Slashdot Mirror
Can I See Your License for those Plants, Sir?
McGruff writes: "A Canadian court has ruled that a farmer growing genetically modified canola without a license violated Monsanto's patent and owes damages. Percy Schmeiser claims that the seeds blew onto his farm from passing seed trucks and from neighboring farms. The court held that regardless of whether he planted them deliberately or if he merely found them growing on his farm, it was his responsibility to destroy the seeds and seedlings or pay royalties. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is carrying the article and the Federal Court of Canada has the full
text of the ruling in PDF form."
...is it going to be mandatory? or will they force every farmer to get a licence to farm, after passing an exam in which they'll have to know and recognize EVERY single specie of vegetable/animal to avoid growing it?
cool.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Monsanto is to Microsoft what the Borg are to Dr. Evil (Austin Powers). Bill's pathetic little attempts to take over the world with some crummy software has got nothing on the company that owns the genetic rights at least one ingredient in something like 80% of all the food we eat. If that doesn't scare you, I bet you're running an unpatched version of Bind (or IE 5 ;-)
*sing* I'm a karma whore and I'm okay....
I work all night and I post all day
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
So if had a 10,000 acre farm, I would be responsible for investigating every square foot (metre?) of said farm, and take a sample of every growing plant on said farm, and bring it in for genetic analysis, otherwise risk being sued for patent infringment?? I don't get it?
This is my Sig.
God is suing, well, everybody, for violating his patent on cellular mitosis. Many people are using the 'my cells do it on thier own, I don't even know what that word means' defence, but the judge involved does not buy that. He says 'As soon as you realized that you weren't dead, you should have started paying the royalties, scumass.'
Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
Hmmm, I could have sworn I was reading something a few years back regarding monsato. It was about them introducing a type of seed that could not produce seeds once it germinated. This was so that farmers would have to continue buying crop seed from monsato every season. I wonder what would happen if somehow these seeds "blew off a truck" and began spreading slowly? Would this contribute to a worldwide food shortage?
There is no spork.
So next time you could have patent owning companies purposely mixing some of their seeds with normal seeds and then claiming the present crops be destroyed or ask for royalties.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
ok. At least the court let him just destroy it and avoid the payment, it would suck if he was forced to pay royalties AND destroy the crop.
The world never ceases to amaze me. I cannot describe it any better.
Arathres
stainless steel
This is truly fantastic, and it doesn't end with poor farmers.
For instance, say you're eating a genetically modified apple. The seeds drop into your flowerpot and starts growing, and voilà - you have to pay!
Would something like the echelon movement do here? What I mean is that people include words that trigger echelon in sigs and what not. In the same spirit, people could just get their hands on lots and lots of genetically modified and patented seeds, and plant them everywhere all over the earth - in public places, parks, governmental areas.
Not that that would be good for our poor planet, since we have no idea what can come of this genetic engineering with nature...
:wq!
.... and spread a few of the new seeds around the world (after copyrighting the DNA, of course). Can I then (in about 20 years time), sue the hell out of everbody for misuse ? What is going on here ?!
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
I was under the impression that you could create for your own use, a device of any kind, whether patented or not. It is only illegal to sell the product. Also, perchance all farmers should sue monsanto for damages, since due to their failure to keep their seeds under control, (ie: cover their trucks), the farmers workload has dramatically increased. Of course, the farmer could be a thief...
Genetic information wants to be free. (like beer)
I find this interesting, because they have apparently patented the seed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but under trademark law (not patent law), you have to protect your product from being diluted. It seems to me that they took inadequate protections to keep their product safe. Of course, because it's patent law, it doesn't matter. Maybe it should be uinder different law. Maybe companies should leave his retirement fund alone...of course, I'm just sticking up for the little guy now. He may have been malicious for all I know ;)
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
If his neighbor buys the seed, and he doesn't, but a bee pollenates between the two plants (I assume this happens, but I don't know for sure), and his seeds start to contain the Monsanto 'patented genes', then what? The decision Monsanto won says that he STILL owes them royalties.
I think this is the ultimate form of 'viral' marketing -- by selling to one farmer, and shutting up for a long time, they could (potentially) get all farmers in Canada (and, potentially, the U.S.) to owe them money.
*sniff* Hmmm... *sniff* *sniff* something smells rotten. *sniiiiiiiiff* I think it's coming from the patent offices around the world...
It is hard control a product like which is self replicating. It is almost like software in a since it is very hard to stop copying. Especialy when you have your product reproducing it. I guess they are trying to make a stand on it now so other will not do the same. I wonder if thsi could be a new business model plant your product in someone yard then demand money for it. Let me go to the patent office right now.
good article with realvideo here . i think percy should counter sue Monsanto for allowing nature to diseminate their genetically altered seeds into his field. they have contaminated his crops.
this whole thing make me sick. here is an account from a meeting where Percy spoke.
How can poor Percy know if a seed is mutated or not? Ok, when it's obvious from the outside, then it's a no-brainer, but most modifications in plants are not visible from the outside. So a farmer has to DNA test all weedplants on his acres if there is SOMEHWERE a plant grown from a foreign seed? Yeah, that will be good for the world food economy! Can I borrow $100? I'd like to buy some bread.
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Go around the countryside on a windy day with a truck load of seeds with the top open. Come back a year later and start sending those letters. Reap the proffits, and you don't even need to sell ANYTHING! Now there's a marketing sceme!
How many farmers are going to just pay-up, instead of going to court with a Multinational company with the possilibly losing all there crop (and the rest in layer fees).
And Jezz... It's not like any farmer has a DNA splicer linked to a patent database in their barn.
-- Aji con Todo!
Did he sign ANY sort of binding agreement with Monsanto concerning their seeds? If not, what basis does Monsanto have for forcing the farmer to so anything?
