Last July, five hundred Monsanto Co. employees convened at Chicago's Westin Hotel for the multinational's first-ever "global forum," a rare and powerful event where one of the world's largest chemical companies talked openly about ecological issues. The message that moved the audience to a rapturous state was best summed up by biologist Peter Raven, who addressed the delegates:

Every natural system on earth is in decline while population, consumption, and technology are accelerating, he said. "Life itself on our planet will become untenable. Monsanto is in a unique position to contribute to the global future. Because of your skills, your dedication, and your understanding, you are equal to the challenge."

Monsanto's challenge is to improve the world, while increasing corporate earnings. The St. Louis-based manufacturer of chemicals, agricultural products, and pharmaceuticals is now directing its vast resources to develop more efficient and sustainable food production techniques. To reach these ends, it has plunged headfirst into the uncharted waters of biologically engineered foods. And after ten years of work, it now holds the leading position in this field, having developed a hormone that, when injected into cows, increases milk production; potatoes and cotton that can grow without the use of pesticides; and tomatoes that are biologically altered to ripen slowly.

Monsanto and its investors expect this to be the company's burgeoning growth area-another NutraSweet, perhaps. The company's two most profitable categories (each with profit margins of about 21 percent in 1994) have been agricultural products such as its herbicide, Roundup; and NutraSweet, which includes NutraSweet brand of aspartame and the fat substitute, Simplesse.

With the expiration of Monsanto's patents on Roundup and aspartame, the company hopes that biotechnology will help create a new wave of stellar-performing products.

Yet resistance abounds. To some, biotechnology is today what nuclear power was in the 1960s and 1970s-a dangerous game that fools with Mother Nature.

Add to that the negative image of a "chemical company" with an admittedly checkered past, and you end up with the question: How can the nation's fourth largest chemical company, whose products have historically harmed people and the environment, now be trusted with one of science's newest, potentially dangerous tools?

Enter Robert Shapiro, Monsanto's ceo. He explains that the company's true intentions are to help the world feed itself once its population more than doubles in the next thirty years; openly addresses the company's past mistakes; and chats personably on just about any subject related to the company.

Shapiro is excellent at presenting Monsanto as a chemical company that has cleaned up its act. Examples include the Monsanto Pledge, which is printed-among other places-on the back of employee business cards and commits the company to "Reduce all toxic releases," and "Work to achieve sustainable agriculture." According to its annual report, the company completed 250 projects and invested more than $100 million to reduce air emissions of toxic chemicals by 90 percent worldwide since 1987. Monsanto also exceeded by two years the epa's voluntary goal to reduce releases of seventeen potentially harmful chemicals. The list of positives continues. But it floats atop a list of controversies past and present.

The firm was a major producer of Agent Orange, the military term for a combination of herbicides which was available commercially throughout the 1950s and 1960s. More than one hundred million pounds were used to clear jungles during the Vietnam War. Soldiers exposed to Agent Orange who suffered severe health problems now blame the herbicide. Monsanto also manufactured pcbs-the chemicals which have been proven to cause cancer and birth defects.

Roundup non-selective herbicide, the most profitable product in the company's history, injects chemicals into the ecosystem. And its sugar substitute, NutraSweet, has been challenged by food activists who question the chemical's safety.

Yet, the product that is most responsible for Monsanto's controversial headline news during the past several years-and the one that best demonstrates the conflict inherent in Monsanto's vision-is the bovine growth hormone (bgh), the company's first biotech progeny. Also known as bovine somatotropin, or bst, the hormone is injected into a cow's pituitary gland every two weeks to replicate a naturally occurring hormone-increasing milk output by up to 25 percent.

The food and Drug Administration (fda) approved bst in November 1993, after nine years of government investigations and consumer scrutiny. The approval-and Monsanto's marketing of bst under the name Posilac-made milk the first food the government allowed to be made using genetically engineered techniques. Monsanto has diligently fought off all attempts to have the government require that milk from bst-injected cows be labelled. Monsanto also has used lawsuits and threats of lawsuits to prevent dairy farmers and retailers who want to identify their milk as bst-free. Dairies from a few states have done so, nonetheless. But they're prohibited by law from shipping milk with such labels across state lines.

According to Doug Groh, an analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York, Monsanto, whose 1994 revenues topped $8.27 billion, has invested more than $1 billion to develop Posilac. John Stauber, co-author of Toxic Sludge is Good For You and director of the Center for Media & Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin, says such a lofty investment can be justified by the fact the company considers Posilac the pioneer that will precede dozens of other genetically engineered agriculture products it plans to introduce in the years ahead.

