Monsanto has been a lightning rod for people’s views on food, the food system, global health, and war since well before it began its pivot into agricultural biotechnology in the 1980s. And in 2013, 31 years after Monsanto scientists first modified a cell line, the furor around the corporation showed few signs of slowing.
Amid a wave of anti-Monsanto fervor on the internet, a reported hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets around the world to “March Against Monsanto.” GMOs, and Monsanto in particular, were being wrongly blamed for a raft of health and social problems, including rising allergy rates, farmer suicides in India and even racial health disparities ….
In 2014, in an apparent attempt to win over young minds …. Monsanto hired [Vance] Crowe, a communications strategist, as their director of millennial engagement. As journalist Jessie Scott put it in a 2017 profile for Successful Farming, Crowe’s overarching goal was “to engage with millennials about the intersection of farming, food, and technology,” and push back against activists who “spread fear of modern agriculture.”
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Crowe preached a scientific gospel of GMOs that went something like this …. if you’re anti-Monsanto, you’re anti-science.
Read full, original article: I Was Lured Into Monsanto’s GMO Crusade. Here’s What I Learned.