If this were any other industry, this case would never win. Imagine if I build software that replicates itself (a "worm") and let it loose (without your permission) in your company. If you turn around and include it in your distribution I cannot see that I would have any right to go after you. It's my look-out for having put the damn thing there in the first place. You should not be required to inspect your software for my intrusions.
I had such respect for Canada, but it's slipping. They're beginning to start looking like a mini-United States with health care.
He was very upset (and rightly so), because this herbicide-resistent Canola is now going to interfere with his crop rotation schedules (done by farmers to allow the land to recover for subsequent years production). Therefore, this affects not only his Canola production, but the overall production of everything he grows on the affected land.
Monsanto, love 'em or hate 'em (I choose the former) are being clearly unreasonable about this. No farmer can be expected to ensure that his farm is free of contamination from other farms in this manner. It could be argued that indeed, he doesn't have the right to sow the seed produced from the plants (but I personally despise that sort of idea), but this ruling extends further, saying that if any seed should happen to grow in an unauthorised (i.e. non-license payer's) land, that person is responsible for destoying that plant. I this the onus here should be on the license payer, forcing them to ensure that they do not either willfully or negligently distribute material where they do not have a right to do so?
Could a farmer bill another for letting his seed contaminate his land?
Another poster mentioned that a computer virus/worm writer could do a similar thing. Hell, why not? Because a virus/trojan is specifically engineered to propagate? Well, what's a seed meant to do.
I despair.
Tom.
Oh arse
In the US treatment is guaranteed at the risk of serious debt.
If I have a non-terminal illness for which a simple emergency room visit will not suffice, I am not guaranteed treatment in the US.
And then sue them for copyright infringment if they complain!
Say no to software patents.
Well well. I found a couple of articles about my old nemesis, Monsanto. A company that is responsible for thousands of deaths over the years. They love to kill, those Monsanto fuckers. They especially like killing babies. Think I'm crazy? Grow up and read the history kids...
But first, a little of what's going on right now regarding Genetic Frankenfood. Monsanto Under Attack Part 2
- Global Pressure Builds Against Monsanto
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/monprob2.html
Found this "conservative" essay on Monsanto's past. I could tell you far more...
Monsanto: A Checkered History
http://www.social-ecology.org/learn/library/tokar
BTW, my MSOutlook spell checker has Monsanto in it (?!?). Is Microsoft part of the Monsanto plans for world domination???
Oh wait... they both already did that.
Man!
______
jeff13
Given that Monsatan (sic) are so AMAZINGLY popular with Greenpeace etc, and that farming opinion is sliding anyway, I find it incredible that they pushed this case.
It gives the environmentalists another weapon against GM.
Which is a shame, as there are many valid uses of this technology, such as trees which don't require nasty chemicals to make paper, rice with added vitamins, monkeys with four asses etc.
The only good to come of this story was my smile when I misread plants as pants.
Re-reading this post makes it look like it was generated from catch-phrases. So be it. *post*
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Uh....in case you didn't notice, this is slashdot here... ALL replies require Microsoft, Linux, IE and Bill Gates mother....duh!!! ;-) But, in case the significance of it slipped by you, it's called an analogy....with just a touch of satire to give it that zesty tang...mmmmm....satirific....
*sing* I'm a karma whore and I'm okay....
I work all night and I post all day
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
To think I was messing with the idea of moving to Canada.
Bah! I don't think so.
Not when the gov. thinks they can crawl that far up your a$$ and look around.
Drive down I 94 in North Dakota and you'll see the stuff overgrowing everywhere!
It spreads across ditches, 4 lanes of freeway, it grows in cracks in roads etc.
I'd like to see even the government contain a 4x4 square mile field of it from spreading.
Among the things Monsanto has done is a "brand" of potato which produces it's own round-ups.
Ie, if for instance a Colorado bug gets to a Monsanto potato and starts eating, in a few minutes it falls dead on the ground.
And people are supposed to eat that food.
Probable scenarios in the future is that genetically modified food spreads it's DNA to "real" plants, eg via pollination, and then some day a disease shows up that Monsanto didn't think about. Woops! All our crops are dead!
What to do? Where to get the original seeds?
:wq!
The method involved in this genetically enhanced canola might be more high-tech, but it has really been done before, and for quite a long time. Canada grew based on genetically enhanced wheat for instance, 'natural' wheat wouldn't grow in the Canadian plains due to the cold.
I admit that there's a lot of skill involved in coming up with new strains but if they were that worried about propogating their seeds 'illegaly' then they should've also engineered them to be incapable of reproduction.
I don't know anything about farming, but it seems to me that this is one area where civil disobedience can make a huge impact. Think of a crop duster dusting a few square miles with these mutant canola seeds. I have no idea if this would actually work though, but if it did it'd cause enough of a problem in the legal system to make them think hard about whether growing seeds should be illegal.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
I doubt anything like that would happen in Europe. In the UK a group of anti GM food "activists" were found not guilty of trashing a farmer's GM crop. There is such hostility to the stuff here that it is unlikely if ever, going to happen anywhere outside US/Canada.
Anyone remember that cheesy 80's film "The Stuff"?
Personally I say a consortium should be created in order to monitor (fully monitor) patents and some of the broad circumstances in which the patents claim. Government is no good at monitoring private sector businesses and this has been proven time and time again.
Now can government be trusted to fully monitor whats going on, when some government employees who are on a time based scale of employment look forward to moving into the private sector, often taking jobs at these corporations who's patents they pass along merrily? It happened with the chemical industry.
Framework for the non profit could include, committee members who are voted into the corporation, just like a politician so there can be no form of monopolization. Patents would have to pass a rigorous full proof dissection to ensure fairness in the open market segments before being given a patent number.
This is whats happening in the justice system regarding technology based cases. Many people can scream and bitch on forums, to friends, etc., about the abuses going on in the justice system, but here is what it comes down to when dealing with the justice system.
