DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 149

ted to cell-related research at this time and he became interested in the advances in gene splicing. During
his employment at Monsanto, which lasted until 1990, when he died of leukemia, he lectured widely on
the ethical dimensions of the private ownership of genes. 4
Monsanto may never have made the big and expensive jump to biotech without Schneiderman, a man of
his times. Biotechnology was making headlines, and capital was rushing in to fund the start-ups. University
scientists were breaking the boundaries between academia and corporations. Schneiderman was part of the
new generation of scientists who believed academia had to work hand-in-hand with industry, so he left
sunny Southern California for Monsanto's headquarters in St. Louis.
When he arrived at Monsanto, he quickly deputized a career scientist there who had dreamed for a long
time that biotech was the future. Nicknamed “Ernie the Cork,” Ernest Jaworski was the child of Polish
immigrants and a graduate of the University of Oregon who had joined Monsanto in 1952. The corporate
culture at Monsanto was rough and ready—not an easy place to work. When the most successful products
garnered runaway profits, management would devote large sums of money to new programs, but when
profits dropped, budgets were slashed, and new programs were dropped overnight. But his colleagues felt
that Jaworski always “somehow bobbed to the surface.” He was supposed to be working on the next gen-
eration of herbicides, but with the gene-splicing frenzy electrifying biologists, he became interested in cre-
ating a gene that allowed corn to survive dosages of Roundup. Until Schneiderman arrived on the scene,
there was little interest at Monsanto in what seemed like a crazy idea. 5
Schneiderman believed that biotech was the second industrial revolution, and he joined forces with Ja-
worski to recruit young scientists with the skills to move Monsanto into the biotech age. He had the cred-
ibility to persuade the management to invest in the Life Sciences Research Center that was built in 1984
and housed one thousand scientists. It was known around the company as the “house that Howard built.”
He used his prominence and his facility with data to gain the support of each influential executive at the
company, and he was able to marshal the resources of universities to advance Monsanto's agenda. Wash-
ington University and Monsanto signed a $23 million agreement in 1982, and Schneiderman developed
close research collaborations with other universities, such as Oxford. 6
In 1980, soon after Schneiderman joined Monsanto, Ronald Reagan was elected president on a band-
wagon of deregulation and free-market capitalism. Monsanto was well positioned to influence the adminis-
tration, because it was already a powerful corporation in Washington's halls of power. It had become clear
to Schneiderman that the biotech industry was going to be controversial, and that if new laws were enacted
to scrutinize genetically engineered products, they would be a deterrent to financial success.
Monsanto's chief lobbyist in Washington, D.C., in the early 1980s was Leonard Guarraia. According to
Daniel Charles, author of Lords of the Harvest , Guarraia was a jovial, profane, and oversize lobbyist who
was hired to charm and cajole officials in Washington. He and his internal allies saw that it would be ne-
cessary to create the illusion of regulation to forestall new legislation from passing. It was a cynical ploy.
Consumers could be lulled into complacency by pseudoregulation and a few easy regulatory hurdles for
product approval. A process with predetermined steps that a large and established company like Monsanto
would have no trouble completing would also give them a competitive edge over smaller biotech firms
with fewer resources.
Guarraia was alarmed by the growing resistance to biotechnology. He wanted to convince his colleagues
that something had to be done, so he took a tape showing biotech's “most vociferous and implacable foe”
to St. Louis for Monsanto executives to view. The tape showed Jeremy Rifkin calling environmentalists to
action. 7
Rifkin had co-authored Who Should Play God? The Artificial Creation of Life and What It Means for the
Future of the Human Race , which laid out a frightening future showing “how precariously we are perched
on the genetic powder keg.” It predicted that corporations would have the right to own and sell the life-