Monsanto — Ethics Grade F

Monsanto receives an overall ethics grade of F (15/100) on CancelCo's corporate accountability database. Sector: Agriculture. Market cap: Large Cap.

Category scores

• labor: 30
• privacy: 50
• consumer: 15
• environment: 10
• humanRights: 12

Documented incidents (3)

• Roundup Cancer Litigation (high, 2018) — Juries found that Monsanto's glyphosate-based weedkiller, Roundup, was a substantial factor in causing Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in users. The company failed to warn consumers of carcinogenic risks.
• PCB Water Contamination (high, 2020) — Monsanto agreed to pay hundreds of millions to settle lawsuits from multiple US states regarding the long-term contamination of water bodies with Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) produced for decades.
• Indian Farmer Debt Crisis (high, 2012) — Critics and activists linked Monsanto’s high-cost GM cotton seeds and strict intellectual property enforcement to severe debt cycles and rising suicide rates among small-scale farmers in India.

Documented good deeds

• Drought-Tolerant Seed Sharing — Monsanto donated drought-tolerant seed technology to the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project to help smallholder farmers combat climate change.

Ethical alternatives

• Eden Foods — Focuses on organic certification and rejects GMO technologies entirely.