Past hurts Monsanto's biotech status

ST. LOUIS -- The headlines and court papers make a stunning charge: For decades, Monsanto Co. knowingly dumped waste chemicals into the waterways of an Alabama town, pollution that had a devastating effect on wildlife and, possibly, the town's residents.

But ask Hendrik Verfaillie, president and CEO of St. Louis-based Monsanto, and he'll tell you his company has nothing to do with its past.

"We want to be seen as a new company with new management and new behavior and we want to be disassociated as much as possible with whatever happened in the past and the chemicals," Verfaillie said in an interview with The Associated Press.

It was Monsanto, the company founded in 1901 as Monsanto Chemical Works, that produced PCBs in Anniston, Ala., for almost four decades. A civil lawsuit brought by attorneys for 3,500 Anniston residents claims Monsanto knowingly dumped PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, then covered up the damage with the help of state regulators.

Monsanto produced PCBs in Anniston from 1935 to 1971. Used as an electrical insulator, PCBs were banned by the federal government in 1979 because of concern about toxicity.

A company built partly on chemicals, Monsanto spun-off that business in 1997, forming Solutia Inc.

And it's Solutia, also based in St. Louis, that's on the hook should a jury find against the company in the ongoing trial, held in federal district court in Gadsden, Ala. That's an important point to today's Monsanto, a company created by a series of corporate actions. The original Monsanto, which spun-off its chemical business to focus on pharmaceuticals, merged in 1999 with Pharmacia & Upjohn, forming Pharmacia.

A year later, Pharmacia jettisoned Monsanto's biotechnology and agriculture business with an IPO, creating the "new" Monsanto Co.