Story at-a-glance
The U.S. Department of Justice has approved the merger of Monsanto and Bayer, which means just three companies now dominate the global seed and pesticide market
Consolidation promotes lower quality products as there’s less incentive for innovation when there’s less competition. Less competition also typically results in price increases. Both are expected to occur as a result of this merger
The first week of June marked the end of the Monsanto name, but that doesn’t mean the company, its products and everything associated with either, are going away — its name has simply changed to Bayer
As the world’s now largest seed and pesticide company, Bayer will have a direct impact on a majority of farmers in the U.S., EU and Great Britain
Organic Consumers Association needs your financial support to step up the campaign against Bayer through public education, litigation and funding of U.S. Right to Know and the Ramazzini Institute global study on the hazards of glyphosate.
By Dr. Mercola
May 29, 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) approved (with conditions) the merger of Monsanto and Bayer.1,2 The decision came on the heels of the European Union's (EU) approval in March. Bayer's takeover of Monsanto — the largest all-cash buyout on record3,4,5 — means just three companies now dominate the global seed and pesticide market.6
In addition to the Bayer-Monsanto merger, the DOJ has also approved the merger of Dow and DuPont, and the Federal Trade Commission recently approved ChemChina's acquisition of Syngenta. Together, these three merged behemoths — Bayer, ChemChina and DowDuPont — will control 61 percent of the global seed market.
The same trio, plus BASF, will also control 70 percent of the pesticide market.7 Of these, Bayer will hold the largest share — about a quarter of the seed and pesticide markets combined. In 2011, Monsanto had 26 percent of the global seed market and Bayer had 3 percent. Bayer sold 17 percent of the total agrochemicals; Monsanto had 7 percent of the chemical market.8
As a condition of the DOJ's approval, Bayer will sell some of its assets to BASF, including its soybean, cottonseed and glufosinate weed killer businesses, which overlap with Monsanto's and were antitrust sticking points. So, the first week of June marked the end of the Monsanto name,9 but that doesn't mean the company, its products and everything associated with either, are going away. As noted by Forbes,10 "its history, products and culture will linger. Bayer can't change Monsanto's history."
Bayer Will Face Same Resistance as Monsanto
According to a Bayer June 4 statement,11 Monsanto's product line will keep their original brand names in the Bayer portfolio, but the Monsanto name is being retired. The merged entity will retain the Bayer name. Cultural integration is predicted to be a challenge for the new, now much larger Bayer. Bayer also has a shadowy past of its own that is in need of rehabilitation.
"Yes, Bayer introduced the world to Aspirin and Phenobarbital. But it also trademarked Heroin and, when it was IG Farben during World War II, used concentration camp prisoners as slave laborers and drug testers with disastrous results," Forbes writes,12 adding: "Even with that context, there are two special challenges to onboarding leaders from Monsanto into Bayer:
1) Monsanto's history as a private company and 2) the "toxicity" of the Monsanto brand earned by its manufacture and marketing of DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange, recombinant bovine growth hormones, genetically modified crops and seed patenting model and enforcement …
There's every reason to expect Monsanto's people to be more results-oriented and less caring, more hierarchical and more driven by authority than Bayer's people. These are non-trivial cultural hurdles to overcome."
Adrian Bebb, a Friends of the Earth Europe food and farming campaigner commented on the merger, telling The Guardian:13
"Bayer will become Monsanto in all but name unless it takes drastic measures to distance itself from the U.S. chemical giant's controversial past. If it continues to peddle dangerous pesticides and unwanted GMOs then it will quickly find itself dealing with the same global resistance that Monsanto did."
What Kind of Food System Do You Want?
"The merger of corporate giants Monsanto and Bayer begs a vital question — what kind of agriculture do we really want?" John Vidal writes in a recent op-ed for The Guardian.14 As the world's now largest seed and pesticide company, Bayer will have a direct impact on a majority of farmers in the U.S., EU and Great Britain.
Needless to say, the company will also wield tremendous power over what ends up on the plates of consumers. "It will be able to influence what and how most of the world's food is grown, affecting the price and the method it is grown by," Vidal writes. In stark contrast to Bayer and other biotech companies, which sells patented seeds at a premium and disallows seed sharing, Debal Deb, an Indian plant researcher, focuses on cultivating as wide a variety of crops as possible, and gives the seeds away for free.
Deb currently grows 1,340 different varieties of traditional Indian rice on donated land in West Bengal. Seeds from these crops are then distributed to more than 7,000 farmers across the country, with one condition: They must grow them and give some of the resulting seed away to others. As described by Vidal:
"This seed-sharing of 'landraces,' or local varieties, is not philanthropy but the extension of an age-old system of mutualized farming that has provided social stability and dietary diversity for millions of people. By continually selecting, crossbreeding and then exchanging their seed, farmers have developed varieties for their aroma, taste, color, medicinal properties and resistance to pests, drought and flood."
