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Plant a Seed, Get Sued?
Friar_MJK writes "Now even traditionally non-tech-savvy farmers are getting the rap for piracy. This isn't your grandma's p2p filesharing, but rather replanting bio-engineered seeds. Somehow the powers-that-be got the idea that replanting seeds grown from your own soil is a crime. A company called Monsanto sells those specially engineered seeds, and according to their license agreements, they make it illegal to replant the seeds harvested from a previous crop. To enforce this, they have brought many hard-working farmers to court and even thrown some in jail. According to the story, the company has not lost a case yet." We've had a couple of stories about Monsanto suing a Canadian farmer, but there hasn't been a lot of U.S. press devoted to the issue.
Sounds like the final nail in the coffin for the independant (non-corporate) American Farmer.
they make it illegal to replant the seeds harvested from a previous crop
It's not "illegal" but a breach of contract. There's no *law* saying you can't replant the seeds.
A company wanting to rape the world's farmers for more money! GOOOO Capitalism!
Well, they got their license agreements and they need money ofc. How could Monsanto develop those seeds if once the farmer bought them he could replant the seeds grown on his soil? I'm not here trying to defend Monsanto, but I believe Bio-engineered Seeds are the future, and need money to be developed.
I know there are drug companies that have patented sections of the human genome, does that mean that I now cannot have children of my own, since I would be illegaly planting my seeds from a previous "harvest" without a license?
OK, farmer entered into an agreement with Monsanto, got it.
Somehow the powers-that-be got the idea that replanting seeds grown from your own soil is a crime.
No, somehow the powers-that-be got the idea that contracts are legally binding instruments.
What's the story here?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The farmer bought seeds from Monsanto, thereby agreeing to their terms and conditions. One of those terms was that he COULD NOT save and re-plant seeds next year - he would either have to buy them again, or use a different type of seed.
He is being sued because he saved and re-planted seeds. Exactly what he agreed not to do by purchasing the seeds in the first place.
Don't like the Terms and Conditions? Don't use their product.
There have been reports of VERY shady Monsanto lawsuits in the past that were really crappy - but this one seems fair enough.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
Plant another kind seed and go to jail, too... How about cannabis sativa (or do you prefer indica?)
Assholes always keep trying to make nature illegal. Har!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Of course, suing the farmers to whom this company markets the seeds will more or less shut down any hope of future profit from the agricultural comminuty who are "just fine, thanks," with natural seeds that don't have hundred or thousand-dollar yearly fees attached. Most farmers have it hard enough already just getting enough money to pay the bills and feed the family...
Yes, certainly.
Bringing about THOSE TYPES of lawsuits is a very dubious thing to do. Monsanto (I believe) has done this in the past, and it should not be allowed.
But if you'd RTFA - in the case we're talking about now, the guy saved and re-used the seeds he bought from Monsanto - which he had previously agreed not to do.
In this specific instance, Monsanto has a good case. But indeed, in the ones that you refer to - they're just being ignorant assholes.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
Nope. You never signed an agreement with Monsanto. You're not breaking any agreement.
Don't weave up a whole arguement based on a contrived supposition.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
Seriously. Why would any farmers choose to buy GM seed from Monsanto? They should all know how Monsanto do business and the potential consequences of their decision to purchase Monsanto GM seed.
Once you buy their seed, it's very difficult to go back to non GM seed. Mostly just because Monsanto will hound you until they find just one unlicensed grain of their GM product on your land and sue you into oblivion.
Even 3rd world countries are aware of the potential problems. Some have even gone so far as to refuse US food aid because it was Monsanto GM grain that was being offered. If leaders of 3rd world countries can see the potential problems, why can't western farmers?
Shitdrummer.
Not only is the submitter trolling, he's glossing over some important points:
If you buy Monsanto's seed, you sign a contract that says that you won't save seed for next year. If you end up saving seed, you're in breach of contract. Point finale.
If you don't agree to their terms and conditions, you're not being forced by anybody to buy Monsanto seed. You'll just have to be content with other seed that doesn't have value-added traits such as herbicide or pest resistance.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
Monsanto is perfectly willing to sell you seed that you allowed to replant, it simply costs more. On a related note, the seed that is not licensed to be replanted often shouldn't be replanted anyway. It is frequently a dihybrid cross that whose next generation is not nearly as robust.
