- In recent years, no company has been more associated with evil than Monsanto. But why?
I have always been under the impression that Monsanto is not hated because of GMOs, but because they aggressively file suit against farmers who save or re-use patented seeds, including in cases where the defendant may not have done so deliberately or consciously. 1
That's always been my take on it too. It's not the science, it's their business practices. This is a bummer because it gives GMO an unnecessary bad name. The science itself may have negative consequences when applied in certain ways, I think the jury is largely still out on much of that but because Monsanto is a dick to people -GMO is evil.
Hits the nail on the head.“They also become this – I don’t want to say scapegoat, but icons [representing] broader social problems.” In Starbucks’ case, the company was blamed for mistreatment of farmers, bad environmental practices and neighborhood gentrification, with varying degrees of fairness. Similarly, says Arsel, Monsanto becomes “symbolically linked to a loss of small farming practices, political alignments and other abstract concerns.”