Monsanto joining forces with bee supervillain
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- Published on Thursday, 14 May 2015 08:30
- Written by editor
Agrochemical giant Monsanto is poised to take over Syngenta, another massive pesticide company.
This monster merger would give Monsanto an iron grip on farmers around the world -- gravely threatening world food security.
We have to stop this now. Tell US and EU antitrust regulators to block Monsanto’s takeover now.
Paov,
This is the deal that could create the ultimate super villain. Monsanto wants to launch a takeover bid of its key competitor Syngenta, one of the biggest pushers of bee-killing pesticides in the world. The new megacorp would boast a combined revenue of $30 billion and control over 35% of the world's seed supply.
Imagine this: Monsanto eliminates one of its biggest competitors and tightens its grip on the global farming industry. Our precious wildlife like bees, birds, and butterflies suffer as Monsanto spreads its pesticides further and wider. More and more small-scale farmers are bullied if they refuse to buy Monsanto’s seeds.
The deal’s not sealed and we can stop this now. Syngenta shareholders have already rejected Monsanto’s initial $45 billion offer, but Monsanto's planning a new offer. Anti-trust regulators in the US and Europe are already skeptical of big corporate mergers, and have the power to stop this. With strong, targeted pressure from a concerned public, we can make this deal unravel.
Tell European and US regulators to stop this ridiculous takeover.
No single corporation should be allowed to wield the sort of power that comes from a near-monopoly on our global food system. And from the very beginning, the SumOfUs community has been working hard to fight back against both Monsanto and Syngenta and limit the power of massive agribusiness corporations.
We've been piling pressure onto Monsanto and its toxic pesticides, terminator seeds, and chronic, aggressive abuse of local farmers -- and we’ve been making waves. In January, a whopping 1 out of 5 shareholders (that’s 20%!) supported a SumOfUs-backed shareholder proposal calling out Monsanto’s CEO for being his own boss and pushing for independent management oversight.
And what about Syngenta -- Monsanto’s soon-to-be partner in crime? Syngenta asked United States regulators for a 40,000% increase in the legal limit of bee-killing neonicotinoids. But we’re well on the way to curbing its destructive practices -- nearly a million SumOfUs members stood up to home improvement chain Lowe's and got it to drop neonics from its stores worldwide.
Together, we’ve stopped monster mergers that would give way to massive monopolies. Recently, we helped stop a potential monster merger between Time Warner and Comcast in the United States, which would have given Comcast a monopoly over the Internet.
Monsanto already had its initial offer rejected, but it’s not backing down. Our impact is in numbers, and we can stop this nightmare of a merger if we come together to demand that international regulators stop Monsanto’s destructive ambitions in its tracks now.
Tell antitrust regulators to say no to this monster merger and stop Monsanto's takeover now.
Thanks for everything you do,
Kaytee, Angus, Kat, Ledys, and the rest of the SumOfUs team
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More information:
Syngenta deal would bulk up Monsanto in crop chemicals, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 5, 2015
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