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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

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.

heliumcraft 12y ago
Yeah... This was for WARFARE not agricultural purposes..
- Wingman4l7 12y ago
  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.
  - heliumcraft 12y ago
    That's fine. Don't tell him about Boeing and Airbus next time he is flying :)
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Or IBM. But if you do and his head starts to hurt so he grabs some Aspirin, don't ever bring up Bayer. ;).
      - heliumcraft 11y ago
        Or Fanta. ;)
        briantakita 11y ago
        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.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        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.
        briantakita 11y ago
        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.
      - hn_ 11y ago
        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."
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    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.
masklinn 12y ago
> 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.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
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.
- fit2rule 12y ago
  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.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    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.
    - fit2rule 11y ago
      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.
dionidium 11y ago
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.

heliumcraft 12y ago

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

Wingman4l7 12y ago
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.
- heliumcraft 12y ago
  That's fine. Don't tell him about Boeing and Airbus next time he is flying :)
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Or IBM. But if you do and his head starts to hurt so he grabs some Aspirin, don't ever bring up Bayer. ;).
    - heliumcraft 11y ago
      Or Fanta. ;)
      - briantakita 11y ago
        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.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        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.
        briantakita 11y ago
        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.
    - hn_ 11y ago
      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."
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  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.

masklinn 12y ago

> 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.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

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.

fit2rule 12y ago
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.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  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.
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    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.

dionidium 11y ago

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.