Blogger gets nastygram from Monsanto

Tom Philpott, whose Bitter Greens Journal is intended “as a running critique of industrial agriculture, a clearinghouse for info on sustainable farming, and a working manifesto for a liberation politics based on food” has run assorted short items on that blog under the heading “Roundup, Ready”. The phrase plays on the name of the herbicide-resistant “Roundup Ready” seed line of the giant Monsanto corporation, of which Philpott is predictably a fervent critic. Now a Monsanto lawyer has sent him a cease and desist letter warning him to drop the offending term or else. (Aug. 26, Aug. 29, Sept. 2). Monsanto is already notorious for suing a dairy in Maine on the free-speech-chilling theory that it was somehow unfair, misleading or deceptive for the dairy to boast in its advertising that its milk did not contain artificial bovine growth hormones, since there’s nothing wrong with the hormones; see Sept. 17, 2003.

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