WASHINGTON – A Monsanto executive said he wanted to “beat
the shit out of" a mothers’ group that urged the company to stop selling
its Roundup weedkiller, according to internal emails obtained by lawyers for
victims who say the pesticide caused their cancer.
The July 2013 emails, reported today by New Food Economy,
reveal an exchange between Dr. Daniel Goldstein of Monsanto and two outside
consultants about how to respond to an open letter from Moms Across America, a
grassroots advocacy group.
Moms Across America’s letter to then-Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant
cited scientific studies linking glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup,
to cancer. It also decried the company’s marketing of seeds for genetically
modified foods: “We Moms know your Mom would be proud of you if you put the
health of the nation first and stopped selling GMO seeds and spraying
Glyphosate (Roundup®) and other harsher pesticides,” the letter said.
In the emails, Goldstein wrote that the group was making “a
pretty nasty looking set of allegations” and that he had been “arguing for a
week to beat the shit out of them.”
Using identical scatological language, one of the
consultants – Bruce Chassy, then a professor at the University of Illinois –
also advocated attacking the moms’ group. The other consultant – Wayne Parrot,
a University of Georgia crop scientist – disagreed: “You can’t beat up mothers,
even if they are dumb mothers but you can beat up the organic industry,” which
he falsely claimed “paid for and wrote that letter.”
“These
ugly emails reveal the utter contempt that Monsanto has for public health and
for consumers, including mothers who only want to protect their kids’ health,”
said EWG President Ken Cook. “Bayer is reeling from its monumental blunder of
buying Monsanto, and these emails should remind them that they acquired the
company that gave us DDT, Agent Orange and PCBs.”
