Charla Lord, a Monsanto spokeswoman, said in a statement that the company is “reviewing the lawsuit and its allegations. However, Monsanto is not responsible for the costs alleged in this matter.”
Monsanto only sold PCBs as a “lawful and useful product that was then incorporated by third parties into other useful products,” Lord said. “If improper disposal or other improper uses created the necessity for cleanup costs, then these other third parties would bear responsibility for these costs.”...
Lord, the company’s spokeswoman, noted that the company has produced many products and has gone through many transformations over the years.
“Monsanto today, and for the last decade, has been focused solely on agriculture, but we share a name with a company that dates back to 1901,” Lord wrote in a statement. “The former Monsanto was involved in a wide variety of businesses including the manufacture of PCBs. . . . The manufacture of PCBs in the United States was banned in 1979, although the former Monsanto voluntarily ceased production and selling before that.”
Ahem, in other words, "
The former Monsanto," the
other Monsanto ... not the present Monsanto. is responsible for the presence of PCBs in the Spokane River.
Reflections on the fantastical and sorcerous universe of corporations below:
Vis-à-vis corporations, a word that comes to mind is chimera:
an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts
Corporations certainly are monsters and Monsanto clearly is a monster of many parts:
Monsanto Company is a publicly traded American multinational agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation . . . . Monsanto expanded to Europe in 1919 by entering a partnership with Graesser's Chemical Works at Cefn Mawr, near Ruabon Wales, to produce vanillin, aspirin and its raw ingredient salicylic acid, and later rubber processing chemicals. . . . In 1926 the company founded and incorporated a town called Monsanto in Illinois (now known as Sauget). It was formed to provide minimal regulation and low taxes for the Monsanto chemical plants at a time when local jurisdictions had most of the responsibility for environmental rules. . . . In 1936 Monsanto acquired Thomas & rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone)Hochwalt Laboratories in Dayton, Ohio . . . . In 1946, it developed "All" laundry detergent and began to market it; they sold the product line to Lever Brothers in 1957. In 1947, one of its factories was destroyed in the Texas City Disaster. Monsanto acquired American Viscose from England's Courtauld family in 1949. In 1954 Monsanto partnered with German chemical giant Bayer to form Mobay and market polyurethanes in the United States.
Among the other goodies dished out by the chimerical Monsanto are: DDT, Agent Orange, "the first transgenic varieties of cotton, soybeans, peanuts, and other crops", glyphosate, AKA Roundup, Bt cotton, rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone).
The monster corporation has gone through a dizzying array of mergers and spinoffs, has its people implanted in various important departments of our federal government, writes our laws and gets them passed, spends millions to fight GMO disclosure laws, is utterly frightening in its monsterness.