Monsanto's unbiased thoughts on Monsanto

So I'm looking forward to seeing the movie Food, Inc., which opens in Chicago this Friday.

Big ag's naturally less excited about the film, a sort of feature-length primer on all things food movement. Monsanto has a blog, called Monsanto According to Monsanto. Why? Hey, they're glad you asked:

The title Monsanto According to Monsanto is a spoof of The World According to Monsanto, a horribly biased documentary which portrays Monsanto in a very negative light. Aside from the shoddy journalism, we at Monsanto found it incredibly arrogant that the filmmaker would present her own twisted view of Monsanto as the company’s view of the world.

Unfortunately there’s no shortage of people, particularly on the internet, who have taken it upon themselves to speak about Monsanto – what the company is, what it does, and why. Many of these folks have their own agendas. If anyone should speak to Monsanto’s vision of the world, it’s those of us who come to work here every day and collectively make this company what it is. This is the main reason for this blog.

"Particularly on the internet"! Nothing like using a blog to imply that teh internets aren't credible. But more importantly: WTF? Seems to me that what's really arrogant is talking down to us internets readers to the point of suggesting that we might actually believe that "those of us who come to work here every day and collectively make this company what it is"--i.e., staffers paid to write spin pieces--are "folks" with less of an agenda than a documentary filmmaker has.

At any rate, via Ethicurean, intrepid citizen blogger Monsanto According to Monsanto is shocked--shocked!--that Food, Inc.'s Robert Kenner would criticize Monsanto for prohibiting its seed buyers from saving seeds. Mr. Kenner! Don't you care about intellectual property, sir? If not, I guess you won't mind if people bootleg your nice little movie, will you?

Hmm. The fact that Monsanto's seeds are corporate intellectual property, and not, say, something occurring in nature, is of course a big part of the problem. That aside, an "ooh! I think I see a hypocrite!" gotcha like this is a silly distraction. The problem with Monsanto et al is that they're destroying our health, our planet, and peoples' livelihoods. One way they do this is by forcing farmers to buy new seeds every year. Kenner can't credibly criticize this without immediately putting his film in the public domain? That's absurd, a comparison that depends on very narrow terms of conversation.

Big ag's mounting a major defensive, and it's going to take a lot of work to keep them from defining the debate. Bonnie does a good job in the comments here--take a look at the back and forth she gets into w/ a Monsanto employee. (You can tell he's one of the cool kids and not some corporate goon because he has a South Park avatar!)