action specialist.

Part of the problem is that despite all the publicity, much remains unknown
about PCBs. Various animal studies have linked them to various cancers.
Other studies suggest possible ties to low IQs, birth defects, thyroid
problems, immune problems, diabetes. A federal research summary titled "Do
PCBs Affect Human Health?" concluded: "No smoking gun . . . but plenty of
bullets on the floor."

But no one has found a link between PCBs and any cancer as definitive as
the link between, say, cigarettes and lung cancer. A recent GE-funded study --
conducted by the same toxicologist who originally discovered that PCBs
cause cancer in rats -- found no link to cancer in humans. And some
independent scientists remain skeptical of any serious health effects from
real-world PCB exposure.

Today, Solutia is negotiating a final Anniston cleanup plan; EPA officials
say the company has been aggressive in pressing for lower standards but
generally cooperative. It employs 85 workers in Anniston, and donates
computers and science labs to area schools. Its brochures pledge to "insure
environmental safety and health for the community" and to hide nothing from
Anniston residents: "You have a right to know, and we have a responsibility
to keep you, our valued neighbor, informed."

"We don't have horns coming out of our head," said David Cain, the current
manager of the Solutia plant in Anniston. "We're not evil people."

Still, the company's credibility problems linger in Anniston. A recent
company e-mail revealed that even the gifts of computers and labs were part
of a new damage-control strategy, along with donations to Siegelman's
inaugural fund: "The strategy calls for significantly increasing . . .
community outreach, contributions and political involvement while
aggressively seeking . . . to contain media issues regionally." The
company's critics say little has changed. And they warn that Monsanto,
which no longer produces chemicals, is now promising the world that its
genetically engineered crops are safe for human consumption.

"For years, these guys said PCBs were safe, too," said Mike Casey of the
Environmental Working Group, which has been compiling chemical industry
documents on the Web. "But there's obviously a corporate culture of
deceiving the public."

On Jan. 7, the two sides will have their day in court. Kaley said his
company has nothing to hide.

"I'm really pretty proud of what we did," Kaley said. "Was it perfect? No.
Could we be second-guessed? Sure. But I think we mostly did what any
company would do, even today."​