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The World According to Monsanto is an eye-opening documentary.
Your eyes, once opened, soon begin to burn.
Is it Dioxin?
PCBs?
That genetically modified burrito making its exit via every bodily orifice?
As damning a screed that has ever been filmed against any corporation this side of the tobacco industry, The World According to Monsanto posits that this 100-year-old chemical giant -- which now positions itself as a "life sciences" company -- wants nothing less than a stranglehold over the world's food supply.
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Got milk?
If you bought it in the States, it probably got a boost from Monsanto's Bovine Growth Hormone, which apparently has the unfortunate side effect of making cow udders susceptible to an infection called clinical mastitis, giving milk drinkers the added benefit of pus and a full spectrum of antibiotics.
Corn in Mexico, cotton in India, soy in North America (specially bred to resist Roundup, the company's signature herbicide, and to exude a bio-insecticide as well), Monsanto has its hands (and lawyers) everywhere, intent on uprooting the local agri-industries and replacing them with their patented variety by any means necessary.
By any means
What this means in Third World countries is a radical change in the culture, requiring subsistence farmers to actually buy seeds annually (under threat of law) instead of using the seeds from the previous crop as they have for centuries.
Director Marie-Monique Robin finds local leaders in Mexico and India who already seem on the verge of armed resistance.
There is so much going on in The World According to Monsanto, Robin's French/NFB co-production.
And yet the company chooses to answer none of it. (Its big "no comment" comes at the end of the movie).
This is almost more shocking than the content of the movie itself.
It's one thing for McDonald's to have no comment over Supersize Me and its accusation that eating too many Big Macs will make you throw up.
It's another to clam up against accusations of almost monstrous criminality and coverup.
It's possible there is hyperbole in Robin's movie, but we'll never know as long as Monsanto pleads the Fifth.
The movie relies on one overly cheesy gimmick.
By way of scene segue, it repeatedly shows Robin at her desk, perusing Google sites.
Given the Net's rep as a haven for wild inaccuracies and conspiracies, it's not the best way to establish the credibility of your case.
Coverups
But when it ventures back into straight-ahead doc territory, The World According to Monsanto posits not only current crimes, but a 70-year-long history of same -- cover-ups of the dangers of PCBs and Dioxin (the supposedly "cooked" studies of the safety of which became a stumbling block for Vietnam veterans seeking compensation after exposure to Agent Orange.)
But the most outrageous revelation in The World According to Monsanto is the fox-guarding-the-chicken-coop aspect -- an extensive revolving door between the U.S. Food & Drug Administration and the company (example: ex FDA deputy commissioner Michael Taylor started at Monsanto, and is now, again, a Monsanto executive).
Definitely not the feel-good movie of the year.
(This film is rated G)