OUTSIDE THE BOX: Public Wary of Monsanto

[Guest guest]

http://biz./opt/020918/ebb09ea39d9b80cffa99f5e55a196001_2.html

Optionetics.comOUTSIDE THE BOX: Public Wary of Monsanto, Shelley Souza Wednesday September 18, 3:30 pm ET

 

In 2001, Monsanto celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. The company, created by George Francis Queeny while he was still an employee with the Meyer Brothers Drug Company, was named after his wife, Olga Mendez Monsanto. According to a report in the London Sunday Times in August 1999, Queeny, who was a chemist, founded the company to promote saccharin, the artificial sweetener. By the end of the 1940s, Monsanto had “become a big supplier of plastics and synthetic fabrics” as a result of its branching into the industrial chemical industry. The problem with Monsanto's image began in the 1960s when first it manufactured PCBs, a compound lubricant that turned out to be carcinogenic and was eventually banned from use. And then, what turned the public against the company, was its role as the largest producer of Agent Orange, the toxin that was used in the Vietnam War to defoliate the rain forests of southeast Asia. Exposure to Agent Orange caused skin rashes, joint pains, muscle weakness, neurological disorders and birth defects. It is not surprising then, that Monsanto, which moved strongly into the biotechnology market with Bt crops in the late 1990s, has been vilified by the public as the creators of Frankenstein-like food products “that are killing us all.” That's what a barber apparently told one of Monsanto's scientists while cutting the scientist's hair in 1999, after hearing that his customer was employed by the giant biotechnology company (according to the Sunday Times report). The history of Monsanto is, at times, no worse than other giant biotechnology companies, such as America's Dupont, or Switzerland's Novartis, Britain's Zeneca or France's Rhone-Poulenc. But for some reason, Monsanto has been “demonized” more than its competitors. In part, the violent reaction of Europeans, and in particular, the British, against Monsanto's GM products, is based y products, fruits, vegetables and wines. The idea of feeding animals manufactured products instead of the real thing, and then extending that process to non-meat food groups consumed by humans, is anathema to the European mind. In England, Sir Paul McCartney objected to the presence of GM in his late wife Linda McCartney's vegetarian food line. Marks and Spencer, a top food producer, whose reputation for quality goods and service is unparalleled, gave in to public pressure not to sell any food which contained genetically modified organisms. The question the 1999 Sunday Times piece raised was whether Monsanto was a pioneer breaking ground in techniques that could produce disease resistant food to save the majority of the world from starvation, or whether it was “a company that has gone too far, too fast, in search of profit.”

To some degree the question is something that cannot be answered clearly. Each investor has to make a personal decision about Monsanto's most recent motives and intentions regarding global ecology, and whether the company's work is serving evolution or not. In recent years, despite claims that their development of the GM seed would guarantee increased profits for farmers, there have been cases where GM crops failed and Monsanto has been in lawsuits over these failures. Certainly, the company also appears to have underestimated the public's reaction to their modified food technology; in part, Monsanto's modified animal feed unfortunately arrived in Britain at the height of mad cow disease mania, and the idea of anything unnatural being fed to animals or humans triggered a wave of fear and loathing greater than could have been anticipated. Despite the controversy surrounding Monsanto's products, the stock over the past two years remained fairly stable until around June of this year when it suddenly declined. It has continued to fall off, although looking at a daily chart, the decline appears to be leveling off. Perhaps on nt and sudden decline is the talk of war against Iraq by the United States. Perhaps shareholders are afraid that Monsanto will develop another powerful chemical like Agent Orange to use against Iraq, in the event the U.S. goes to war with the Middle East country, and they don't want to remain invested. It may also be connected directly with its profits and losses; Monsanto recently issued bonds to raise several million dollars of credit. However, because Monsanto was previously engaged in products that have ultimately proved harmful to humans and the earth as a whole, it is not surprising that the public remains wary about the company's motives going forward, despite its claims that it wants only to offer a genetic strain of food that could sustain the earth's population without depleting its resources. From a company that defoliated rain forests, it may prove difficult for the public to believe that Monsanto's GM products won't in some way affect the earth adversely. And what will the price for the ordinary person be, who knows nothing about Monsanto directly, if they engage with genetically modified organisms? These are just some of the big questions that remain unanswered and only time will reveal what the repercussions in nature will be if the world relents and allows Monsanto's genetically engineered products to become part of our daily fare. As always, trade carefully. Shelley SouzaSenior Writer & Trading StrategistOptionetics.com ~ Your Options Education Site

 

 

For more information on learning how to make money with options, go to the Optionetics.com full site! We empower investors through knowledge.

New DSL Internet Access from SBC