There was a suit filed, in Canada IIRC, over just this a while back. A farmer's crops were found to include GM plants matching those engineered by a nearby company (the seeds had blown onto their land). The company demanded that said crops (and I think the land they were on) be given to them as damages. I don't recall how it turned out.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
We can enforce our opinions as law when they hire the new farmer-overlord judges. Anyone here with an opinion to enforce?
if a farmer buys seeds from them even once.
just once.
and grows them alongside his own.. or whatever.. then he must buy from monsanto for all eternity after that, because monsanto can argue that there's their ip in that crop regardles...
so cheaper, more effective crop becomes more expensive thanks to force of law.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Just as if a record company came into my house and recorded thier songs on my blank CDs, they couldn't sue me for pirating thier songs, but I would sue them for damaging my CDs.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
It used to be that you could only commit a crime against another person. That was in the very old days. Then things got more complex when you could commit a crime against a government. Now things are hopelessly complex - you can commit a crime against an entity that only exists in a legal sense - a company. Slavery has not been abolished, but it has been renamed, and everyone is a slave - it is called citizenship. When you are born it is a crime for you to not be entered as a citizen by your parents. From then on they own you, and you owe them. You will be free when you die. The only reason we don't recognize that it's a Brave New World is because we are well fed and dazzled by technology. It's 1984, twenty-one years on now.
When they prove that, maybe it's just. But Monsanto genes spread to nearby crops, despite legal requirements that they not pollute the gene pool. Of course Monsanto has no actual accountability for polluting the gene pool, and it's insidious marketing for forcing polluted farms to pay for licensing, or go to jail. It's interesting that you assume the farmers are all pirates, rather than the victims of Monsanto. Monsanto IP is viral in the biological sense. Imagine if your next-door neighbor's EULA click obligated *you* to subscribe to Microsoft's trusted computing, while you also had to install Windows antispyware, though you installed only Linux on your machines.
--
make install -not war
Monsanto IP is viral in the biological sense. Monsanto genes spread to nearby crops, despite legal requirements that they not pollute the gene pool. Of course Monsanto has no actual accountability for polluting the gene pool, and it's insidious marketing for forcing polluted farms to pay for licensing, or go to jail.
Imagine if your next-door neighbor's EULA click obligated *you* to subscribe to Microsoft's trusted computing, while you also had to install Windows antispyware, though you installed only Linux on your machines.
--
make install -not war
"People, particularly americans, often confuse what is legal/illegal and what is right/wrong. Please don't."
I got a better question for Slashdot. Why should anyone clear up misconceptions, and provide more information? When we all know that it will go in one ear and out the other. So when the next story comes up, we get to listen to the same mistakes, over and over. Apparently there's a lot of talking (as witnessed by the post numbers). but there's absolutely no listening. I don't know about the rest of you. But I always thought that part of the definition of a geek, was someone willing to learn. Not having to be repeatedly told the same things over and over. Always willing to do research. Now it's talk loud, be a rebel, and speak from a position of ignorance.*
*Maybe the old "/." is dead, for all the people that made it was it was, have been driven off, in the pursuit of "karma".
After a six-year legal battle, Canada's Supreme Court ruled that while Schmeiser had technically infringed on Monsanto's patent, he did not have to pay any penalties.
But at least it sets up a precedent for other Canadian farmers to make it into an open-and-shut case.
DON'T BUY SEEDS FROM Monsanto.
So how do I prevent my neighbours from buying patented Monsanto seeds and planting them such that they cross-pollinate with mine?
You can make noises that the media is controlled by the right or the left. But this is proof the media is controlled by the rich.
This is obviously the story of the century. The implications to access to food is staggering. As well as the future of non-megacorp farming. And yet, barely a peep comes out of the TV or the magazines or the newspapers.
Is it a story out in the farming communities? That's one thing I don't know, given that I live in the city and don't come from farming stock...
Its much like the Telecommunications Deregulation Act of '94. Or the DMCA. Monsanto is proceeding to use the courts to establish a corporate monopoly on producing foodstuffs. They are counting on scientific illiteracy to keep the public from becoming aware of the ramifications.
The US media doesn't dare call the spade a spade. They'll get buried in lawsuits. Just like 60 Minutes & the tobacco companies. And they aren't motivated to report anyway. The public are told that terrorists are a bigger threat to your well being than automobile transport, and apparently they believe it. Its more important to report about Brad and Jenn, or Ben and J-Lo, or one premeditated murder in CA by a white guy.
