Monsanto, the massive biotech company everybody loves to hate, once again proved themselves unworthy of existence with their line of RoundUp-Ready crop products.

Roundup is (or was) an almost universal herbicide that is actually environmentally friendly. It was one of our most guilt-free chemical tools for plant management. Like penecillin for plants instead of bacteria.

Enter Monsanto with a bright idea. "Why not develop corn that's resistant to RoundUp? Then instead of having to get up close and personal, nuking each weed individually, you can just spray the whole damn field with RoundUp, and everything but the corn will die!"

Good one, Einstein. Only one problem. Did you know that, like bacteria, plants can share genetic information with one another, even between different species? Wow, what do you think will happen now? Will the gene for RoundUp resistance escape into the weed population, spreading out of control, until the only really useful and environmentally friendly herbicide we have is as useless as penecillin is today?

Ah, progress.

Come to think of it, Monsanto wants farmers to waste money on using RoundUp. The best way to do so is to make the farmers spray more and more RoundUp all over the fields with no effect on the crops. If the corn crops are resistant to this stuff, farmers will definitely spray more RoundUp than they need. It's the herbicide equivalent of tossing the baby with the bathwater. If the weeds are herbicide-resistant because of this genetic modification crap, then Monsanto can "unveil" the latest kind of weed-killers and sell that stuff to the farmers along with new plants that are resistant to this new herbicide stuff...

"Address all complaints to the Monsanto Corporation."
-- Spoken by a "moon gopher" in the Luna Park amusement park during the second episode of Futurama ("The Series has Landed").

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