One of the World's Largest Pesticide Makers Could Be Bought by a Chinese Company

[SecularMotion]

We all love to hate Monsanto. We also know that Monsanto isn’t the only poison-maker trying to pass itself off as a “farmer-friendly producer of food to feed the world.”

Monsanto belongs to an exclusive club of dominant pesticide makers. That club, which includes Dow, Dupont, Bayer, Syngenta and BASF, is about to get a lot smaller. And a lot more dangerous.

Bayer has been trying for months to buy Monsanto. Dow and Dupont are in talks to merge. And Switzerland-based Syngenta may soon be owned by ChemChina.

It’s bad enough that less than a dozen multinational corporations (including Monsanto, Dupont, Bayer and Syngenta) control nearly 70 percent of the global seed market. If these mergers and buyouts go through, that number will shrink even further. The recent merger and acquisition in the seed and chemical (why are the words "seeds" and "chemicals" even uttered in the same breath?) signals trouble in the industry, a fact Bayer CEO Werner Baumann recently admitted. That’s probably a good sign.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/one-worlds-largest-pesticide-makers-could-be-bought-chinese-company-heres-what-means

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Well, seeds are able to grow because they contain the chemical DNA ...

... so when Monsanto's DNA is found in other people's crops, Monsanto should be fined for a chemical spill, and forced to pay cleanup costs, until the contamination is completely eliminated.

Yes, I'm serious -- I'd like to see the legal profession to take up the case that corporations, like bachelors, need to be responsible for where their genetic material ends up.

Viruses are just DNA or RNA in a small package -- are companies allowed to spill viruses wherever they want to ?

BTW, if the Chinese acquire Syngenta, I'd expect Syngenta's industrial safety standards to fall in line with China's (which involve frequent drastic explosions and massive environmental ruination), rather than the other way around.