EXCERPT: From Vietnam to Socsargen [where Monsanto's GM corn is growing]. Old practices, it seems, die hard.
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A blast from a dark past
The Mindanao Daily Mirror (The Philippines), Jan 30 2006 http://bond.lanesystems.com/sitegen/article.asp?wid=125&cid=453&aid=35288

Over the weekend, agribusiness giant Monsanto was cast under the glare of international publicity. The reason? Survivors of Agent Orange, the defoliant it manufactured for use during the Vietnam War, just came out victorious from a historic class suit.

The Seoul Supreme Court charged that Monsanto and Dow Chemical, another multimillion dollar company, were not immune from being responsible for the lethal effects of the chemical spray upon humans, both combatants and civilians, at the height of the controversial war.

South Korea had supported Washington's fight against the Vietnamese in the 1965-73 conflict. In the wake of Agent Orange, more than 20,000 South Koreans sued for damages.

The high court ordered the two multinational companies to pay $62 million in medical damages to 6,800 people.

Monsanto will expectedly appeal the court's decision. But as it now stands, the ruling is groundbreaking. It certainly behoves the company, which prides itself as "a leading provider of agricultural products and solutions," to take stock of history and consider moral redemption over corporate conceit.

That, admittedly, won't be easy. Not for a global organization that has been field-testing mutant corn in the South Cotabato-Sarangani-General Santos (Socsargen) area.

Activists have been banging the doors of the country's legislators to stop Monsanto from testing the genetically-modified Bt corn, purported to boost the crop's resistance to pests and increase productivity. But despite the protests, commercial planting of the mutated crop has expanded since 2003 to now cover some 70,000 hectares. Tribal residents in Polomolok, South Cotabato living within a hundred meters of the testing site have once complained of an array of ailments from headaches to flu, from vomiting to skin allergies.

From Vietnam to Socsargen. Old practices, it seems, die hard.

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