You poison one little French farmer and all hell breaks loose. Giant chemical-maker Monsanto yesterday announced it plans to appeal a Monday ruling that one of its herbicides in 2004 poisoned French farmer Paul Francois, who says inhaling a Monsanto weedkiller led to “memory loss, headaches and stammering”(coincidentally, these are the same symptoms of the accidental hangover™). In addition to the French farmer being pissed enough at the company for giving him a hangover when he was trying to work his farmland, there are about a million other people officially declaring themselves as against Monsanto via “Millions Against Monsanto,” an organic consumers association that campaigns for “health, justice, sustainability, peace and democracy.” If you accept the possibility of Monsanto obstructing even a majority of these five concepts, it’s easy to believe the company has enemies from a lot of different backgrounds. That’s why Monday’s ruling by a French court finding Monsanto legally responsible for poisoning Francois and ordering it to compensate him has enlivened a bunch of angry activists. Millions Against Monsanto offers a wealth of content documenting the agricultural biotechnology corporation’s government ties, tendencies to take small dairies to court, refusal to compensate veterans for Agent Orange and getting their nasty chemicals in normal people’s water supplies. (Wikipedia is hilariously filled with references to things like dumping toxic waste in the UK, Indonesian bribing convictions and fines for false advertising.) Even 'ol boy Obama has gotten caught up in the mix with charts like this one circulating on Facebook: The latest news out of Millions Against Monsanto is the moving forward of a California ballot initiative to require mandatory GMO labeling that polls show has 80 percent support. According to the site:"A win for the California Initiative would be a huge blow to biotech and a huge victory for food activists. Monsanto and their minions have billions invested in GMOs and they are willing to spend millions to defeat this initiative. California is the 8th largest economy in the world. Labeling laws in CA will affect packaging and ingredient decisions nation-wide. The bill has been carefully written to ensure that it will not increase costs to consumers or producers." Back in France, our friendly farmer will have to wait a while for whatever compensation poisoning amounts to, as Monsanto says it will appeal the ruling. According to The Washington Post: Monsanto spokesman Tom Helscher says the company does not think there is “sufficient data” to demonstrate a link between the use of Lasso herbicide and the symptoms Francois reported. "We do not agree any injury was accidentally caused nor did the company intentionally permit injury," Helscher said. "Lasso herbicide was ... successfully used by farmers on millions of hectares around the world."

It has to be difficult writing press releases defending corporations’ PR challenges when dealing with such dubious commodities as chemically enhanced foods, cigarettes, alcohol, the occasional toy that rips little kids’ hair out but doesn’t get recalled because it’s too attractive to kids at the point-of-sale, etc. Reminds us of a Mr. Show clip where GloboChem executives receive an earful from a new advertising duo, who get the CEO’s attention by explaining that the company has an image problem: “The perception is that this company is a beast, a monster, a cold heartless, smelly behemoth, run by a greedy fat, fat-headed fattypants — a fatso.” The CEO’s response? “Who do you think you are? This company cares! We were in the people business when you were in short pants. My great, great, great grandfather started this company with one single, rickety, leaky, handcrafted, slave ship and a simple motto: people selling people — to people. So don’t tell me that I’m fat!”The execs eventually come around to the idea of a new mascot: Pit Pat, the @font-face { font-family: "ＭＳ 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria; }.MsoChpDefault { font-family: Cambria; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }"magical pansexual nonthreatening spokes-thing." Mr. Show was an awesome sketch comedy on HBO from 1995-98 featuring David Cross (Dr. Tobias Fünke in Arrested Development) and Bob Odenkirk (a bunch of really funny stuff).