Court
Jury of peers Highly unlikely 90% of the time the jury will be comprised of people who do not have any understanding of whats going on fully. These people are purposely selected by both lawyers, and the prosecution, depending on how they intend to fight the case. If the prosecution's job is to win by hiding facts about technology they'll option to choose as many e-illiterate jurors as they can and vice versa.
Lengthy trials
Jurors don't want to sit through boring trials such as these, and this combined with jurors that don't have a clue are a ticking timebomb set to explode in a very bad fashion. They will not look at any of the evidence, and rather they'd just wanna hurry up and go back to watching Oprah, Martha Stewart, and CBS.
Finances
Company X's resources are 1billion dollars for their legal teams while Defendant is almost dirt poor.
Companies who are bringing these patent suits should be held liable to pay for the entire trial along with damages for attempting to manipulate the legal system. Hefty fines should be imposed on them which could be used for research into the patenting system and its mechanisms.
Newflix
360 degrees of Karma
Is it my fault? I didn't buy them, they just happened to be there. Officer.
While I'm a big fan of genetically engineered foods (genetic engineering just being good ol' selective breeding sped up) I'm astounded that the courts found that the farmer has to pay damages for seeds that fell onto his land and grew there.
And in Canada too, normally the Land of Common Sense.
I'm writing my MP about this.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Offtopic, I know, but I saw your sig, and ... well ... not sure if there's an official continuation of that song, but, well, the creative juices are flowing this morning and here's my version
I'm a Karma Whore and I'm ok,
I work all night and I post all day.
I troll slashdot
And flame JonKatz,
I like to get first post
I have a dozen accounts
But use HiNote the most
I'm a Karma Whore and I'm ok,
I work all night and I post all day.
I post AC,
Reply to sigs
I complain and I whine
I like to spell micro$oft
With a dollar sign
I'm a Karma Whore and I'm ok,
I work all night and I post all day.
I flame a lot
I use 1337 5p34k
Then people envy me
I wish I was hacker
Not just a skript kiddie
I'm a Karma Whore and I'm ok,
I work all night and I post all day.
It is certainly withing the police power of the state to place an obligation not to use the seeds upon the farmer, even if they blow there. *However*, if these seeds are waste of such a type, which imposes an obligation to act upon the farmer, then the entry of the seed onto his property was a tresspass, for which he is entitled to damages--includeing the cost of removing them, lost profits from not being able to use the contaminated portion of his land, etc.
hawk, esq.
My own, personal, heartfelt message to the empire.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Please read the source material and not just the /. posts
I must agree with the court and Monsanto - I really don't think pollen flow can account for the presence of Round-Up Ready canola is the Mr. Schmeiser's field.
90% of the grain in his field was Monsanto. Pollen flow cannot reasonably account for that kind of distribution. I don't believe it was blown from a neighbouring field or that it blew off a truck.
If, as a farmer, you find RUR growth in your field, Monsanto claims they will come in and remove it for you at no cost to you. Since I haven't heard contrary to this, I think that is a reasonable position.
The more important issue for me is questioning the ethics and impact of patenting DNA, and why no one is talking about Monsanto's strategy to fundamentally alter the agricultural industry by selling seeds that are one-use-only.
/. since 3.30.2001
Bringing the nightly Canadian news to
What's wrong with patenting new breeds of plants? Creating those seeds costs Monsanto probably millions of dollars in research. Also, Monsanto doesn't hold the patent on 'corn' or 'wheat'. Anybody can grow 'corn' or 'wheat' or whatever. Monsanto isn't stopping them. The deal is that anyone who uses Monsanto's seeds gets the benefit of much higher crop yields. So, why shouldn't they pay Monsanto? It's the same as using anything else to improve your business: you need to pay the owner. If I were to slap the name 'McDonald's on my restaurant, and I were to benefit from the increase in business, don't I owe the real McDonalds for this boost in business that came abuot through them building the name brand for 50+ years? Sure I do. If this farmer has greater yields because he used Monsanto's seeds that they spent millions to develop, doesn't he owe Monsanto? Sure he does! What's wrong with this?
The resistance of Monsanto brand canola to Monsanto brand Roundup pesticide is not a coincidence. Roundup was specifically developed to work well with Monsanto engineered crops, so much so that using any other broad spectrum pesticide would ruin the crop. Thus when farmers buy Monsanto engineered seed, they have to buy Monsanto engineered pesticides too.
Monsanto definitely has a bad rep. Although they didn't actually do anything with it, the Terminator seed debacle definitely tarnished their image. Here Monsanto had acquired a company which was developing seeds which would grow but yield crops which were infertile. That is, year after year, you'd have to buy seeds because you couldn't plant seeds from the previous crop. This was viewed as particularly galling in the case of Third World countries where they wouldn't have money to buy seeds year after year.
Not a happy picture
-- "Sucks to your ass-mar"
Although as much as I hate it, its true, the man should be responsible for the plants. He could have destroyed them as soon as he saw them..
If he went to market and tried to sell them, then he's an idiot
Of course, I'd sue the truck and their company for damages.
Step right up folks! See the amazing Husaria who can distinguish the genetic heritage of a wheatstalk ON SIGHT! No fancy labs! No equipment, he just takes a look and Presto! He knows if the wheat is the genetic property of Monsanto or is just a regular non engineered wheat stalk like the other hundred million on the farm! Amazing eh?
But what are the farmers without your amazing talent supposed to do to distinguish engineered wheat from regular wheat? Unless the engineered wheat shows up some bizarre color or has 'Monsanto' imprinted on the stalk in big letters I doubt most people can tell them apart on sight.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The nightmare the "lefties" and "socialist freaks" have screamed and raved about has happened; a perfectly innocent person, who apparently didn't realize his crop was contaminated until the company came in and tested, has lost his life's work over something he had little to no control over - nature - because the law gave the company that kind of power and legal backing. Time to stop laughing; you can now have your life taken away from your through no wrong actions of your own. Unless these plants look significantly different, or the seeds friggin' grow or something, there is no way he could have known an outside plant had invaded his crop. But accidents and acts of God be damned, there's a patent to protect, and some license money to reclaim - and possibly get a little more money in the process (read the article, especially the part about Monsanto wanting all of his profits for the past few years).
