GM Crops Family Tree
Corporate Watch | 29.05.2003 15:52 | Bio-technology | Ecology | Oxford
As 3 corporations, Bayer, Monsanto and Syngenta, push for the commercial growing of GM crops in the UK, Corporate Watch brings you the biotech family tree. The family tree shows the complex tangle of name changes, spin-offs, joint ventures and acquisitions woven by the biotech industry during 10 years of rapid expansion, consolidation and crisis.
GM crops family tree 2003
As 3 corporations, Bayer, Monsanto and Syngenta, push for the commercial growing of GM crops in the UK, Corporate Watch brings you the biotech family tree. The family tree shows the complex tangle of name changes, spin-offs, joint ventures and acquisitions woven by the biotech industry during 10 years of rapid expansion, consolidation and crisis.
The family tree shows how a handful of old European and US chemical and pharmaceutical companies invested heavily in seed companies throughout the 1990s, rode out the hype and failure of the 'life science' concept at the turn of the millennium, and have become today's Gene Giants. They seek to change the way our food is produced forever.
Some name changes are inevitable as companies change hands, but others mark deliberate attempts to fake fresh starts and escape the notoriety of an old name. It is important to connect today's shiny new innovators, with their talk about sustainable development and feeding the world, to the parent companies that for years have manufactured hazardous chemicals, and even helped to develop weapons of mass destruction.
About the family tree
The family tree is deliberately selective and UK focused. It shows the evolution of the 3 companies, Bayer CropScience, Monsanto and Syngenta who are currently pushing forward the commercialisation of GM crops in the UK. The family tree shows the companies from which they were formed, and those companies with an involvement in GM crops in the UK that they have acquired and merged with. This is not an attempt to map the whole GM crops industry at a global level, or even to map every company that has had an involvement in GM crops in the UK. This family tree was completed in early March 2003 and is accurate at the time of going to press. It is the first in a series of new Corporate Watch briefings looking at the companies behind GM crop commercialisation.
Paper copies of the Biotech Family tree are availble for free (donations welcome though) from Corporate Watch.
Sorry we can't afford to post individual copies outside of Europe.
As 3 corporations, Bayer, Monsanto and Syngenta, push for the commercial growing of GM crops in the UK, Corporate Watch brings you the biotech family tree. The family tree shows the complex tangle of name changes, spin-offs, joint ventures and acquisitions woven by the biotech industry during 10 years of rapid expansion, consolidation and crisis.
The family tree shows how a handful of old European and US chemical and pharmaceutical companies invested heavily in seed companies throughout the 1990s, rode out the hype and failure of the 'life science' concept at the turn of the millennium, and have become today's Gene Giants. They seek to change the way our food is produced forever.
Some name changes are inevitable as companies change hands, but others mark deliberate attempts to fake fresh starts and escape the notoriety of an old name. It is important to connect today's shiny new innovators, with their talk about sustainable development and feeding the world, to the parent companies that for years have manufactured hazardous chemicals, and even helped to develop weapons of mass destruction.
About the family tree
The family tree is deliberately selective and UK focused. It shows the evolution of the 3 companies, Bayer CropScience, Monsanto and Syngenta who are currently pushing forward the commercialisation of GM crops in the UK. The family tree shows the companies from which they were formed, and those companies with an involvement in GM crops in the UK that they have acquired and merged with. This is not an attempt to map the whole GM crops industry at a global level, or even to map every company that has had an involvement in GM crops in the UK. This family tree was completed in early March 2003 and is accurate at the time of going to press. It is the first in a series of new Corporate Watch briefings looking at the companies behind GM crop commercialisation.
Paper copies of the Biotech Family tree are availble for free (donations welcome though) from Corporate Watch.
Sorry we can't afford to post individual copies outside of Europe.
Corporate Watch
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