Monsanto, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, employs 45,000 people and peddles over eight billion dollars a year in chemical products to the planet. Its Roundup is the world's largest selling herbicide. Monsanto owns the drug firm G.D. Searle and Company, a major phramceutical supplier. Add to this branches which manufacture a whole range of fibers, plastics, resins, rubber and metallised materials and you have a giant.

Monsanto has been under great heat for some time for their production of NutraSweet and the genetically engineered BGH (Bovine Growth Hormone). Ongoing American boycotts launched out of Atlanta and Hillsboro, Wisconsin, are taking their toll. (Family farm Defenders, P.O. Box 581, Hillsboro, Wisconsin, 54634, for BGH; and Betty Martini, 9270 River Club Parkway Duluth, Georiga 30097, 770 242-2599, for NutraSweet.) Another Monsanto boycott is being run by Pure Dairy Commission, RR 2, Box 191, New Auburn WI 54757.

The U.S. FDA, as of April 20, 1995, has reported 10,386 volunteered consumer complaints stemming from NutraSweet, aka Equal (aspartame). Among the symptoms listed are blindness seizures, memory loss, loss of limb control, slurred speech, skin lesions, extremity numbness, depression, mood swings, anxiety attacks, coma and death.

Aspartame is a food addititve 180 to 200 times sweeter than sugar. Absorbed very quickly into the bloodstream it metabolizes into six to eight byproducts including methyl alcohol and the class A carcinogen, formaldehyde. At least a hundred million Americans consume products containing NutraSweet (e.g., certain Coca Cola and Pepsi drinks, Children's Tylenol Chewable Tablets, Flintstones Complete Children's Chewable Vitamins, Metamucil Sugarfree, Breath Savers, Wrigley's Extra Sugar Free Gum, Kellogg's All Bran, Twin Labs Endurance Quick fix Powder, Calcilyte).

The early research history of aspartame was plagued with deception. Animal studies were faked (S.O.P. for the drug industry), on top of the fact that even real animal data would have had no provable crossover to humans. The resulting FDA approval of aspartame paved the way for disaster.

H.J. Roberts, M.D., a diabetes specialist and member of the American Diabetes Association, states that aspartame brings on clinical diabetes and causes convulsions.

Ralph G. Walton's aspartame study published in Biological Psychiatry (1993 34:13-17), led him to conclude "individuals with mood disorders are particularly sensitive to this artificial sweetener; its use in this population should be discouraged." On another occasion Walton was much more blunt: "I know it (aspartame) causes seizures. I'm convinced also that it definitely causes behavioral changes. I'm very angry that this substance is on the market. I personally question the reliability and validity of any studies funded by the NutraSweet Company."

A dozen airplane magazines, including Flying Safety, published by the U.S. Air Force, have issued warnings about seizures and vertigo among pilots ingesting aspartame.

And all this is just the tip of the iceberg on this product.

Monsanto's BGH, the new growth hormone now injected into cows all over the U.S. to make them produce more milk, is another debacle. 93 percent of the nations's dairy farmers refuse to use the product. In Europe BGH is banned, at least until the year 2000. Why? Because this hormone makes cows sick -- leading to treatment with high levels of antibiotics which along with pus then find their way into the milk supply. reports of serious health and reproductive problems among U.S. cows have shot up since February 1995. Meanwhile Monsanto has tried to intimidate all those who label their milk products BGH-free. The corporation has actually brought lawsuits against such farmers and, through a related organization, has sued the state of Vermont over its permissive attitude toward BGH labeling. This obvious encroachement on the First Amendment is, of course, outrageous, but the Department of Justice does nothing to stop it.

Dr. Samuel Epstein, a well known public health advocate and professor of environmental medicine, states that "cell stimulating growth factors" such as BGH could lead to breast cancer in humans and bring about premature growth in babies. Monsanto, of course, cannot produce any safety data vis-a-vis humans because BGH is a crapshoot using million of people as experimental subjects.

More toxicity in its products? Of course. In 1985, not long before Monsanto would be exposed for having rigged a dioxin study in its favor (it made Agent Orange), the Pesticide Action Network named Monsanto's insecticied Parathion as one of the dirtiest dozen pesticides used around the world. Multinational Monitor states that Parathion "may be responsible for half the world's pesticide poisonings and 80 pecent of those in central America." Monsanto stopped making Parathion in 1986, claiming "market considerations".

