Argentinians have said no to what they call Monsanto´s "deathly" business in Latin America


In Buenos Aires, the action group "Millions against Monsanto" has led a protest at the House of Cordoba, a province located in the center of Argentina where the US multinational company is developing its biggest regional factory.

According to activists, the construction of the facility has been approved by provincial authorities but no official report on environmental damages has yet been conducted.

Political complicity, leaders of the protest said, is fostering the expansion of Monsanto´s "chain of profit and death": Monsanto sells seeds that are resistant to its own glyphosate-based Roundup, a key herbicide used in Argentina´s "green gold" soybean industry.

In the meantime, thousands of farmers are exposed to serious health risks -cancer, birth defects, intestinal, heart and neuronal conditions- as a recent investigation by the University of Buenos Aires shows.

But Argentina is only one link of Monsanto´s billionaire expansion in Latin America.

In Paraguay, for instance, demonstrators denounced that the biotech company has managed to introduce its transgenic soy thanks to economic lobbies linked to the impeachment of President Fernando Lugo last year. They called it the "agribusiness coup".

Monsanto has reported to have nearly tripled its profits in the first fiscal quarter of 2013 as its regional sales boom and governments allow the US-based firm to spread.

Meanwhile, on the margins of the anti-Monsanto demonstration, Argentine left-wing opposition lawmakers held a political meeting to condemn the corporate power of agribusiness and the increasing control of food sovereignty by transnational companies.