April 18, 2013, 2:25 PM
Before the Blast, West Fertilizer’s Monsanto Lawsuit


AP
Firefighter conduct search and rescue of an apartment destroyed by an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas

By Alexandra Berzon

As details emerge about the Texas fertilizer plant that was the site of Wednesday’s fatal explosion and fire, a few tidbits can be gleaned from a 2007 lawsuit that the plant’s owners filed against agribusiness giant Monsanto Co.

The suit, filed as a potential class action in U.S. District Court for the western district of Texas, claimed that Monsanto had artificially inflated prices for its herbicide Roundup through anti-competitive actions. The suit did not relate to storing fertilizer, believed to be at the root of Wednesday’s blast.

The suit was filed by Texas Grain Storage Inc. The company now calls itself West Fertilizer Co.

In the suit, the company said that it was started in 1957 as a grain-storage business by the Plasek family in the town of West, Texas. It later built a small fertilizer-blend plant and started selling fertilizer to area farmers.

Zak Covar, executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, told a news conference Wednesday that the fertilizer storage and blending facility had been there since 1962.

In 1970 it started selling other agricultural products, including some from Monsanto, and by 1997 it had struck a deal with Monsanto to directly purchase Roundup each year.

A court filing in 2008 indicated that Texas Grain Storage recently had been sold. Emil Plasek is listed as a former owner.
Texas Grain Storage said it monitored the Roundup, stored in a stainless steel tank, through a telephone connected to the tank, the company said.

Many documents in the case are sealed, and the public documents don’t reveal the names of the plant’s then-current owners. Texas corporation records list the president of the company as Donald R. Adair, and show a business operating as Adair Grain Inc. at the same address.

http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intellige...YWORDS=Monsanto

Roundup was grossly over priced for years, however it is about one third what it was, if you buy off brand, same amount of salt. But that has nothing to do with fertilizer.

Quote: nerd wrote in post #2

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Roundup was grossly over priced for years, however it is about one third what it was, if you buy off brand, same amount of salt. But that has nothing to do with fertilizer.

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Quote: The_Nevadan wrote in post #3

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Very odd article. Seems like it was trying to tie Roundup to the explosion and being (author thought) coy about it. Wonder if they were trying to make the link between this and Monsanto's GMO "evils".

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So Alexandra, in here perpetual dim Liberal thought process, is trying to tie Monsanto and this fertilizer company together so the Low Info crowd starts to believe evil Monsanto is behind this whole disaster? Seem typical. I am going to guess that the next article on this from her will show how many financial contributions woman killer and all around bad guy Mitt Romney got from management at the plant.