Monsanto Douses Colombia

By Jim Hightower, AlterNet. Posted July 17, 2001.

Here's a proven formula for human disaster: Take one part avarice from the Monsanto corporation, add one part arrogance from federal officials, mix, spray on a small foreign country, then cover up the mess with official secrecy.

This is the formula used in Vietnam, where Pentagon officials liberally doused the countryside (and people) with a monsoon of Monsanto's toxic defoliant, Agent Orange. At the time, corporate and government officials both claimed that while this stuff would strip a jungle's foliage bare, it posed no health threat to humans. They lied -- as we learned after 50,000 birth defects, hundreds of thousands of cancers, and untold numbers of deaths from Agent Orange exposure.

Now, Monsanto and our government are applying their disastrous formula to Colombia, where hundreds of thousands of gallons of Monsanto's toxic herbicide, Roundup, are being sprayed on the jungles and the people. Once again, our government claims that while this stuff will decimate a field of coca (from which cocaine is made), it poses no risk to humans. And, once again, they're lying.

Indeed, as reported by CorpWatch in the online news service, AlterNet, Monsanto's own label warns that Roundup is a deadly threat to plants, pets, people, and all other living things. Plus, the Roundup being sprayed in Colombia is supercharged, creating toxic exposure 100 times higher than allowed in the U.S. Not to worry, say the officials, for our satellite-directed planes are so precise that only the coca plants are getting sprayed. Yet the people who live there testify that their villages, water supplies, vegetable crops, and even school yards are routinely drenched, widespread sickness.

This is Jim Hightower saying ... The official Monsanto-Government lie was embarrassingly exposed last December when Senator Paul Wellstone was taken to Colombia to witness the pinpoint accuracy of our spraying. Standing well away from the coca field, the senator was drenched in Roundup on the very first flyover. Oops.

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