Ah, I'm going to laugh at you under 40 bitches when you have to give up your life to go serve Uncle Sam and Mobil. So many of you just don't have a clue.
Watch out for mysterious wasting disease and financial chaos wiping out life savings. Those are next on the horizon of unreported news.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
This is actually a fairly complex deal.
Farmers do not collect their own seed generally- they harvest their corn, and repurchase seed every spring. That's the way it is done. There is no sense in harvesting corn for seed and it is rarely practiced. If you've got good corn you sell it at price It's cheaper and easier to go to the Coop and get more seed each spring.
The genetically engineered corn is actually the life blood of many farmers- yes even the small ones. They plant tracts of corn that are then observed for the quality of the corn. I lived in an area of TN that Monsanto and others used for testing- you've never sen more curious rows of corn.
Monsanto is engineering a seed that produces better product. The result is simple- a farmer sees that he can harvest the engineered corn and create his own seed for less than Monsanto charges for the engneered product. That would be the only reason to replat Monsanto seed- the last thing any farmer wants to do is more work than they have to, but if they can get Monsanto's branded seed for less, they will do so.
In addition, they can at that point actually sell seed that was engineered by Monsanto for their own profit. Monsanto actually engineers the seed to help the farmers bottom line- to make them more productive.
However, I do agree that suing the little guy in this is pointless. the big agriculture corporate farms would be the major players if "seed copying" ever became a huge problem.
Still, you've got to realize that the reseeding farmer is trying to save money by copying superior product. Call it the genetic equivalent of P2P or whatever you like, but trying to use superior seed to grow it to avoid paying- that's not quite kosher.
The farmers would be motivated though because in this day and age, family farming is nearly an impossible adventure- the cost are astronomical and the payoff risky as hell.
befuddled (noun) 1. Unable to create a pithy sig
There are many issues here. Perhaps the most important is bio-diversity. Furthermore there is not a whole lot we can do about this other than become aware of what is going on and do our best to raise the issues in the public eye.
I have challenged the supermarkets where I live to label foods that are genetically engineered. They cannot of course do anything but the more noise I make the more aware other people become. So this is the little revolt that I am making.
Now the issue is that Rape (now called canola) has been genetically engineered so it is resistant to roundup. Percy Schmeiser had his feild contaminated with Monsanto genetically altered seeds and rather than the supreme court of Canada finding that Monsanto is to blame for not keeping their experiments in the lab the court instead found Schmeiser to be liable for not being able to keep Monsanto experiments out of his feilds.
The logic of this totally excapes me.
The economics of the agricultural community are such that even a minor percentage inprovment in productivity will be picked up by a select few. The consequence of this is that in the long term no-one wins. The reason farm income is low is because from an economic standpoint there is almost perfect competition so everyone competes to the lowest income people can survive on. This is how commodity markets work.
From the standpoint of sustainable agriculture however - this is a very dangerous development.
First off we end up with only selected strains being planted across vast acerages. Next we end up with Monsanto (95% of the genetically altered seeds come from Monsanto) controlling the distribution of these seeds and to top it off we now have an uninformed court ruling that 100,000 years of workable agriculture where any farmer is free to develope any strain of seed is to be replaced with a regime where Monsanto Labs rule the roost.
Not only this - those genetically altered seeds will form some of the most viralent weeds one can imagine.
But - what if we end up with 100% of the farm land planted with a single strain and some biological vector brings in an infection. This will result in close to a 100% crop failure. Anyone who knows of the consequences of the Irish Potatoe Blight should realise what this will mean.
Genetic alteration is not necessarily bad. What is bad is mono culture. When we get a ruling that the individual farmers are somehow responsible for preventing contamination of their seed then we move into a world where a single corporate interest can control the seeds all farmers use.
This leads directly to mono-culture and all farmers are forced into abandoning their individual strains. The result of this mono-culture will be a massive crop failure at some point in the future.
So the judges may have been well schooled in law but they are ignorant of the biology which provides the food they eat.
As I said before - as a lone voice the only thing I can do is bitch and complain which I do. What we really need to do is get a very strong movement going. Even a million voices are not enough. The disaster mono-culture can precipate can be much larger than the Tsunami that just hit SE asia.