A Return to Agricultural Roots Can Save Us
This inherent wisdom of these ancient practices cannot be underestimated or overstated. While multinationals like Bayer want you to believe they are the saviors of mankind and that without them we would all starve, the converse is actually true. While monoculture has only been around for a few decades, ramifications of the dramatic loss of diversity is already apparent. The entire ecosystem suffers and, as a result, healthy crops are more difficult to grow and sustain.
Multinational seed companies insist consolidation is the best way to ensure the continual development of successful seed varieties, but what we really need is an explosion of diversity — that's how the best seeds are brought to the fore. Best of all, no genetic tinkering in the lab is necessary. There's absolutely no need to swap genes between animal- and plant kingdoms to "improve" on nature.
Rather than spawning innovation, consolidation actually promotes lower quality products as there's less incentive for innovation when there's less competition. Less competition also has a tendency to drive prices skyward.
As just one example, the price of a bag of seed corn has risen from $80 to $300 over the past decade alone — a price hike attributed to the consolidation of seed companies and reduced competition. The good news is farmers around the world are starting to pay attention to these facts, and are pushing back. As noted by Vidal:
"Nearly 10 million of the poorest farmers now use the system of rice intensification, which has been proven to increase rice, wheat, potato and other yields dramatically by stimulating the roots of crops. Agro-forestry techniques that grow trees and shrubs among crops is proving more productive, as is land restoration. Farmers' groups in India and across Latin America are developing their own seed companies in order to avoid the new corporate monopolies."
Monsanto, You Can Run but You Cannot Hide
While Bayer defends the safety of Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, just as vigorously as Monsanto has in the past, mounting independent research suggests it may be one of the most hazardous farming chemicals out there. Together with the nonprofit organization Beyond Pesticides, OCA filed a lawsuit16 against Monsanto on behalf of the general public in April 2017, charging Monsanto with deceptive labeling, marketing and sale of Roundup.
According to the complaint, Monsanto "actively advertises and promotes its Roundup products as targeting an enzyme 'found in plants but not in people or pets.' These claims are false, misleading and deceptive." The fact of the matter is the enzyme glyphosate targets is indeed found in both animals and humans, as it is found in our gut bacteria. Studies also suggest glyphosate may be carcinogenic, and may affect the cardiovascular, endocrine, nervous and reproductive systems in both animals and humans.
"No reasonable consumer seeing these representations would expect that Roundup targets a bacterial enzyme that is found in humans and animals and that affects their immune health," the complaint states, adding "Monsanto affirmatively states that the enzyme targeted by glyphosate is not found in people and pets, and fails to disclose to consumers the material information that the enzyme targeted by glyphosate, and the shikimate pathway it's designed to inhibit, are found in people and pets."
Monsanto filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, but on March 31, 2018, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly denied the motion,17 ruling18 that enough evidence had been presented to support the allegation that Monsanto's labeling is misleading consumers. This is a significant "win" and, with your help, OCA will continue to keep the pressure on through that legal channel.
Help OCA Support Global Glyphosate Study
OCA is also sponsoring a global glyphosate study by the world-renowned Ramazzini Institute in Italy. Stage 1 will investigate the chemical's carcinogenicity and chronic toxicity potential.
Already, the pilot phase19 has revealed that daily ingestion of glyphosate at the acceptable daily dietary exposure level set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) alters sexual development in rats, produces changes in the intestinal microbiome, and exhibits genotoxic effects. In response to the results, OCA director Ronnie Cummins said:20
"For years, the U.S. EPA has dismissed consumer concerns about glyphosate-based weed killers in their drinking water and their food, claiming that exposure to the chemical at low levels is harmless. This new pilot study confirms what many responsible scientists have been saying all along: There is no such thing as 'safe' levels when it comes to glyphosate, especially when it comes to children.
In fact, the EPA established what it calls 'safe' levels without having any scientific evidence to back up its claim because, until now, there have been no comprehensive publicly available peer-reviewed studies of the potential health impact of glyphosate exposure at or lower than the EPA's guidelines.
This new study confirms that consumers should be alarmed when products such as Ben & Jerry's ice cream test positive for glyphosate at any level — despite corporations' claims that these levels are 'harmless.'"
Your Donation Will Also Support USRTK and Regeneration International
In addition to the continued financial support provided to the Ramazzini Institute's glyphosate study, OCA is also dedicated to continue its support of the USRTK's work21 — a nonprofit organization that has proven exceptionally capable of pursuing and extricating the truth by making full use of freedom of information act (FOIA) requests and other legal means.
