Monsanto's Net Profit Up 77%

Jack Kaskey
Bloomberg

Monsanto Co. (MON), the world’s largest seed company, raised its full-year profit forecast and posted third-quarter earnings that topped analysts’ estimates on higher sales of Roundup weed killer and genetically modified seeds.

Net income climbed 77 percent to $680 million, or $1.26 a share, in the three months through May 31, from $384 million, or 70 cents, a year earlier, St. Louis-based Monsanto said today in a statement. That beat the $1.10 average estimate of 17 analysts in a Bloomberg survey.

Profit excluding some items will rise to $2.84 to $2.88 a share in the fiscal year through August, compared with a previous prediction of $2.72 to $2.82. The average estimate of 20 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was $2.82. Monsanto also said the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating customer incentives for Roundup.

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Report Finds Regulators Knew Monsanto's Roundup Caused Birth Defects

Lucia Graves
Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- Industry regulators have known for years that Roundup, the world's best-selling herbicide produced by U.S. company Monsanto, causes birth defects, according to a new report released Tuesday.

The report, "Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?" found regulators knew as long ago as 1980 that glyphosate, the chemical on which Roundup is based, can cause birth defects in laboratory animals.

But despite such warnings, and although the European Commission has known that glyphosate causes malformations since at least 2002, the information was not made public.

Instead regulators misled the public about glyphosate's safety, according to the report, and as recently as last year, the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, the German government body dealing with the glyphosate review, told the European Commission that there was no evidence glyphosate causes birth defects.

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Scientists warn of link between dangerous new pathogen and Monsanto’s Roundup

Late term spontaneous abortion

Rady Ananda, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

A plant pathologist experienced in protecting against biological warfare recently warned the USDA of a new, self-replicating, micro-fungal virus-sized organism which may be causing spontaneous abortions in livestock, sudden death syndrome in Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy, and wilt in Monsanto’s RR corn.

Dr. Don M. Huber, who coordinates the Emergent Diseases and Pathogens committee of the American Phytopathological Society, as part of the USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System, warned Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack that this pathogen threatens the US food and feed supply and can lead to the collapse of the US corn and soy export markets.  Likewise, deregulation of GE alfalfa “could be a calamity,” he noted in his letter (reproduced in full below).

War Over Monsanto Gets Ugly

Mike Ludwig
Truth-Out

A delegation of politicians and community activists gathered on August 7 in La Leonesa, a small farm town in Argentina, to hear Dr. Andres Carrasco speak about a study linking a popular herbicide to birth defects in Argentina's agricultural areas.

But the presentation never happened. A mob of about 100 people attacked the delegation before they could reach the local school where the talk was to be held.

Dr. Carrasco and a colleague locked themselves in a car as the mob yelled threats and beat on the vehicle for two hours. One delegate was hit in the spine and has since suffered lower-body paralysis. Another person was treated for blows to the head. A former provincial human rights official was hit in the face and knocked unconscious.


Witnesses said the angry crowd had ties to local officials and agribusiness bosses, and police made little effort to stop the violence, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

Carrasco is a lead embryologist at the University of Buenos Aires Medical School and the Argentinean national research council. His study, first released in 2009 and published in the United States this past summer, shows that glyphosate-based herbicides like Monsanto's popular Roundup formula caused deformations in chicken embryos that resembled the kind of birth defects being reported in areas like La Leonesa, where big agribusinesses depend on glyphosate to treat genetically engineered crops.

The deformations resulted from much lower doses of herbicide than those commonly found on crops, according to the study.

Biotech chemical giant Monsanto patented glyphosate under the trade name Roundup in the 1970's. The billion-dollar product is a main source of Monsanto's revenue and one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. One Monsanto blogger recently wrote that decades of success has made the Roundup brand name and glyphosate "interchangeable similar to the case of facial tissue and the brand name Kleenex."

Carrasco's report was largely ignored in the mainstream American media, but gained international attention among those opposed to genetically modified (GM) crops like Monstano's Roundup Ready crops, which are genetically engineered to tolerate the glyphosate-based herbicides.

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