But opponents have waged an intense campaign criticizing bst on two fronts. First, such groups as Jeremy Rifkin's Washington, D.C.-based Foundation on Economic Trends, continue to question the product's safety, both for cows and for humans, as well as its alleged benefits. Others claim that the hormones and increased milk supplies will lead to further reduced prices, and drive even more small family farmers out of business.

Considering that America has an abundant supply of inexpensive milk (the federal government right now spends about $1 billion each year buying surplus milk that is used to make butter), and that milk consumption per capita has declined, many wonder why Monsanto devoted so much time and resources to a problem that doesn't seem to exist? This sentiment is further espoused when considering the product Monsanto sought to "fix." "It's ironic they picked milk," says Mark Kastel, director of governmental affairs for the Wisconsin Farmers Union in La Farge, Wisconsin. "It's one of the freshest, unadulterated products available and has a fuzzy romantic image, particularly among mothers. The dairy farmers are incensed that Monsanto tarnished this image."

Shapiro takes a more global view of the issue, noting, "It may be that today, people say we have plenty of food. But look what is happening with our world population, which is expected to double in size in thirty years. There is a need for agricultural productivity and increased dairy products. We will need to double production if we want to feed all the people who will be joining us."

Yet two years since Posilac's commercial introduction, Monsanto has yet to recover its investment on the product's development.

One year after Posilac's February 1994 launch, the company reported it had sold or given away fourteen million doses. This computes to about 5.4 percent of all cows in the U.S., according to Ron Cummings, director of the Pure Food Campaign, which is sponsored by Rifkin's Foundation on Economic Trends. Other sources, however, report much higher usage. The business reference guide Hoover's Handbook Database reports the product has been used by 30 percent of the U.S. dairy herd.

Monsanto has not released sales numbers on Posilac since February 1995, but recent polls indicate sales could be weak or down. In October 1995, industry magazine Dairy Today published a poll of four hundred dairy farmers who had used Posilac in 1994. About 40 percent of the respondents said they no longer used the hormone; and 87 percent said they had no intention of ever using bst. The poll says the main reasons for avoiding the hormone injections are: philosophical opposition to the idea (34 percent); fear that the drug harms cows (23 percent); and concern that bst won't improve profits.

Another reason why many farmers have no interest in injecting their cows with bst is the fact that consumers don't want genetically engineered foods.

The public also favors labeling. "We've argued strongly for government mandatory labeling, but the fda left it up to the states," says Jean Halloran, director of the Consumer Policy Institute in Yonkers, New York.

State agricultural and health departments have prevented any product that moves across state lines from being identified as bst-free. Why? "It's pure economics," says Halloran. "No one would buy a product if it was labelled as being genetically engineered." Halloran adds that, in her opinion, Monsanto's actions "tamper with people's fundamental sense of order and trust. It removes the consumers' right to know, and the farmers' right to tell."

Others offer less austere opinions. "The challenge is that we are speaking different languages," says Gary Hirshberg, founder of yogurt maker Stonyfield Farms in Londonderry, New Hampshire. "We talk about living within the earth's means; large corporations, like Monsanto, talk about expanding those means, the notion of better living through technology."

Perhaps. But Shapiro confronts the issue not only as a businessman, but as a person with genuine compassion for both people and ecology.

A 57-year old lawyer and former law school professor who served in government under the Carter Administration, Shapiro is not the type one would expect to lead a multi-national chemical company. He dresses casually at work, sometimes without a suit jacket. He drives a Jeep Cherokee, enjoys scuba diving, and is an avid reader of history books. He speaks fondly of his two twenty-something children, who perform in a Chicago alternative rock band. And he admits he is anxious about the recent birth of a third child.

In his one-year presidential tenure, Shapiro-who came to Monsanto by way of the pharmaceutical maker G.D. Searle, which he joined in 1979-has pleased analysts with some savvy business moves. "He's decentralized the company, taken out a lot of layers of management, and has made each separate unit responsible for its own return," says analyst Groh of Merrill Lynch.

He has also charismatically faced some of Monsanto's biggest critics.

Before speaking at the annual Business for Social Responsibility conference in San Francisco, Robert Shapiro took time out to discuss with Business Ethics Monsanto's challenges and future direction. Yet, it was clear to this writer that Shapiro spoke in two voices. When discussing sustainability, he sounded hopeful. It was obvious he spoke from the heart. Yet, when responding to questions about Posilac, he reworded the queries, and provided the well-rehearsed answers Wall Street investors would want to hear.