Phantasmix Stock Blog

Monsanto’s GMO corn threatens biodiversity. © Statchett

I’ve touched on the topic of ethical investing before. While our investments aren’t blameless (nobody can say mining is harmless), this company takes the cake for being the most evil — MONSANTO.

They sell death, and use some pretty underhanded tactics to attack their opponents. Here’s an abridged list of things Monsanto has created. Each one on its own has the ability to destroy or at least seriously cripple humans. Imagine the eventual effect of these 4 combined.

• Aspartame (NutraSweet) – Formaldehyde Poisoning, Health Destruction, & Lawsuits
• Genetically – Engineered “Frankenfoods”
• rBGH (Posilac) – Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer
• Monsanto Terminator Technology – Worldwide Famine & Starvation

The only way to fight this is to vote with your wallet:
- do not invest in Monsanto;
- do not buy products they have “touched”.

Sometimes I wonder… what do people who lead this company think of the future and the future of their children? They aren’t able to control their GMO technology: it has contaminated several non-GMO batches of rice in the U.S., for instance. So do they genuinely believe that their GMO foods and rBGH-contaminated milk are safe? Or are they so arrogant as to believe that they will be able to somehow avoid these foods? Do they have a vault of all-organic seeds, similar to Norway’s Doomsday Vault? Some things are much more important than profit for today.

This is a bit off topic. I’m going to humour my inner conspiracy theorist. As we know pharmaceutical companies must invent chemical drugs, even though alternative healing methods exist, such as herbs (by the way, most earlier chemical drugs were derived from herbs). They have to modify the herbs not because those aren’t effective, but because they cannot patent something that exists in nature and charge exorbitant amounts of money for it.

Now, imagine for a minute this scenario (I’ll be the first to admit, it’s crazy and outlandish, but not impossible): Monsanto has patented their GMO technology and charges some crazy licensing fees to farmers – even those whose crops got accidentally contaminated.

Since food provides building blocks for our bodies, it’s reasonable to assume and, in fact has been proven, that when you eat GMO foods, parts of it remain in your body. Genetically-modified particles become part of your digestive system etc. So what if Monsanto comes along and says that you’ve become a user of their patented GMO technology and therefore, it has every right to charge you licensing fees. They will essentially own you – a modified organism at this point.

Right now you buy a coffee at Starbucks (or any other café), you get a non-recyclable paper cup lined with plastic. Not only it’s bad for your health (hot beverages leech out cancer-promoting chemicals from plastic), it’s obviously bad for the environment. These cups can only be taken to the landfill. They are not recyclable, though they are partially made of recycled materials. I say they should by default give you a ceramic mug, unless you specifically ask for a cup “to go”, and possibly charge extra 10-15 cents for it.

I see several benefits to this:

• Drinks taste better from ceramic mugs
• It’s much more pleasant to take a few minutes off and sit down at a café than rush off and drink burning hot beverage on the run
• No more non-recyclable waste
• And I’m sure it would actually be cheaper for Starbucks to wash and reuse the mugs

The same thing can be said for plastic bags. I think they should charge at least $0.10 for each plastic bag you use. I can’t stand it when people ask cashiers to double bag everything. Most people easily use 10-12 plastic bags in one visit to the grocery store. I feel guilty even using one.

If you don’t care for sea animals choking and dying from plastic bags, consider this:

“When plastic bags disintegrate, they break down into small plastic molicules and now those molicules are being found in the ocean and in actual seafood products. So when we consume these fish and lobster, we’re actually injesting the molicules of plastic bags.”

Ireland did this years ago:

“A tax on plastic shopping bags in the Republic of Ireland has cut their use by more than 90% and raised millions of euros in revenue.”

People will take the easy way out, unless there’s a monetary punishment. Instead of giving incentives for doing good, I believe we must be punished for doing bad.