Monsanto's herbicide Butachlor, marketed in foreigh countries as Machete and Lambast, has never been permanently approved by the EPA. Adverse effects of the chemical include weight loss, weight changes in internal organs, reduced brain size together with lesions. Butachlor, reports Multinational Monitor, can be found in the U.S. food supply. It's used in Argentina, Brazil, China, India, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Venezuela, which means that up to 97 percent of our rice imports could contain it.

Monsanto Lasso is the largest selling herbicide in the U.S. Lasso is everywhere on corn and soybeans. Only through extreme pressure on the EPA was Monsanto able to keep the compound on the market. EPA had already called Lasso "a probable carcinogen".

The only U.S. producer of the notorious PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) since 1929, Monsanto was forced to stop making this carcinogen in 1977 after having spread it (1.4 billion pounds) into every corner of America's land, water and human and animal bodies. By 1990, every trout and salmon over a foot long in the Great Lakes was contaminated with PCBs.

Monsanto is a leader in the biotech revolution that threatens to engineeer the genes of every food crop on the planet. This year (1996) Monsanto will introduce its altered soybean to the world of commerce. The bean is altered to withstand, without keeling over, higher levels of Monsanto's chemical herbicide Roundup. You will ingest these higher levels of Roundup.

Monsanto now owns 49.9 percent of Calgene, the maker of the Flavr Savr tomato engineered for longer shelf life. Soon to come from the parent company? Varieties of canola, cotton, maize sugar beets and rapeseed oil, all of which will also tolerate higher level of Roundup, and pass the poison on to you.

The Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C. has placed Monsanto at the top of its "dirty sixteen" companies and universities which are trying to extend the legal patenting of life forms. In response to this charge, an unruffled Monsanto spokesman said that the company puts 120 million dollars a year into biotech research and development, and there are no problems.

As if all this weren't enough, Monsanto's drug company, G.D. Searle, continues to turn out its share of toxic compounds for ingestion, as an adjunct to eating Monsanto pesticide. Examples:

• Daypro, an NSAID for arthritis -- NSAIDS, as mentioned above, routinely cause 7,000 deaths a year in the U.S. and 70-80,000 hospitalizations.

• Demulen, an oral contraceptive, is an estrogenic compound. Very reassuring at a time when environmental scientists are linking estrogenic pollutants to breast cancer.

• Flagyl, an oral synthetic antiprotozoal and antibacterial, can cause convulsive seizures, peripheral neuropathy, a significant lessening of white blood corpuscles, and can make candida infections worse.

• Kerlone for "management of hypertension" can contribute to cardiac failure.

• Lomotil, the anti-diarrhea drug, has a number of adverse effects including tachycardia, vomiting, depression, numbness of extremities and pancreatitis.

A 1991 report by the Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education indicates that Monsanto stands at the forefront of those companies who ship hazardous and potentially carcinogenic pesticides out of the country. For example, customs records for the period March to May 1990 reveal that a large anonymous St. Louis shipper sent over 21 million pounds -- over 116 tons every day -- of these pesticides out of the U.S. There is only one shipper of pesticides in St. Louis and that is Monsanto.

Beyond Searle's pharmaceuticals here is a list of Monsanto products to boycott:

• NutraSweet, Equal, BGH (aka rBGH, rBST, Posilac), Simplese (an artificial butter fat), Simple Pleasures Frozen Dairy Desserts, Salad Dressing and Mayonnaise;
• the artificial fibers Astroturf and Wear Dated Carpets;
• the garden herbicides Roundup and Dimension;
• agricultural chemicals: Lasso, Harness Plus, Far Go, Avauer, Machete, Bronco, Bullet, Cropstar GB, Freedom, Landmaster BW, Micro-Tech Partner, Ram Rod, Accord, Buckle, Fallow Master, Lariat, Rodeo;
• the feed supplement and preservative Alimet;
• the Flavr Savr tomato.

The Family Farm Defenders Monsanto Boycott says: "Be alert for dozens of new Monsanto genetically engineered plants including corn, potatoes and soybeans."

Clearly, as with all engineered foods, no long-term human studies will be done. The USFDA will automatically assume the gene insertion is safe for people and the subsequent migration of these genes into another plant species will have no untoward effect on the environment. In other words, the planet is a test tube. Source: http://home.earthlink.net/~alto/boycott.html