That, to me, is a sign of a broken, unjust legal system, one where logic is shoved out of the way to protect not just every last cent (and more) of a company's revenue, but a series of legal institutions that are unable to deal with certain natural realities. The result has been disaster for a man that didn't steal anything from the company, except under a tenuous, legalistic definition of "theft", whereby you can apparently now be charged in unlawful posession of a plant species that the wind tossed on your lawn, and have to pay for it. You can say "but that's the law" all you want - in this case, and in many others, the law is wrong and needs to be fixed before someone else gets hurt.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Yes, because:
1) You clearly identified what they were.
2) You took steps to promote thier growth, knowing what they were.
If you had a liscence to grow THC free marijuana, but a couple fo plnats were the wild type, they you would have an excuse. However, as it's easy ti ID marijuana, that doesn't hold.
GM rapeseed looks identical to proper rapeseed. The farmer did not, and could not, identify the difference, and treated it like the expected crop.
And that's the difference
--
if for instance a Colorado bug gets to a Monsanto potato and starts eating, in a few minutes it falls dead on the ground.
And people are supposed to eat that food.
Actually every raw potato is poisonous. It was hard to convince European peasants that they are edible after cooking.
And a relative of potatoes is tobacco, whose leaves contains dangerous alcaloids, like nicotine. But nobody will tell to smokers. Er, wait...
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I'm going to preface this by stating I've worked in AG before, with Monsanto, in the seed division.
The whole seed industy is all about making round up ready seed. If you're not making genetically altered seed, then you're not going to be in business much longer.
So where did Monsanto come from? Well, they are a former Chemical Company. They made many products, including PCB's. Dateline NBC has portraited Monstanto as a company that has contaminated water supplies, covered up said contaimination, and been directly responcible for Deaths, birth defects, and cancer of hundreds of people.
Now if a case like this were held in the US some interesting things might come about. First, and most damning for Monsanto is that seed companies have been held responcible for cross seeding. The makers of Star Link corn face some pretty hefty fines for contaiminating the corn supply. This might play out well because everyone in the industy is testifing that the source seed was all good. It was the cross breeding that created the wide spread contamination.
In the end, we need some laws specifically protecting famrers. They already get the shaft 9 times out of 10 anyways.
say you're eating a genetically modified apple. The seeds drop into your flowerpot and starts growing, and voilà - you have to pay!
That's why Monsanto uses the Terminator gene. Descendants of a Terminator seed are sterile. At the same time, Monsanto makes the farmer dependant and reduces genetically engineered being in the wild.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Monsanto has been hunting seed pirates as early as 1998. In the aforementioned article, monsanto specifically went after farmers who were hording monsanto seeds they purchased. I'm guessing that purchasing the seed 'media' isn't the same as purchasing the license, just like with software. I recall hearing about this as early as 1993 however, it the context of African farms suffering from Monsanto, however what I heard at that time might have been speculation that this would happen, or it might have been rumors of real incidents.
Monsanto's activities could easily be a threat to the continued existence of humanity (though not as great a threat as overpopulation!).
Try a google search for the keywords "Monsanto" and "Deaths" to find a lot of articles discussing Monsanto's activities for better or worse.
I'm all for mucking with nature to improve the survival chances of our civilization, but I think Monsanto is reckless and therefore dangerous. Maybe someday layers will find that they are willfully reckless and send the police to ask them to stop.
Farmers are having trouble finding non modified seeds:
_ id =30 (See 3/22
_ __ ____________________
h tm l?article_id=1000991
American Farmers Are Getting Angry over GE Crops
Genetic Contamination & Unavailability of Non-GE Seeds Anger North Dakota
Farmers
Genetic Beans Giving Farmers More Headaches. Difficulty
Finding GM-free Seeds.
Bismark (North Dakota) Tribune, 20 March 2001
http://208.141.36.73/listarchive/index.cfm?list
listing). BY Jerry W. Kram.
Excerpts: Wiley was informed that his sample had tested positive for
genetically modified varieties. The level of contamination was 1.37
percent, which was too much for the Japanese. 'I was stunned and
sick to my stomach,' Wiley said. 'I finally went into the house to tell
my wife we had just lost $ 6,000 because of a neighbor's planting
decision.' Other producers who sell into markets that prohibit or
severely restrict the use of genetically modified crops are having
a hard time finding seed. Donald Vig, an organic farmer from
Valley City, said he has talked to seed suppliers as far away as
California and cannot find seed guaranteed to be free of foreign genes.
'The organic industry has a zero tolerance for genetically modified
crops,' Vig said. Rodney Nelson, a farmer from Amenia, is also looking
for soybean seed free of genetically modified varieties. Nelson is being
sued by Monsanto, producer of Roundup Ready soybeans, for growing their
variety of soybeans without buying seed from the company. "I want
soybean seed that's guaranteed not to contain genetically engineered
material,' Nelson said. 'When I asked my seed dealer for a guarantee, he
laughed at me..."
_______________________________________________
Indiana Farmers Getting the Bad News on Biotech
www.DirectAg.com articles. 3/23/2001, or
http://www.directag.com/directag/news/article.j
Why Didn't You Warn Me About GMO's? Excerpts:
"I came here this morning feeling pretty good," the farmer continued.
"But now you've got me very concerned about where we're going to sell
our GMO-crops in the future. It's not right that you let us all get
hooked growing these GMO-crops and now tell us that maybe we should be
growing something else."
Tom Bechman, Indiana Prairie Farmer, a Farm Progress Publication.
