The Corporation (2003)

Jane Akre: Self - Investigative Reporter

Quotes 

• Samuel Epstein M.D. : Towards the end of 1989, a great box of documents arrived at my office, without any indication where they came from. And I opened them, and found in it a complete set of Monsanto files, particularly dealing with toxicological testing of cows that'd been given RBGH. And at that time Monsanto was saying, 'There's no evidence whatsoever of any adverse effects. We don't use antibiotics'. And this clearly showed that they had lied through their teeth. The files described areas of chronic inflammation in the heart, lungs, kidneys, spleen, also reproductive effects, also a whole series of other problems.

  Jeremy Rifkin : It is a silly product. The industrial world is awash in milk. We're overproducing milk. We actually have governments around the world who pay farmers not to produce milk. So the first product Monsanto comes up with is a product that produces more of what we don't need.

  Steve Wilson : But the problem was that use of the artificial hormone caused all kinds of problems for the cows. It caused something called mastitis, which is a very painful infection of the udders. When you milk the cow, if the cow has bad mastitis, some of the, and I don't know how to say this in a, you know, I hope people aren't watching at dinnertime but the pus from the infection of the udders ends up in the milk... And the somatic cell count, they call it, the bacteria count, inside your milk goes up.

  Jane Akre : There's a cost to the cows. The cows get sicker when they're infected with RBGH. They're injected with antibiotics. We know that people are consuming antibiotics through their food and we that that's contributing to antibiotic resistant bacteria and diseases. And we know we're at a crisis when somebody can go into a hospital and get a staff infection and it can't be cured and they die. That's a crisis.

  Jeremy Rifkin : Bad for the cow. Bad for the farmer. Bad potentially for the consumer. The jury is out; we see a lot of conflicting evidence about potential health risk. And, of course, as a consumer, my belief is why should I take any risk?

• Steve Wilson : One of the first stories that Jane came up with was the revelation that most of the milk in the state of Florida and throughout most of the country was adulterated with the effects of bovine growth hormone.

  Jane Akre : With Monsanto, I didn't realise how effectively a corporation could work to get something on the marketplace. The levels of coordination they had to have. They had to get university professors into the fold. They had to get experts into the fold. They had to get reporters into the fold. They had to get the public into the fold and of course the FDA, let's not leave them out. They had to get the federal regulators convinced that this was a fine and safe product to get it onto the marketplace. And they did that, they did that very, very well. The federal government basically rubber stamped it before they put it on the marketplace. The longest test they did for human toxicity was 90 days on 30 rats. And then either Monsanto misreported the results to the FDA, or the FDA didn't bother to look in depth at Monsanto's own studies.

  Steve Wilson : The scientists within Health Canada looked very carefully at bovine growth hormone and come to very different conclusions than the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. did.

• Jane Akre : Monsanto sent the second letter, and this was more strongly worded. And it said there will be dire consequences for Fox News if the story airs in Florida. And this time they freaked. They were afraid of being sued and they were also afraid of losing advertising dollars. And all of the stations owned by Rupert Murdoch. And he owned more television stations than any other group in America. That's 22 television stations. That's a lot of advertising dollars. For Round-Up, Aspartame, Nutra Sweet and other products.