The World According to Monsanto/Le Monde Selon Monsanto (review)

The World According to Monsanto/Le Monde Selon Monsanto is a film that will make your blood run cold. A scrupulously documented film of deception and disastrous consequence, it is a damning indictment of the world's leading biotechnology company, a chemical company enhanced as a multinational agricultural behemoth. Monsanto declines comment.

The documentary is built around a record of government documents, legal reports, hearings and investigations and the carefully orchestrated lack thereof, scientific studies and interviews with former government officials, scientists and victims—and, of course, proponents. Much of this material is available on the Internet, and indeed the film is particularly interesting in how it incorporates these Internet searches into the actual structure and content of the documentary. It reveals, incontestably it would seem, mendacious criminal fraud and collusion between big business and governments, so much so that it exceeds what even the most jumped-up conspiracy any conspiracy theorist could imagine in their worst psychotic nightmare.

If it were not for the science and the lack and perversion thereof, for the dire consequences for the victims globally, for the systematic persecution of those scientists who have dared to reveal the scientific evidence of the toxicity of the herbicide Roundup, which is marketed in tandem with Monsanto GMO seeds, and arguably its raison d'être in the first place, one might if unawares be tempted to dismiss this as the insane work and testimony of red-eyed Luddites and environmental activists refusing the march of progress and the fruits of biotechnology and ignorantly resisting a second green revolution while denying the supposed benefits of the first.

At the time of filming, there were 7,570,000 critical on-line documents on Monsanto and Monsanto-related products, specifically on the relevant lawsuits and problematic issues. In a simple, ingenious and most unusual way of building a documentary plot, the film is structured around scenes of Marie-Monique Robin typing in the company name, a chemical term or an issue or combination thereof into a Google search. In each unfolding drama, after clicking on one of millions of the most utterly compromising documents you can imagine, she reveals herself a consummate investigator.

The film begins in a rail-side garden outside Paris. An old man in his garden is reading the label on the back of a green spray bottle of Roundup. The label reads "biodegradable" and states that the herbicide is not toxic if used "appropriately." What we learn in the rest of the film is that it is indeed "biodegradable" in that after 28 days, 2% of it will degrade. In what follows you will learn that Roundup is a glycostat ring molecule—a PCB, basically dioxin. Sold as a harmless biodegradable weed killer, it is a form of Agent Orange, and as we know all too well from Vietnam, it causes cancers, extreme birth defects and many other problems leading to illness and eventually death.

The extraordinary history of documented lies and fraud, the dirty tricks and dark collusion between multinational business and governments, the calculated evil behind this and other products and their connections to genetically modified crops simply defies the imagination. For instance, in one scene Robin accesses a Washington Post article from 2002. There she discovers that the company and the U.S. government purposely hid the fact that they knew Roundup was toxic and that the factory in Anniston, Alabama, was poisoning the community all along. For instance, in leaked ("stolen") internal classified documents, made available on-line, she shows that despite the knowledge that PCB has systemic toxic effects and causes hepatitis, "We [Monsanto] can't afford to lose one dollar. . . ."

Monsanto hid this information from the public and was protected in doing so by the U.S. government. Looking into this perverse collusion of industry and government, Robin visits the Anniston community to record the long-term effects on the community's...