Purdue Extension corn specialist Bob Nielsen didn't mince words when he
addressed the issue of genetic modified organisms (GMO's) and the
controversy still swirling throughout agriculture due to the StarLink Bt
debacle last fall. He warned farmers that while the long-term potential
for great benefits from biotechnology still existed, the short-term
fall-out could actually make life more difficult, and perhaps even less
profitable, for farmers who didn't manage carefully in the short term.
When he finished his talk at the Wayne County Conservation Tillage
Workshop in Richmond, Ind., one farmer in the crowd was quick about not
mincing words, either.
"Why didn't you tell us about all of these
potential negatives a long time ago," he questioned, sharply. "Where
have you been for the last two or three years? "I came here this morning
feeling pretty good," the farmer continued. "But now you've got me very
concerned about where we're going to sell our GMO-crops in the future.
It's not right that you let us all get hooked growing these GMO-crops
and now tell us that maybe we should be growing something else." While
Nielsen is never at a loss for words, he did acknowledge that the farmer
had a point. But it wasn't just Nielsen who didn't see the controversy
coming. He contended that it was all of agriculture, plus the media and
even regulatory officials. "Six months ago, hardly anyone in Indiana
even knew what StarLink was," Nielsen says. "It was barely a blip on the
radar screen."...
Living here in Sunny Alberta (tm), Canada and having family members directly involved in agriculture, I am saddened by this decision.
Unlike some of the raving left-wing crowd crowing about GM foods, and how wrong they are, I have no personal problem with them.
Having taken a whack of genetics courses (before deciding that messing around with fruit flies is not how I want to spend the rest of my life), I am surprised he did not use the simple defence of:
It's a naturally occuring mutation.
Prove it otherwise.
Really. What could Monsanto do in that scenario? Do they have a patent on randomly occuring genetic mutation? Cross-polination? NO.
All genetic modification is really just selectively chosing genes that exist elsewhere. Nature does this too. It's called...wait for it...evolution.
If you want to support GMO's, thats great. But don't use this lame excuse to try to justify it. Genetic engineering allows you to create organisms which you would never ever be able to produce via selective breeding.
The clearest example of this is a new type of tomato which has genes from a certain fish in it. The result is a tomato which keeps longer and is resistant to freezing. Now, pray tell, how long would it take you to use "selective breeding" between a tomato and a fish? The fact is you will never get it to work.
I've even heard propronents of GMO's both admit and deny that genetic engineering is just like selective breeding in the same interview. First they say, "of course it's safe. It's the same thing people have been doing for thousands of years: selective and cross breeding." Then later, "Genetic engineering is important because it lets us create things that would be impossible to make via any other method". Well, which one is it? A powerful new tool which makes the impossible possible? Or just a sped up verion of a old tool? It can't be both. The two options are mutually exclusive.
Personally, I think genetic engineering is a great new tool. But, I also think that we barely know how to use it. The current situation is that we are honing are skills using our food supply as a guinea pig and releasing the newly made creatures into the wild were they will propogate on their own. All of this with basically no regulation or testing. Stupid and foolhardy both.
This wasn't about government licensing for genetically modified crops.. it was about a patented crop.. he was growing without a license from the patent holder.
Is effectively what Monsanto is claiming. Because some idiot granted them the patent on genetically modified canola, they own the rights to a type of *life* in perpetuity? This seems ludicrous to me, obviously we must start campaigning to deny the legality of any patent that relates to living being or DNA.
For instance, life evolves naturally. If natural evolution were to produce the same result as genetic modification, would it invalidate the patent? How would we ever know? Or would the patent holder suddenly gain the ownership of an entire species?
I am very sad to see the courts make this ruling, particularly as a I am a proud Canadian.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
And therein lies the problem. Morons who run to the doctor for every sniffle, ache, and runny nose because they really do think they're going to die. Perhaps if people only went to the doctor when medically necessary, or for an annual exam, then there wouldn't be such a large waiting list.
Why doesn't some insurance company come out with a Catastrophe-Medical Insurance plan? In other words, I'll pay for routine Dr. visits (I never go), but if I break my leg or come down with Cancer, then I'm covered....
The Canadian farmers started to accuse Monsanto of cross pollinating a while ago. Farmers near fields with "those gall darn ge'tic seeds" found that Monsanto seed ended up in their crop. Fears of an uncontrollable cross pollinated world of genetically altered food started to be thrown about. What happened next?
Monsanto spied on farmers, then "burned" farmers fields in order to destroy evidence. When caught, Monsanto said they were "testing" fields. Hmm, and flew night missions in Cessnas to carry out these "normal" activities. Yea... sure.
And now they win a court case against a farmer who has complained about Monsanto seed in his crop before. I don't care if the whole field is full of Genetic seed, it's still Monsantos responsibility.
Monsanto wants to own the worlds food before the farmer does. It's insidious!
They have killed before, they will kill again.
______
jeff13
What's really worthy of note is that the bee (Eric), who did the cross-pollinating could be held liable under patent laws, possibly even the DMCA.
It's probably important to note that the juries, lawyers & judges involved will probably find poor Eric responsible for damages payable to Monstanto.
Poor Eric's dirt-bag lawyer would probably recommend that he try to place responsibility on the hive. After all, poor Eric was acting in the service of the hive and the queen bee. He was just an unpaid laborer and the hive wasn't even witholding Social Security taxes for him.
Erics dirt-bag lawyer will take to his Public Relations Weasel, who will quickly note that Eric and, in fact, all worker bees are female. He will quickly turn this into a political issue.
The Nation Organization of Women will note that the feminist-social-collective bee hive is battling against the evil patriarchal Monsanto Corporation, and send a small army of lawyers to assist poor Eric. They will file a counter-suit against Monstanto for civil-rights violations.
Meantime, Monsanto Corporation will be busy distributing bribes("education") to legislators, attempting to make property-owners responsible for the actions of any bees that live on their property.
Etc...
