Monsanto (Historical Records) — Ethics Grade F

Monsanto (Historical Records) receives an overall ethics grade of F (12/100) on CancelCo's corporate accountability database. Sector: Agriculture. Market cap: Large Cap.

Category scores

• labor: 40
• privacy: 50
• consumer: 5
• environment: 5
• humanRights: 10

Documented incidents (3)

• Agent Orange Production (high, 1984) — Monsanto was a primary producer of Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War. Decades of litigation followed regarding dioxin contamination and catastrophic health defects caused to veterans and Vietnamese civilians.
• Roundup Glyphosate Lawsuits (high, 2018) — A California jury found that Monsanto failed to warn users that its weedkiller Roundup could cause cancer (Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma), leading to thousands of similar lawsuits and multibillion-dollar settlements.
• Long-term PCB Contamination (high, 2022) — Monsanto faced numerous lawsuits from states and cities over the historical manufacture of PCBs, toxic chemicals that persist in waterways and cause ecological and human health damage.

Documented good deeds

• Golden Rice Licensing — The company provided royalty-free licenses for its technologies to help develop Vitamin A-enriched Golden Rice to fight blindness in developing nations.

Ethical alternatives

• Corteva Agriscience — Fewer historical toxic chemical legacy issues compared to Monsanto/Bayer.