For example, internal emails obtained via FOIA requests filed by USRTK correspondent and director of research Carey Gillam, revealed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has found glyphosate residues in all foods sampled to date. In a June 5, 2018 update, OCA writes:22
"It's the FDA's job to conduct residue testing on food. It's the responsibility of the EPA to regulate pesticide residues on food. It stands to reason then that the two taxpayer-funded agencies would communicate closely with each other on any food testing involving glyphosate or any other pesticide. That's why USRTK has filed a series of FOIA requests with both agencies …
The FDA has produced at least some of the documents requested by USRTK. But the EPA … has failed to produce documents requested in a July 2016 FOIA request, and also had failed to respond to a February 2017 request for related industry communications.
That failure led Gillam and USRTK to sue the EPA last month.23 If the public already knows that FDA tests found glyphosate, and USRTK already has related FDA documents, why bother suing the EPA for that agency's related communications?
'When you use FOIA, it's like getting pieces of a puzzle,' said Gillam, explaining that the FDA and other federal agencies routinely redact, or black out, large sections of the documents they turn over. 'To put that puzzle together, to get the whole picture, often requires requesting records from multiple sources. We still may not get everything, as it seems the agencies are increasingly embracing secrecy, but it's our responsibility to try to get to the truth.'"
In addition to exposing the dark side of chemical agriculture, OCA will also continue to promote the alternative through its sister organization Regeneration International,24 which provides educational services and resources about regenerative farming practices and techniques.
Biotech Companies Are Gaining Power by Taking Over the Government
Monsanto and their industry allies will not willingly surrender their stranglehold on the food supply. They must be resisted and rolled back at every turn. There is no doubt in my mind that GMOs and the chemical-intensive agricultural model of which they are part and parcel, pose a serious threat to the environment and our health. Yet, government agencies not only turn a blind eye to the damage they are inflicting on the planet, but actively work to further the interests of the biotech giants.
This is not surprising. It is well-known that there is a revolving door between regulatory agencies and private corporations. This has allowed companies such as Monsanto to manipulate science, defang regulations and even control the free press, all from their commanding position within the halls of government.
Consider for a moment that on paper, the U.S. may have the strictest safety regulations in the world governing new food additives, but has repeatedly allowed GMOs and their accompanying pesticides such as Roundup to circumvent these laws.
In fact, the only legal basis for allowing GE foods to be marketed in the U.S. is the FDA’s tenuous claim that these foods are inherently safe, a claim which is demonstrably false. Documents released as a result of a lawsuit against the FDA reveal that the agency's own scientists warned their superiors about the detrimental risks of GE foods. But their warnings fell on deaf ears.
Don’t Be Duped by Industry Shills!
In a further effort to deceive the public, Monsanto and its cohorts spoon-feed scientists, academics and journalists a diet of questionable studies that depict them in a positive light. By hiring “third-party experts,” biotech companies are able to take information of dubious validity, and present it as independent and authoritative.
Industry front groups also abound. The Genetic Literacy Project and the American Council for Science and Health are both Monsanto-funded. Even WebMD, a website that is often presented as a trustworthy source of "independent and objective" health information, is heavily reliant on advertising dollars. It is no coincidence that they promote corporate-backed health strategies and products.
At the end of the day, we must shatter Monsanto’s grip on the agricultural sector. There is no way to recall GMOs once they have been released into the environment. The stakes could not be higher. Will you continue supporting the corrupt, toxic and unsustainable food system that Monsanto and its industry allies are working so hard to protect?
For more and more people, the answer is no. Consumers are rejecting genetically engineered and pesticide laden foods. Another positive trend is that there has been strong growth in the global organic and grass fed sectors. This just proves one thing: We can make a difference if we steadily work toward the same goal.
One of the best things you can do is to buy your foods from a local farmer who runs a small business and uses diverse methods that promote regenerative agriculture. You can also join a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program, where you can buy a “share” of the vegetables produced by the farm, so that you get a regular supply of fresh food. I believe that joining a CSA is a powerful investment not only in your own health, but in that of your local community and economy as well.
In addition, you should also adopt preventive strategies that can help reduce the toxic chemical pollution that assaults your body. I recommend visiting these trustworthy sites for non-GMO food resources in your country as well:
Organic Food Directory (Australia) Eat Wild (Canada)
Organic Explorer (New Zealand) Eat Well Guide (United States and Canada)
Farm Match (United States) Local Harvest (United States)
Weston A. Price Foundation (United States) The Cornucopia Institute
Monsanto and its allies want you to think that they control everything, but they are on the wrong side of history. It’s you, the informed and empowered, who hold the future in your hands. Let’s all work together to topple the biotech industry’s house of cards. Remember — it all starts with shopping smart and making the best food purchases for you and your family.
Monsanto shedding its name, after acquisition by BAYER
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