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
I know allowing people to patent a plant alone is bad enough, but ignoring that:
Shouldn't the person who gave/sold him the seeds/starter plants to begin with be the one paying up?
'As soon as you realized that you weren't dead, you should have started paying the royalties...'
It's called "tithing". A 10% "voluntary" income tax payable to the (Christian - various denominations) church.
A large fraction of the population of Europe did it for centuries, and some people do it to this day.
Some non-Christian churches have a similar custom.
(I wonder how long it will take for patent holders to start claiming a divine right to royalties, by analogy with kings who claimed a divine right to rule as the next level below God in an "executive branch" responsible for temporal governance.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Remember the old saying: You are what you eat.
Ah! So THAT explains the mental abilities of those new-age vegitarians.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The benefit of using Monsanto's crop is that you can use a herbicide called Roundup. Roundup usually kills just about all plants it comes in contact to, except this genetically modified canola that Monsanto has developed. This simplifies your weeding task, decreases cost, and (presumably) increases yield.
I'm not taking any kind of stand on this practice; who knows if it's better environmentally?
But on the matter of the court case, I believe the most important question is whether Schmeiser took advantage of Monsanto's plant in the way that licensed farmers do. Did he use Roundup, or some similar herbicide? Or was he just conducting his business as he normally would have, with normal canola?
This would establish two things: did he know that the genetically modified plant was present, and how much did he gain from the illicit use?
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Monsanto: Pure Concentrated Evil.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Hmm, could this simply the introduction of "seeding" the market... (pun only halfway intened). If Monsanto flew over crop fields and dusted each farmer's crop with just a few seeds, then they could sue each farm until they own every farm on the continent.
Perhaps AOL might take a lesson from this, and sue everyone who touches an AOL cd for "mis-handling intellectual property"
- passion
Terminator never came out. Monsanto got too much flack for even considering it.
But cytoplasmic sterile hybrid corn was a BIG thing for years. It had the same effect: The seed companies kept the lines that could reproduce to themselves and made "mule" crosses that couldn't reproduce to sell as seed to the farmers.
(It wasn't JUST a scam to keep selling seeds. The hybrid didn't regrow as a weed the next year, when farmers practicing crop rotation switched to another crop to keep the field fertile.)
That largely ended when a corn blight came through in the early '70s. Seems the line that was crossed-in to make the seeds sterile also carried susceptability to the blight - and almost all the corn was wiped out that year.
They were really worried about the next year, too, because the companies couldn't come up with enough seeds from other lines to supply all the farmers in one year, so there was a lot of the susceptable stuff out there. (Fortunately the blight infestation was minor and well contained the next year.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Think "Irish Potato Blight". Genetic diversity good. Monoculture bad.
If you want a more recent example of "Monoculture Bad" think the "ILOVEYOU" virus. (mono-culture is monoculture).
or the recent outbreak of Hoof and Mouth desease in England.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
If you want to know what kind of a Corporation this farmer is dealing with, check out Monsanto's legacy
<A HREF="www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/canola/"> here </A>.
The question on all the issues that crop up around here seem to be with loopholes.
On the one hand, a person has certain rights. On the other, granting that right shouldn't open the door to all sorts of objectionable things.
i.e. You Americans *love* your free speech - but you still can't say "I've got a bomb" in an airport.
Napster is great for sharing indie-band music, but you still shouldn't trade copyright material.
You can't be responsible for seeds blowing onto your land, but you can't use that as an excuse for having a crop of it.
For every right we grant, we open a door to abuse.
"I'm just going to start punching the air like this, and if you get in the way - it's your fault!"
First it is interesting to see an anglo-saxon court going against Nature and Science. This is a very typical example as, no matter the hundreds of years that passed, courts are still bound to Middle Age concepts of property. It is not admirable to see people getting charged for things due to inertia, lawyers defending anti-scientific concepts, or widly known superstitions. Even a president gets killed by a "magic bullet" that violates every possible law of mechanics.
What if the seeds did came with the wind? Why the farmer should care to destroy them? Is there a clear (TM) on the top of every wind-blown seed? Why Monsanto didn't care to produce seeds that wouldn't blow by the wind? Or maybe the next step is to take Nature to court for robbing a few seeds?
Maybe Monsanto will care for the last one, when it screws up something. I really can't imagine what may happen in a situation when a genetically modified plant or animal gets into Nature. Consequences may be quite negative as humans aren't there to control any conditions or relations. A genetically modified plant to resist parasites may force the appearence of parasites that will be many times more resistent to pesticides and other means of control. In fact we may already seeing this. If the farmer is speaking the truth, then we may be facing the spread of plants beyond limits where we still could control any possible "oops".
So let's see. Maybe the next court case will be a revival of the "People of town N vs town's cock", where people blamed the poor bird for not singing in due hours... Only here it will be Monsanto vs. Nature for the last one blowing up their profits...
Teams of Monsanto Lawyers forced to go through a canola field, plant-by-plant, and remove each one that has their damn gene in it. Poetic justice.
Could a farmer bill another for letting his seed contaminate his land?
If you read the judgement, there is a section towards the end where the judge mentions the "Stray Bull Law", which basically states: if your bull loose, and has its way with my cows, I own the offspring, but if it causes me any harm that your bull banged my cows, you owe me.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
In regards to Asparatame, their toxic sweetner, Monsata has this to say: "Nutrasweet breaks down into such common dietary products as phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol.
Shit, I don't know about you, but I don't get all that much methanol in my diet. I suspect taht the fine "scientists" at Monsato might, though.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Why is this not just a Luddite anachronism? Because of exactly the kind of thing Monsanto is doing. There is a wealth of genuine knowledge accumulated by Native Americans regarding how to raise the crops native to their area. There are strains of crops which have been passed down through generations which are tremendously sturdy and hardy.
