Posted on 04/13/2005 7:57:56 AM PDT by tomball
ince 1947, Percy Schmeiser has been more than a Canadian canola farmer. He and his wife Louise have been seed developers, saving year to year the best of their crop, slowly breeding seed adapted to the Saskatchewan plains and, more particularly, to their own acres. But all that ended with a surprise letter.
One day in August 1998, the Schmeisers received notice from Monsanto. It accused the farmers of "stealing" Monsanto's patented seed, Roundup Ready — a genetically modified version of canola that survives spraying of the popular herbicide Roundup — that the company had found on the Schmeiser farm. Percy and his wife would have to pay Monsanto, the world's largest producer of genetically modified crops) for the use of their product.
The Schmeisers had not used Monsanto's seed. Surely there had been a mistake. But no. Turns out that the farmers had been afflicted with something known as "genetic drift," the billowing of seed-matter by wind from neighboring farms onto their own land. Monsanto filed lawsuit against the Schmeisers, who refused to be coerced by the multinational corporation. Monsanto charged the farmers with "patent infringement" and sought $400,000.
Canada's high court ruled that the patent law supersedes the rights of any and all farmers, and upheld Monsanto's patent law as valid.
Unfortunately Schmeiser had fallen victim to Monsanto's strategy to gain control of our seed supply. A Monsanto official once said to Schmeiser: "This is a helluva thing to say but the way we do this is to take people's choice away."
In the United States, similar methods of extortion have been used against farmers.
Not long ago I heard Schmeiser tell his story, when he traveled to Vermont at the invitation of Rep. David Zuckerman, P-Burlington. Schmeiser is soft-spoken, unassuming man, 74 years old. He stood on a low stage in the concrete-floored social hall of First Congregational Church in Brattleboro, before a card table that held his notes and a plastic cup of water. He spoke of the tremendous stress his family had endured, the debt they had incurred, and the breakdown of their rural social fabric as neighbor farmers who stood up for the Schmeisers received the same Monsanto letter.
"The whole issue for Monsanto is contamination," said Schmeiser. "Contaminate and people don't have a choice."
"The right of farmers to use seeds from year to year should never be taken away," he continued, in his clipped Canadian brogue. "Some of the best wheat we have in Canada is developed by farmers, not companies."
Schmeiser visited Vermont at a perfect time. The Farmer Protection Act, a state bill addressing farmers' property rights concerning seed, has just passed the Senate and has moved to the house. It has three parts. First, seed companies won't be able to sue Vermont farmers for genetic drift. Secondly, in the event of a Vermont farmer being sued, the court case would take place in the state. The third part is most important: the person who owns the seed bears the consequence of that seed. In Vermont at least, Monsanto and not farmers would be responsible for genetic drift.
The issue, however, is bigger than the private property rights of Vermont farmers. For one thing, genetically modified (GMO) seed contains a "terminator gene," which renders the seed of the crop sterile. Further, other vectors are necessary to insert qualities like Round-up resistance — viruses and bacteria are used for these vectors. GMO-foods have not been around a sufficient time for us to know their repercussions on the human body. When GMO-foods are labeled, we'll know if people get sick after consuming them.
Even as you read this, seed and chemical lobbyists are pressuring Vermont's representatives to cut down the Farmer Protection Act. This would be a grave mistake and an injustice to Vermont's proud agricultural tradition. Please contact your state representatives, as well as the governor and Agriculture Secretary Steve Kerr, who has said he will urge the governor to veto the bill.
Remember Percy Schmeiser. Put out of business by a little seed floating on the wind, he lost almost 50 years of his farm's legacy. "There's no such thing as co-existence," he said. "The GMO gene is the dominant one. If you introduce GMOs, there is no turning back."
Monsanto created the A-B situation with the Candian canola lawsuit.
They can't have it both ways. Either genetic contamination of adjacent fields occurs, or it doesn't.
This is the dark side of genetic modification.
Consider that we as humans do not own our own DNA.
The patent for gene modified plants should be super brief perhaps one growning season or two at the most. This is no different than a person modifying an car and reselling it.
Background info - The courts noted that more than half of Schmeiser's 1,030 acres bore the high-tech plants and concluded that he had infringed Monsanto's patent.
Can't the Schmeisers sue Monsanto for contaminating their crops?
The term "canola" is a recent marketing ploy invented so that overly sensitive US consumers wouldn't be offended by the terms rapeseed and rapeseed oil. A completely fabricated word right up there with Ron Popeil's "juliene".
ping
They have been around since the dawn of time. What ADM and Monsanto do in a lab is just speeding up the natural selection done through cross breeding of plants.
isn't that why prunes had their name changed to "dried plums"?
The lefties would be in full chorus against Monsanto by the time the press conference was over. The attorney's next move is to discuss a deal with the Monsanto attorney, to drop both of the suits. The legal judo seems pretty obvious to me, but what do I know?
They do not introduce genes from animals or insects. They have played with this in the lab, but created unstable plants. They do cross breed unlike plants, for instance grape genes with wheat genes, but who is to say this could not be done naturally? I actually know someone who managed to cross breed a tomato and a bell pepper. The fruit was awful, but it was possible.
I would also recommend the last section of this document to explain how lab based Genetic Modification happens.
http://www.cei.org/pdf/2312.pdf
Wasn't there a case recently where a woman who performed oral sex on a man kept the result in her mouth, and later used it to father a child? When the erstwhile father sued, the court ruled that since he had "given" her the semen, he no longer had a right to it or its product. I would think the same applies with regard to plant pollen. If you don't want others using it, don't let it get away.
Perhaps genes should have the same "no ownership" rules as slavery? IOW there is no intelectual property to genes.
Just brainstorming.
Little do you know about the "American Justice System"....As Styx said "Justice for money, how much more will you pay". There is no logic present in our courts... Look at the supreme court using the laws of another country to justify an unconstitutional ruling.... We're doomed unless we take matters into our own hands.
They can't have it both ways. Either genetic contamination of adjacent fields occurs, or it doesn't.
Sure it occurs. It's even more of a problem with wind pollinated crops such as corn and wheat. If Monsanto owns these specific genes then they should be liable for contaminating other farmers crops.
I don't generally belong to the "Big corporations are evil" school of thought.
But I think Monsanto is an exception. I am deeply suspicious of them, of the whole factory farm industry, and of genetic plant modification.
You don't get that kind of result from judges--a Canadian judge in this case--unless you have an instance of Big Business working hand in hand with Big Government, scratching each others backs and competing in corruption.
The most frightening initiative these folks are working toward is sterile crops, crops that don't produce their own seed, so you have to buy new seed from Monsanto every year. Why is this frightening? Because these sterile strains of corn and wheat and other crops will get loose and possibly drive out the natural strains. Then if there is a war or something happens to Monsanto's monopololistic seed supply, we might suddenly wake up in a world from which the basic food crops have suddenly disappeared.
Should we trust Monsanto or various socialist government bureaucracies to manage such a life and death matter?
But then there is no incentive to spend millions of dollars in research to make better products. It seems obvious to me that the logical solution is that the company that creates GMO products should have all protection of patents, but should also be held liable if they can't control their creation. It would be like they gave the seeds to the neighbors. If they created a GMO Tiger that was twice as large and ten times as agressive and it escaped they would be held liable for the damage it caused, not the victims....
or even worse, once theirs is the only seed available, they can charge a hundred times what the seed is worth....
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