Pay Up! Monsanto Found Guilty Of Chemical Poisoning In France

image © – Wikipedia PD

After ending up in a coma, Paul Francois spent 11 years wrestling with chemical manufacturing giant, Monsanto, a company with a 2014 market value of $58 billion. Paul Francois is a regular French cereal crop Farmer. Like many other farmers, he used herbicides to kill weeds. In 2004, he used the weed killer – Lasso. Lasso is one of the trademark names for the chemical Alachlor. Shortly after using Monsanto’s product, he got very sick.

After using Monsanto’s herbicide, Paul Francois suffered headaches, memory loss, and stammering speech. He was admitted to the hospital and fell into a coma. Medical tests showed that he had permanent brain damage. Paul Francois’ first court case against Monsanto was in 2005. Finally, in 2012, the court found Monsanto liable for the injuries Paul suffered. Monsanto appealed, yet in 2015 the French court upheld the Farmer’s claims and mandated that he be fully compensated. ^[1]

Since 2006, the use of alachlor as a herbicide has been banned in the European Union. It is also a controlled substance under Australian law and is listed as a Schedule 7 (Dangerous Poison) substance. However, it is the second most widely used herbicide in the United States, with particularly heavy use on corn and soybeans in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin. ^[2]

The chemical, just like all other herbicides, was meant to kill weeds. Farmers use herbicides to make their lives easier, not to make them sick – however, there are obvious risks involved with the handling of such toxic chemicals.

Here are the other dangers of the chemical: ^[3]

1. risk of permanent eye injury,
2. irritation of the lungs,
3. harmful if swallowed,
4. liver damage,
5. kidney damage,
6. known to cause cancer.

Monsanto was formed in 1901 and began with manufacturing chemical food additives including saccharin. They also make plastics, like PCBs, insecticides, and herbicides like RoundUp. Monsanto claims that their goal is to improve agriculture. They do so by making chemicals that are intended to increase crop production.

The company also manufactured or helped make the following: ^[4]

1. Polystyrene – a manufactured plastic that has been blamed for damaging the environment.
2. Nuclear weapons – have caused massive deaths and horrible injuries.
3. DDT – a cancer-causing insecticide that is regarded as particularly harmful to wildlife.
4. Agent Orange – a herbicide most notable sprayed over Vietnam during the war and blamed for millions of illnesses, disabilities, and birth defects in one of the worst atrocities ever seen.
5. Aspartame – an artificial sweetener linked to obesity, autism, and cancer.
6. Glyphosate / RoundUp – a weedkiller now linked to cancer and listed as a “probable human carcinogen” by the IARC. ^[5]
7. rGBH – Bovine growth hormone.

As for Alachlor: You are quite possibly drinking small amounts of this chemical that has been banned throughout Europe – as EPA’s Pesticides in Ground Water Database reports detections of alachlor in groundwater at concentrations above the maximum contaminant level in at least 15 U.S. states. ^[6]

Why Monsanto continues to produce chemicals that are so clearly harmful to humans and the environment is dumbfounding.