Innocent, Unaware Monsanto: Avoiding Responsibility

The document we are highlighting today could seem to be particularly puzzling. It is a letter from February 3, 1976, where a Monsanto employee heartfeltly thanks Mrs. Polsen for her "touching letter."

Mrs. Polsen mentions the death of her son, and seems to thank Monsanto for discontinuing the manufacture of PCBs. It is possible that her own son died because of exposure to some industrial toxin.

It is extremly problamatic that Monsanto portrays themselves as simply deciding to discontinue PCBs when they learned of its danger. As we have written before, Monsanto had knowledge of the toxicity of PCBs before they were forced to ban them.

But here, Monsanto paints themselves as in the moral right. The employee even goes as far as to compare Monsanto to his family:

"I do not think that everything that Monsanto does is without fault — any more than I think that everything my family does is without fault. But we do consistently try to do the right thing."

This is a dangerous comparison. Monsato paints itself as a family and an organization that is constantly striving to do the right thing. However, this association also implies that along the way, mistakes are natural. The letter chips away at corporate responsibility and liability by personifying Monsanto.