Besides maintaining viable seeds of particular species, Native Seed/SEARCH also recognizes another facet that gets glossed over in a lot of these discussions: the importance of biodiversity. Monsanto et al, besides controlling a lot of farmers, are essentially working to homogenize the agricultural world. Anyone who's heard of the Irish potato famine can tell you why this is a bad, bad thing.
Anyway, they're doing some great stuff. The nature of the project kind of contains any particular effort to its immediate geographical area, but there's no reason this kind of coop couldn't be set up elsewhere with that region's native species. Anyway, check it out.
I grew up in South Dakota, and my dad is a farmer, so this story really struck me. If a piece of my dad's land was flooded, yes, he'd notice it. If it was overrun by Canadian thistle, yes, he'd notice it. If there were some stray canola plants in the corner of a field, bordering someone else's land, someone else who's planted Monsanto(TM)(R) Canola (TM)(R)(all your canola are belong to us)(etc), no, it wouldn't be noticed.
Volunteer crops (crops that grow from existing seed left over in a field, not deliberately planted, and usually not even known about) are by nature distributed in a patchy fashion. They're smaller, typically, than their cultivated counterparts, because they're usually at the edges of a field where wind and soil erosion are harder on the plants.
If indeed these were seeds blown in from another field, I can't imagine how Monsanto could see them as a deliberate affront to their license because it really doesn't make sense to harvest volunteer crops. They're patchy and small and just get crunched up by the combine.
The article is sketchy and i can't seem to find any details in the rulings...how MUCH canola was found on this guy's land? did he have a history of reusing Monsanto seed?
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
He tried to kill them with RoundUp. They didn't die. He knew which ones to spray therefore he knew which were which (since he wouldn't spary RoundUp on the whole crop). End of story.
So Monsanto has made a form of wheat that can't be killed by the normal weedkiller they guy used, and they are complaining that he didn't get rid of it? What is he supposed to do to remove it?
Shouldn't it be Monsanto's responsibility to make sure their product doesn't distribute itself onto other peoples land and contaminate their crops?
I think the responsiblity in this issue is squarely on monsanto and that they should be forced to pay this guy damages for contaminating his crop.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
This is truly fantastic, and it doesn't end with poor farmers.
Speaking of poor farmers, would this have been such major news had it happened to, say, some helpless fellow in the Philippines or Thailand? On the other hand, if it can happen to someone in Canada, it can happen to "one of us", so it has a chilling effect.
One thing I find very interesting is how much nationality plays a role in a story like this. Had Monsanto - a big proponent of globalization - done this to some farmer in the developing world, the only coverage it would have gotten would be in left wing student newspapers. It's unlikely it would have made
Had it been in the US, it would definitely have been headline news all over the place, and Dubya would have had to ask Cheney to write a statement of some kind. Americans would even be asking "What is a genetically modified food?"
If it had happened in Europe, the effect would have been tremondous, since they are extremely sensitive to GM issues.
South America - well, probably would have made the local news, but nothing major. We only care about their currency crisis or carnivals.
I guess it's a good thing it happened in Canada, since it actually made news.
w/m
Some freaky things are going on here folks-
First, you've got biotech companies like we see her suing farmers for *piracy* for growing F1 generation seed. Farmers which even purchased the seed originally are not allowed to plant their own crop's seed. So, this is even worse to them, they see it as "brownbagging," buying or stealing another farmer's F1 seed. That would be like making CDs of Photoshop *and* selling them.
How do they tell? Pour RoundUp on them soybeans and see if they shrivel? Nah. They have signature sequences within certain genes that they assume do nothing. Christ! They're just writing there little names into genes that potentially do something. I mean, we don't know what ever single gene does in soybeans, corn, &c. It just doesn't seem safe...
Maybe I'm "new age" TM, but I shop organic because I don't want to eating random GM crap like this or encouraging monopolistic and tyranical business like this that strive to put the farmer in a worse place than they already are.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
If the genetics companies are so concerned about people replanting this seed (accidentally, as it would seem in this case, or deliberately), then why is it not their responsibility to sell only plants that cannot produce seeds?
If the software/music companies are so concerned about people reproducing this file (accidentally, as it would seem in this case, or deliberately), then why is it not their responsibility to sell only files/CDs that cannot produce copies?
w/m
Where did you get these MP3's?
Umm...they blew off a passing CD onto my hard drive.
What about this "One-Click"(tm) website you are running?
I think the Feature Fairy left it there.
Do you have a license for that copy of Windows?
Windows? How did that get installed? Musta been my cat. She likes Solitaire.
--
324006
I know it's poor form to reply to one's own post, but I left out something...due to crop rotation, and the fact that different farmers/ranchers grow different things, the odds are not always that volunteer crops in a field will be of the same kind as the ones that are supposed to be there. One will often see sunflowers in a corn field, for example. Were that the case, the canola would have been a good deal easier to spot; but it would still be a volunteer crop. Still be smallish and patchy like I said in my previous post. How Monsanto could even spot it in the first place, or see it as a violation of their license...huh.
Either Monsanto's off their rocker completely or this guy was actually mucking with seed illegally.
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
IMHO, The farmer deliberatly performed a selection on a field edge for Roundup resistant lines.
Easy to do: Spray Roundup, harvest what's left which will be Roundup resistant.
Basically it's the equivalent of a Armored car spilling it's cash all over your property: You don't own it just because it landed on your property.
Again, IMHO, I think the farmer's argument that the seed just blew over and contaminate all my crops IS BULL. He had >90% Roundup resistant crop in his field! (Even by his account it was ~60%) Sorry, contamination will NOT overwhelm a field in that manner!
Nevermind what you think about ownership issues of biological entities, the farmer either performed very poor farming practices, or deliberately used what he knew was Roundup resistant canola that had blown on the edge of his field to plant *whole* fields in subsequent years.
You can find a link to the court's papers at that CBC link.
W9x:Thanks for the make-work project Bill.
