Monsanto: Profits, Laws, and Human Rights

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Main body
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Modern-day capitalism is taking a turn towards philanthropy. As the new generation of Millenials is coming of age, the issues of ethics, environmentalism, and humane treatment of both the customers and the employees start prevailing over the notions of earning cold, hard profit through any means. In addition, the legalization process of the globalized market is placing numerous restrictions regarding the production and use of various products. Companies that want to succeed must learn to strike a balance between profit, the law, and professional ethics that are applied to the industry.

Although the majority of multinational giants have affirmed their conviction in upholding the letter of the law and professional ethics, in practice, a good portion of them has issues with either the ethical or the legislative side of matters. This paper will discuss the ethical and legal side of the argument in Monsanto’s Roundup crisis.

Main body

Monsanto is a large American agrochemical and agricultural company that produces a variety of agricultural wares ranging from seeds and plants and ending with herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, and other products used to grow and protect crops. The company is one of the top 10 US-based agricultural holdings. In 2016, Bayer, a multinational agricultural corporation, purchased the company and made it a subsidiary.

One of Monsanto’s primary products is Roundup, which is a very efficient herbicide, which is based on the glyphosate component, which is said to be very harmful to plants, harmless to other lifeforms, and quickly decomposing when in contact with air (Levin and Greenfield). However, this statement has been under question numerous times. There are reports of glyphosate being a potential cancerogenic product. In addition, there have been reports in the media regarding Monsanto either buying off or silencing independent researchers investigating the safety of their product.

In August 2018, the court of San Francisco ordered Monsanto is to pay 289 million dollars in damages to Mr. Johnson for failure to inform him, as well as the general public, that their products are likely to cause cancer (Levin and Greenfield). The lawsuit has been in place since 2016 and was fast-tracked because of the development of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma disease in the plaintiff, which severely reduced his lifespan. The doctors say that Mr. Johnson is unlikely to live for more than 2 years. The accusations were made against Roundup and Ranger Pro, which share a similar glyphosate-based formula (Levin and Greenfield).

This ruling poses a series of significant ethical and legal questions towards Monsanto. Roundup has been one of the most popular herbicides in agriculture for the last 30 years. If their products are indeed capable of causing cancer, then the implications for the company’s future are grim. After Mr. Johnson’s victory in the San Francisco court, over 8,000 plaintiffs have filed similar claims against the company (Levin and Greenfield). Whether the company knew about these dangerous side effects or not, it now has to weather the storm of criticism and a loss of public face because of it.

As it stands, the only two facts regarding the case are the scientific evidence about glyphosate as well as the legal ruling of the court of San Francisco, which sets a legal precedent. The scientific evidence about the dangers of glyphosate is contradictory. The main two documents used by the prosecution and the defense in Mr. Johnson’s case are the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) report.

EPA reports are based on national surveys, with each country having its own report at the end of the year. The EPA report published by the US and New Zealand in 2015 states that glyphosate, which is the active component in Roundup, is unlikely to be cancerogenic. These conclusions were based on the lack of evidence to the contrary. The papers claiming that glyphosate could provoke cancer were stated to be lacking in number, having small control groups, and various other methodological errors (Rowland and Middleton).

The report published by the IARC in the following year came up with different results. It analyzed large-scale studies, such as the Agricultural Health Cohort Study, have provided evidence that glyphosate, which is found in Roundup, can cause cancer in some specific cases, namely related to the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which Mr. Johnson has developed (IARC). These scientific findings were allowed into court as evidence for the first time in the history of American jurisprudence and were the reason why Monsanto was declared guilty. The company denies all allegations of knowing about the side effects of the product and continues to claim innocence. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the law, the company is a guilty party.

There are several documents in the US, which are used to control and regulate the use and production of herbicides. These documents and laws have been issued under the authority of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which can regulate the use and distribution of herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and other chemicals that have the potential to cause damage to humans, animals, and the environment. The list of laws is as follows (NPIC):

Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)
Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA)
Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 (FQPA)
Pesticide Registration Improvement Act (PRIA)
Endangered Species Act (ESA)

Out of this list, Monsanto managed to break the first three regulations, namely FIFRA, FFDCA, and FQPA. Section 7 U.S.C. §136 et seq. of FIFRA forbids the use and distribution of chemicals that cause any unreasonable risks to a human being or the environment, as well as any dietary risks from the residue (NPIC). Since it was proven that Roundup could indeed cause cancer, the company was charged with the violation of this and other relevant statutes regarding the testing and reporting the effects of the compound on human beings. In addition, Monsanto was declared guilty of violating

Section 21 U.S.C. §301 et seq., states that the safe dosages of using the compound were declared wrongly (NPIC). Mr. Johnson’s exposure to the disease was motivated by the wrong dosage as well as by the cancerogenic properties of Roundup. Lastly, Monsanto was found guilty of violating Public Law 104-170, which obligated the company to use a tenfold safety factor in the absence of studies to justify other doses as well as to consider the aggregate risk of accumulative exposure in individuals that work with the compound for increased periods of time (NPIC).

