Monsanto's Ethical Culture

1456 Words3 Pages

Monsanto is one of the largest genetically modified seed companies with sales over $11.8 billion to date. Founded in 1901 in St Louis Missouri, by John F. Queeny, the first product that this company produced was an artificial sweetener named saccharine that is sold to the Coca-Cola company. From there, the company went into chemical manufacturing where they came under scrutiny and a lawsuit for the chemical Agent Orange that was used during the Vietnam war. After this and years of battling bad PR for dumping toxic waste and chemicals containing PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) into the environment via creeks and landfills, the company has since made itself to the position that it finds itself today. While GM (Genetically modified) foods are …show more content…

To help with this the company has developed some specific strategies to help bring about this new image. One thing that the company did was back in 1999. To combat their old image, the company developed what they called the “New Monsanto pledge”. This pledge committed the company to a new way of doing business, and has since slowly started to help build a better image for them. Although this pledge has been modified since its original conception it still touches on six main points. These six points are integrity, dialogue, transparency, sharing, benefits, and respect (Singh, 2010 ). Each one of these points is discussed in detail on the Monsanto …show more content…

Given the companies previous reputation with environmental concerns has left a lot of doubt in the public about their current stand on the environment. Monsanto’s current pledge is to create products in a environmentally safe way. This would be a far cry from previous dealing with the company where they dumped toxic waste without regard to how it would affect the environment. Besides this there have been many concerns with some products and the impact that they have on the environment as well. This has even been brought up to the level of lawsuits brought against the company for damage done to the environment and non GMO crops. The concerns that brought up these latest issues were from two main sources. One source is the Herbicide Roundup which they pair with their Roundup Ready products, like alfalfa. There are multiple authors who have written on the herbicide and the effect that it has had on the environment. One researcher blamed the herbicide directly for the decline in amphibian life in the area in which it was used. The other environmental impact comes from crop contamination of crops with Monsanto seeds. While no lawsuit has ruled against Monsanto as of yet, it has not done anything to bring the trust in their products that the company is looking for (Powell, 2012). Monsanto has a long road ahead of them if they want to win the public’s trust in their business. While their current

Open Document