Last year a few people took The Canadian Wheat Board to court over the fact that farmers are FORCED to sell their wheat to the Wheat Board. In the [Canadian] praires, it is ILLEGAL to sell your wheat that grows on your land to ANYONE else other then the Wheat Board.
2 6721.p.en.html
How nice to see our rights getting to$$ed as soon as there is money to be made. What a $ick and disgusting society.
They lost the case, as you read the transcript here:
http://www.fja.gc.ca/en/cf/2000/vol4/html/2000fca
(You will have to scroll down to Section 102, 103, and the DISPOSITION)
Nominated for the coveted Golden Modem award, Best Post of the Year, by the Academy of Slashdot Trolls and Flamers.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The way this works is that Roundup inhibits the plant form of a gene involved in amino acid synthesis (according to this message, anyway). The "Roundup Resistant" plants have a version of the same gene that instead comes from a plant-infecting bacteria, which is not so sensitive to the chemical in Roundup, and continues chugging along producing the necessary biochemical products.
Here's an analogy - imagine the WWF didn't learn from the experience with the XFL and decides it wants to make it's own version of another sport - auto racing. Let's imagine that the rules of "Xtreme racing" specify that you must use Plymouth Neons as your car [perhaps they bid the highest for the ad rights...], but that you can make minor modifications and replacements.
Now imagine that you've developed a fuel additive that manages to clog every fuel injector manufactured in america, but for some reason doesn't bother Honda fuel injectors much. You replace the fuel injector in your car, otherwise identical to all of the other Plymouth Neon's in the race, with a Honda fuel injector...then spray your fuel additive into the racetrack's communal fuel tank.
The day of the race comes, and all of the cars with the standard fuel injectors die, while your car with the "foreign" fuel injector continues chugging along...just as the plants with the Agrobacterium gene keep chugging along while the plants with the off-the-shelf version of the same gene die.
Pretty straightforward and harmless. The overused "Frankenstein" analogy really doesn't fit here. It's a "labor saving" device allowing a farmer to spray a field rather than going through and more carefully weeding it.
I do worry, though, about the tendency towards lazy and harmful farming practices. Flood irrigation in California is slowly salinizing the soils, and those sprinklers spraying the water high into the air in the middle of summer end up wasting a great deal of water as it evaporates before it hits the ground...but both are cheaper and easier than installing and working with drip-irrigation systems.
While the herbicide resistance isn't itself much of an issue, if all farmers insist on using the same strain of plant from the same provider because they're cheap and easy, you're worries about having a disease come along that particularly likes the specific strains that Monsanto uses for their "roundup-ready" seeds can be a serious concern. The problem isn't "biotechnological" at all, but cultural. The solution is to discourage "monoculture" farming.
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Yes, if you know that you're growing something illegal, you have to destroy it whether you grew it intentionally or not.
These kinds of laws are mostly of the LAW_REGULATION_OF_PUBLIC_WELFARE rather than LAW_PUNISHMENT_FOR_HARM_TO_OTHERS, since everyone knows:
enum crimes = { LAW_PUNISHMENT_FOR_HARM_TO_OTHERS, LAW_PROMOTION_OF_CONTROL_AND_ORDER, LAW_CENSORSHIP_OF_IMMORALITY, LAW_REGULATION_OF_PUBLIC_WELFARE };
It's true that in an ideal society, all you need is the first category, but many societies (and ESPECIALLY not the U.S.'s) aren't capable of handling that kind of freedom. The key to being free is proving you're responsible enough to handle it, not whining about what you can and can't do.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Um, keep in mind Canada is where they tax blank computer media to hand over to Celine Dion, prevent free speech, prevent the right to self-defence, have reverse onus crimes (e.g. you are guilty until proven innocent). In Canada you do NOT have the right to remain silent... and if you mail someone something there's a chance it might be opened, photocopied with a copy to be sent to the Government Department that interfaces with that big Big Brother database... just for the hell of it. Keep in mind you aren't allowed to own property of any kind in Canada, not even the shirt you wear, but you ARE forced to pay more than 50% of your income on taxes for it. The Prime Minister can hand himself $215,000 of public money through a shady hotel deal in backwoods Quebec, and is above the law if caught. Don't assemble and protest peacefully, you might get maced and beaten.
And you wouldn't move to Canada because of canola seeds??????
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I have 6 tomato plants growing out on my back porch (super beefsteaks or somesuch), each had a little blurb about propagating said plant as being against the law, yadayada.
I might just propagate them myself just to piss people off...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I'm sorry if I'm easily amused, but the idea of farmers being lumped in the same category as software pirates seems like such an absurd situation that it brings me to laughter.
-- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"
Hey, I agree with you... I think all this stuff is horrible and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves. Governments should make it illegal to patent genes, and illegal to make sterile plants.
But, I was just talking about the legal issue regarding Monsanto and that Canadian farmer. It's ridiculous - imagine if Monsanto (secretly) flew a plane all over Saskatchewan, scattering just enough of their seeds out the back to contaminate every field they crossed.
Next year, they go after every farmer in the province. Pay up or else! And the farmers might just decide, "Hell, if I'm paying for the stuff anyway, I might as well grow it and get the (minor) benefits".
And so Monsanto takes over the market. It's awful. Those people should be dragged out into the street and shot.
But at LEAST they should be told: If you don't like it, make your plants sterile. That way they can't play the game both ways, ripping off people whos crops get contaminated.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Cultivate GM seeds from some farmers fields. Plant said seeds in competing farmers fields (make sure it's a larfe farm). Turn in the farm to monsanto, write letters to the editor about hos Monsanto is going to bankrupt farmers. Repeat until monstanto lawyers are too busy to sue anybody else. Voila a DOS attack on monsanto and a clever culture hack to align the farmers against Monsanto. If nothing else it would add one more fuse to the powderkeg known as the inland west.
War is necrophilia.