Additional laws and statutes violated by Monsanto included the failure to inform the customers about the dangerous and cancerogenic properties of Roundup as well as providing false advertising, stating that all components of the chemical were natural. These violations of the law were committed by the company in order to make the product more appealing to customers and increase sales by a large margin. Without these violations, Roundup would have been banned by the majority of the countries, which would have significantly reduced its profitability.

There are several ethical issues with the positions of the company in this matter. First of all, this is not a single lawsuit against Monsanto. They have been accused of unethical practices towards the scientists, the farmers, the customers, and their employees for years. Although some of these accusations may have been unsubstantiated, they do indicate that the company, in general, places its own interests above the interests of other stakeholder groups.

The impact of Monsanto’s activities can be seen more accurately when analyzed through the prism of several ethical perspectives. From the perspective of a rights-based ethical framework, every individual using Roundup and any other chemicals has the right to make an informed decision about whether or not the results are worth the risk (Philp and Rosen 134). However, the company has obstructed the possibility to make an informed decision. Thus, based on the perspective of Rights ethics, what they did was wrong and unethical.

Emmanuel Kant’s deontological ethics are based on the concepts of duty and Categorical Imperative (Stern 15). It states that a perfect duty is a kind of duty, which could be imagined to be upheld by everyone (Kohl 332). The requirement for a company to test out its products until their safety is confirmed without a shadow of a doubt is a perfect duty. So is the requirement to be honest with a customer and report any potential risks to the authorities. Monsanto did not uphold any of these duties, making their actions unethical based on Kant’s deontological ethics perspective.

Utilitarian ethics tend to balance happiness and grief caused by any particular action in order to determine how ethical a decision is (Philp and Rosen 32). They can be used to defend Monsanto’s position. Despite glyphosate being confirmed as a cancerogenic product in several studies, its detrimental effects remain relatively low. It is one of the safest herbicides currently in use by the agricultural sector. Its alternatives are more dangerous and expensive.

If glyphosate is banned, the margin for grief will increase significantly due to rising prices for food and various side effects associated with herbicides. However, utilitarian ethics also condone the direct loss of human life. Death, according to utilitarian ethics, is the ultimate facilitator of grief. The attempt to hide and obfuscate the truth only made things worse. Although it resulted in short-term happiness through obliviousness, it also facilitated greater feelings of rage once the truth was discovered. Thus, utilitarian ethics also condone Monsanto for its actions.

The proper course of action for Monsanto should have been taken back when the first questions about the dangers of glyphosate had emerged. It is very possible that initially, the compound was considered harmless, as the immediate tests and research did not give any reasons to believe it had cancer-inducing qualities. However, the company should have conducted cohort studies every 10 years and investigated the results of independent research instead of trying to suppress them.

That way, Roundup’s negative effects on humans would have been discovered long before the crisis erupted. Of course, this would have ended the use of Roundup as a commercial product. At the same time, however, Monsanto would have kept its good name and reputation. Herbicides are not the only products the company has. Hundreds of lives would have been saved from exposure to the toxicity of the compound as well. Mr. Johnson’s case was just the first one that got publicity. The total number of Monsanto’s customers that died because of cancer is unknown.

As it was evidenced by the case with Monsanto, neglecting ethical decision-making and breaking the law to increase one’s revenue cannot be considered the best way to facilitate business in the long term. Although the company did enjoy short-term profits, it had recently lost 289 million dollars in compensations as well as many more to pay for the lawyers to defend their case for two years. With over 8,000 impending lawsuits, the situation is going to get worse.

Ethical and law-abiding businesses are the future of the world’s economy. The purpose of businesses is not just the personal enrichment of their founders and stakeholders, but in making the world a better place to live in through excellent services and high-quality products.

Conclusion

Agricultural companies are often put into difficult ethical and legislative conditions. A product considered safe for several decades may turn out to be dangerous. Balancing effectiveness and eco-friendliness is also a significant challenge, as the world population keeps growing and requires food. Nevertheless, the focus should always be on the safety and honesty of the end-users of the product as well as with the communities it could be affected by. Trying to chase profits with no regard for ethics, laws, or safety measures will bring suffering in the long-term, as was demonstrated by Monsanto.

Works Cited

IARC. “Glyphosate.” IARC Monographs. Web.

Kohl, Markus. “Kant on Determinism and the Categorical Imperative.” Ethics, vol. 125, no. 2, 2015, pp. 331-356.

Levin, Sam, and Patrick Greenfield. “Monsanto Ordered to Pay $289m as Jury Rules Weedkiller Caused Man’s Cancer.” The Guardian. 2018. Web.

NPIC. “Pesticide Laws and Regulations.” National Pesticide Information Center. Web.

Philp, Mark, and Frederick Rosen, editors. John Stuart Mill on Liberty, Utilitarianism, and Other Essays. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Rowland, Jess, and Karlyn Middleton. “Glyphosate: Report of the Cancer Assessment Review Committee.” SRC. 2015. Web.

Stern, Robert. Kantian Ethics: Value, Agency, and Obligation. Oxford University Press, 2015.

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Monsanto: Profits, Laws, and Human Rights

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