It was formed to provide minimal regulation and low taxes for Monsanto plants at a time when local jurisdictions had most of the responsibility for environmental rules.
[31] In 1943, Thomas was called to a meeting in Washington, D.C., with Leslie Groves, commander of the Manhattan Project, and James Conant, president of Harvard University and chairman of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC).
[41] In the 1960s and 1970s, Monsanto was a producer of Agent Orange for United States Armed Forces operations in Vietnam, and settled out of court in a lawsuit brought by veterans in 1984.
[18] This involvement increased under the leadership of Robert Shapiro, appointed CEO in 1995, leading ultimately to the disposition of product lines unrelated to agriculture.
In 1993, its Searle division filed a patent application for Celebrex,[46][47] which in 1998 became the first selective COX‑2 inhibitor to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
[116] Farmers widely adopted the technology—for example over 80% of maize (Mon 832), soybean (MON-Ø4Ø32-6), cotton, sugar beet and canola planted in the United States are glyphosate-tolerant.
[127] Monsanto invented and sells genetically modified seeds that make a crystalline insecticidal protein from Bacillus thuringiensis, known as Bt.
Monsanto produces seed that has multiple genetic modifications, also known as "stacked traits"—for instance, cotton that make one or more Bt proteins and is resistant to glyphosate.
[149] In 2009, high prices of Bt Cotton were blamed for forcing farmers of Jhabua district into debt when the crops died due to lack of rain.
[159] Monsanto developed and sold recombinant bovine somatotropin (also known as rBST and rBGH), a synthetic hormone that increases milk production by 11–16% when injected into cows.
[164] In reaction to this, in early 2008 a pro-rBST advocacy group called "American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology" (AFACT),[165] made up of dairies and originally affiliated with Monsanto, formed and began lobbying to ban such labels.
[180] Monsanto also became one of the most controversial large corporations in the world, over a range of issues involving its industrial and agricultural chemical products, and GM seed.
Court rulings supported the project,[187] but environmentalist groups organised demonstrations and opened an online petition for the subject to be decided in a popular referendum.
[188] The court rulings stipulated that while construction could continue, the facility could not begin operating until the environmental impact report required by law had been duly presented.
[191] This was a controversial decision, and in response, the Landless Workers' Movement protested by invading and occupying several Monsanto farm plots used for research, training and seed-processing.
[194][203][204][205] In 2009, Shiva wrote that Indian farmers who had previously spent as little as ₹7 (rupees) per kilogram were now paying up to ₹17,000 per kilo per year for Bt cotton.
[212][213] A 2005 report by Environment Agency Wales (EAW) found that the quarry contained up to 75 toxic substances, including heavy metals, Agent Orange and PCBs.
[214][218] In the late 1960s, the Monsanto plant in Sauget, Illinois, was the nation's largest producer of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) compounds, which remained in the water along Dead Creek there.
On November 25, 2020, however U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olguin rejected the proposed $650 million settlement from Bayer and allowed Monsanto-related lawsuits involving PCB to proceed.
"[231] As of August 30, 2013, while the source of the GM wheat remained unknown, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan had all resumed placing orders.
Dewayne Johnson, who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, was initially awarded $289 million in damages after a jury in San Francisco said that Monsanto had failed to adequately warn consumers of cancer risks posed by the herbicide.
[246] On March 27, 2019, Monsanto was found liable in a federal court for Edwin Hardeman's non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and ordered to pay $80 million in damages.
[247] On May 13, 2019, a jury in California ordered Bayer to pay $2 billion in damages after finding that the company had failed to adequately inform consumers of the possible carcinogenicity of Roundup.
[13] Following a lawsuit by a peach farmer alleging that Dicamba used as a weed killer drifted in the wind from adjacent crops to destroy his peach orchards, a Missouri trial jury found in February 2020 that Monsanto and codefendant BASF were negligent in design of Dicamba and failed to warn farmers about the product, awarding $15 million for losses and $250 million in punitive damages.
[256] According to the report, Monsanto asked Miller to write an article rebutting the findings of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and he indicated willingness to do it if he "could start from a high-quality draft".
Critics argued that the connections between the company and the government allowed Monsanto to obtain favorable regulations at the expense of consumer safety.
[279][280][281] Supporters of the practice point to the benefits of competent and experienced individuals in both sectors and to the importance of appropriately managing potential conflicts of interest.
[294]: 267 Peter Luff, then a Conservative Party MP and Chairman of the Agriculture Select Committee, received up to £10,000 a year from Bell Pottinger on behalf of Monsanto.
[286][333] In 2010 Swiss research firm Covalence rated Monsanto least ethical[334] of 581 multinational corporations based on their EthicalQuote reputation tracking index which "aggregates thousands of positive and negative news items published by the media, companies, and stakeholders",[335] without attempt to validate sources.
[339][340] Monsanto executive Robert Fraley won the World Food Prize for "breakthrough achievements in founding, developing, and applying modern agricultural biotechnology".