... but not new. Being an molecular biologist myself, I have been ranting about this kind of shit for YEARS. I mean, what IS it with those people? When gene manipulation of crops, a.k.a. green biotech, came up, we were all celebrating. What could one do with this method - creating crops resistant against various pests, thereby reducing the need for pesticides, creating crops resistant against cold, draught, excess sun, whatever, increasing the area of potential farmland greatly. Maybe even building the nitrogen fixation system of legumes in other crops, completely abolishing the need for synthetic nitrate fertilizers.
What happened outside our overly optimistic minds? Corporate greed took over, corporations like monsanto created new pesticides and the correlated pesticide resistant plants, they had their lawyer draw up special license agreements - and the promise of feeding humanity with less pollution and higher efficiency was broken down to higher corporate profits. I was not a part of this personally, but simply the fact of being employed in a related field makes me bow my head in shame for all this great opportunities given away and sacrificed on the altar of capitalism.
This comment does not exist.
When the BSE story first broke, the UK government tried to convince the British public that British beef was safe (there is wonderful video footage of the environment minister of the time (John Gummer) publically feeding his daughter a beef burger - but she refused to eat it!). Anyway, the whole sorry saga led to two things. Firstly, the British people stopped trusting the government when they said that things were safe. Secondly, people became a lot more aware of what they were eating and sensitive to production methods. Remember, BSE came about because of greedy farmers, with the encouragement of the Thatcher government, feeding dead cows (meat) to living cows (herbivores).
So, sensitised to farming methods, the British public questioned the wisdom of genetically modifying food. Most of the concern was centred around the impossibility of undoing any genetic pollution that would result. The UK government (Blair in particular) have tried to tell everyone that GM is safe - but thanks to BSE, no-one believes them.
Our government has passed laws making GM crops legal, but fortunately, there has been such a strong anti-GM movement here, that supermarkets don't dare stock GM food. Since BSE, the British public have become slightly more aware of the way that food is produced.
This means that there is no profit to be made from GM crops and so no companies are even bothering to apply for licenses to grow them.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
>If they don't like that agreement, then they don't have to buy the seeds!
Wrong. Monsanto and its cohorts has the market buttoned up. You should say if you don't like it, go get some other job. Organic farmers are pretty much the only farmers in industrialized countries that don't have to buy from Monsanto, since they can produce their own seeds.
On a side note, one of the threads in this discussion is about saving seed to replant next season. Monsanto is essentially doing everything it can to stop the entire world from doing this. Most of their hybrids won't produce viable seed, and now they have IP laws on their side that say if they can detect the DNA they devoloped in your crop, no matter how it got there, you're legally liable to pay them damages.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Bunch of luddites, not seeing that the future is genetically modified grains, wholly owned and controlled by a foreign company who will bury anyone who tries to grow food without permission...
Haven't we at least learned anything from Microsoft about single-source monopolistic controls? And this is food! I'm starting to think we deserve our new fascist state.
The enemies of Democracy are
http://www.tulane.edu/~bfleury/envirobio/enviroweb /DeadZone.htm
Posting this logged in so maybe someone will see it.
This is absolutely sick! Seeds float through the air, and when they land, they grow into plants, by their very nature!
That's like if I were to write a computer worm, then sue people who get infected by it for violating the terms under which I license it!
This is pure evil.
Monsanto always make me thing of the moneylender in the Merchant of Venice:
;)
The moneylender can take one pound of flesh without blood or hair, from the borrower.
Similarly, Monsanto should be able to the protect its magic gene, but not anything more.
If they can enforce their IP just to that gene but not anything else go for it. They are overly greedy and ignore (or forget) the fact that 99.99999% of the plant is contributed by the mother nature and generations of farmers who adopt the selective breeding technique (keep only the seed from a good and strong plant). To me it is a bit like adding a proprietary extension to Linux and claim the whole lot belong to yours. So sad that God forgets to sign GPL with Man
This sounds horrible, until you think about what Monsanto et al. are really trying to control. The US public has made it very clear that many do not want to eat any genetically modified food. If well-meaning farmers can replant the crops whenever and wherever they want, Monsanto et al. cannot guarantee that the public isn't getting genetically modified crops in their food. That could open up a whole new round of liability for the companies.
