| First of all, I wasn't going after the "big PR budget" but since you mention it - what do you pay your staff? Because the rest of us bloggers work for free (except for the lucky ones who might get a few bucks for their work). Your PR budget isn't going to set up free Facebook pages, no doubt, but it IS going to pay the people who attract "fans" to the page. Aside from that, though, here are a few questions I've got:
1. As a member organization of the Mid America CropLife Association, how do you feel about MACA's assertion that Michelle Obama's organic garden made them "shudder." (Update: Monsanto sent a lobbyist to the TX state leg when TX was forming some sort of organics advisory board. This lobbyist was very vehement that the bill COULD NOT make any inference that organic was better than conventional.)
2. What was your role in killing the Montana seed bill last week? I would think that if you aren't in the business of intimidating and suing farmers then the bill wouldn't be a threat at all to you.
3. How many sustainable food activists have you sent your lawyers after? I can name one two. Why do you do this? If you're not the bogeyman, would you mind calling off your dogs and let activists participate in democracy as is their right?
4. What was your involvement in forming AFACT - American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology - a group that has gone around the country trying to ban rbGH-free labeling on dairy?
5. Why do you sponsor or contribute resources to misleading studies about your products, such as this one (sponsored by Cornell, with a Monsanto employee working on the study) or this one (sponsored by Monsanto)?
I've got other questions but we can start with those. Please limit your answers to facts - bloggers tend to have pretty good bullshit detectors.
UPDATE: I just got back from a hike and I thought up a few more things I want answered:
6. What was your role in preventing the 2 reporters at Fox News from reporting on rbGH? Did you also have a hand in getting them fired?
7. Recently we saw a headline that biotech companies prevent independent research of their GM seeds. What is your participation in this?
8. Why did you sue a Canadian farmer when his fields became contaminated with your GM canola genes? As one blogger put it on DailyKos, this is like a computer hacker suing you for stealing their code after your computer gets a virus.
9. What about the threatening behavior of your "seed police"? For example, in the Vanity Fair article "Monsanto's Harvest of Fear" or in this article, this article, or this article.
10. Why did Monsanto sue a Maine dairy because it labeled its milk as free of artificial growth hormones?
I'd love to pick on Syngenta, Bayer, and other biotech companies instead but most of the bad stories that reach my ears tend to be about Monsanto. Why is that? |
