More Cracks In The Monsanto Façade: Former Company Exec Drops Bomb Claiming Faked Data In Order To Gain Regulatory Approval
And the trickle of bad news on Monsanto turns to a stream, then a river, then a flood. It seems the company–despite employing an army of PR flacks and a second, covert army of scientist/flacks who are tasked with cranking out refutations of any and all science that contradicts the company line–just can’t seem to catch a break.
The latest news comes out of India, where Monsanto has long been supplanting traditional farming methods thousands of years old in an attempt to control–and of course, profit from–the way the food-insecure nation of 1.3 billion feeds itself.
And now the former managing director of Monsanto India, Tiruvadi Jagadisan has joined the growing chorus of critics of the agri-chemical company’s genetically modified variety of brinjal, or eggplant.
For two decades, Jagadisan worked with the company. But at a recent conference in Bangalore he broke ranks and criticized not only the GM brinjal, but also the way the company managed to get approval for the strain. His claims that Monsanto scientists “used to fake scientific data” that was submitted to government regulators in order to win its commercial approvals have hit the industry like a bomb, prompting many to question any and all other data the company has produced around the world.
The former exec claims that regulators in India that the company dealt with in the 1980s simply relied on data supplied by the company in order to give approval of the use of its herbicides and insecticides.
“The Central Insecticide Board was supposed to give these approvals based on the location and crop-specific data from India,” Jagadisan said. “But it simply accepted foreign data supplied by Monsanto. They did not even have a test tube to validate the data and, at times, the data itself was faked.”
The implications that Monsanto employees knowingly misled regulators in order to get their products on the market could set off a cascade of consequences:
Imagine the lawsuits from the families of all the farmers there who committed suicide as a result of switching to Monsanto seed and discovering belatedly that they could no longer support themselves.
Imagine the Indian farm workers who have contracted non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and the hell they could release on the Indian government and Monsanto with a well-placed class action suit alleging negligence and seeking punitive damages.
Indeed, the idea for calling Monsanto’s actions an act of international aggression is not entirely without merit.
“I retired from the company as I felt the management of Monsanto, USA, was exploiting our country,” said Jagadisan.
Yes, it sure looks that way. If ever there were a case to be made for summary execution of a corporation, Monsanto would be a prime target.
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Former Monsanto Executive Admits Company Faked Scientific Data To Gain Regulatory Approval