Monsanto House of Lords, stated that all information relating to the matter would be "kept secret". During the 24 months prior to the 1997 British election Monsanto representatives had 22 meetings at the departments of Agriculture and the Environment. Stanley Greenberg, an election advisor to Tony Blair, later worked as a Monsanto consultant. Former Labour spokesperson David Hill, became Monsanto's media adviser at the lobbying firm Bell Pottinger. The Labour government was challenged in Parliament about "trips, facilities, gifts and other offerings of financial value provided by Monsanto to civil servants", but only acknowledged that Department of Trade and Industry had
Monsanto Eli Lilly and Company. In 1996, Monsanto purchased Agracetus, the biotechnology company that had generated the first transgenic cotton, soybeans, peanuts and other crops, and from which Monsanto had been licensing technology since 1991. Monsanto first entered the maize seed business when it purchased 40% of Dekalb in 1996; it purchased the remainder of the corporation in 1998. In 1997, the company first published an annual report citing Monsanto's Law, a biotechnological take on Moore's Law, indicating its future directions and exponential growth in the use of biotechnology. In 1998, Monsanto purchased Cargill's international seed business, which gave it access