Monsanto Argumentative Essay

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Between 1961 and 1971, Monsanto, along with Dow Chemical and other chemical companies, provided herbicides and defoliants, including Agent Orange, to the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. As a consequence of the exposure to dioxins contained in the defoliant, the military personnel in Vietnam suffered of injuries, such as Chloracne, heart disease, prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, etc. (“Veterans' Diseases Associated with Agent Orange”) In 1980, a class-action lawsuit concerning Agent Orange was filed against Monsanto, Dow Chemical and other chemical companies, but these companies denied that Agent Orange was linked to the veterans’ medical problems. In 1984, seven of the chemical companies involved decided to settle the class-action …show more content…

The jury found that “Monsanto had engaged in outrageous behavior, and held the corporations and its corporate successors liable on all six counts it considered - including negligence, nuisance, wantonness and suppression of the truth.” (Crean) Monsanto faced many lawsuits over the harm caused by PCB between 1990 and today. Alachlor, an herbicide banned in the European union, is the second most widely used in the U.S. Monsanto commercializes it under the name Lasso. In 2007, a French farmer filled a lawsuit against Monsanto regarding the toxicity of the herbicide. In 2015, the French court confirmed the ruling made in February 2012, which held Monsanto responsible for the chemical poisoning of the farmer, sentencing the firm to pay compensation to him. The court found the multinational guilty of a contractual negligence, reproaching Monsanto for failing to provide information by not respecting the regulations regarding packaging and labeling of its product. (Van Eeckhout) These are only few examples of the many lawsuits that have been filed against Monsanto since its creation in

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