You're missing the bigger issue here. The problem is that Monsanto CAN NOT insure that their genetic modifications will not infect other crops through cross-pollination. That's the problem. That's why the Supreme Court was short-sighted and messed up when they allowed companies to patent genetic modifications to plants.
For example, let's say you are a soybean farmer who decides he's going to hold off from buying the Monsanto seed because you don't like the license terms. But every farm around you does buy the seed. And at the end of the year, you save a little seed for the next year. And the next year you decide that you still don't want to use the Monsanto seed because you already have seed. So you plant and everything seems fine until you get a served papers because Monsanto is suing you for using their seed. And you're confused because you never bought any Monsanto seed. See that's the problem. Through no fault of your own, your natural seed has now been infected with Monsanto's genetic modifications. Is that your fault? Monsanto's the one spreading a virus.
This could very easily lead to the complete elimination of seeds that are unmodified genetically. Monsanto is criminally neglegent for not insuring that their genetically modified seed does not infect ungenetically modified seeds.
Prions can infect any neuron. If you think there are only neurons in the brain and spinal column, try touching a red hot stove burner.
--I have some of those "gene bank" type seeds, in a way anyway. Bought several large sealed cans of various open pollinated seeds. I keep those just packed away, and use other open pollinated for my season to season garden crops. some are many years old, lost track of when I started breeding them now.. It's a "just in case" deal, and eventually I hope to be able to build a pretty large tight greenhouse with decent air filtration and airlock styled entrys for it. Just for that purpose. Cross pollination is an extreme threat though,generally speaking, as is cross species contamination (it's happened already) and just wait until they get "terminator" gene modified seeds out on the market. They were going to do it, public outcry got them to back off just a little bit and "just do research" but it's only a matter of time now before they bribe off enough legislators to get it legal to distribute.
I think it's one of the larger threats facing the planet. People think about nukes or terror attacks or whatnot, but I think mucking around with the planets food supply with GM products will eventually result in some rather nasty disasters. I simply *don't* trust those industries spokesmodel scientists to be anywhere nears truthful on the subject. IMO, they are simply too blinded by economic greed to seriously acknowledge the inherent dangers in what they are doing. We've seen the same arrogance and public assurances of "safe" with any number of past "new shiny and improved" products that turned out to be not so swift. Just generally speaking now, could be anything, thinking that just relocating species to brand new areas was a good idea (carp, english sparrows, kudzu, etc). Releasing chemcicals for various purposes, medications that turned out to be more harmful than good or had unintended side effects, etc that were missed in the "scientific testing".
I am sure they are intellectually aware of it,back to these various GM modded plants, but that itch for buckets of scratch is just too strong for them to ignore. I know they are capable of creating most anything now, and I have read some amazing claims on what they can do with them, make new medicines, etc, but still...I just don't know if *they* know way down the road how things will turn out. Here's a good analogy, well, good enough for slashdot purposes. Look at software code, people can look at it and use it for awhile and it seems fine, perfectly ok, then one day someone does something just a tad different and POOF a large vulnerability is exposed. With code (in most cases), it's not that big of a deal, it just gets fixed, but with live growing things? Wind blowing pollen around, trucks hauling stuff hither and yon...it could get messy. Look at down in Louisiana now, the last batch of hurricanes brought up a nasty disease that's spreading all through the soybeans now. Stuff happens, planetary wildcards happen. I think with "food" they should go real s-l-o-w and careful. Wouldn't bother me a bit if they studied their products for decades before even teeny tiny uber controlled trials out in the open.
As to "always be able to purchase non GM.." you should investigate what's going down in a lot of african countries and in india lately on this front. Even in Iraq, we had as thread on Iraq and farmers just a little while ago, like last month. They -monsanto they and others- are actively trying to corner "the market" there with their brands of seeds through the legislative (read:bribes) process. They are as far from playing fair as you can get. They tried to even patent a widely used Indian wheat that's been openly grown and shared around India for thousands of years, and they didn't even invent it! It's a form of wheat that lacks some markers that causes it to be not as "sticky" in baking as regular wheat, it has lower gluten content, that's where Indians get their "flat bread". Monsanto ups and patents it! Just said "ya,we own it, give us a patent" and the freekin patent office rubber stamps it! In india they are fighting it, they had to fight in in england
But there's a problem with this. He was doing what plant breeders have been doing for ten thousand years: noticing which plants have a desirable property and saving the seeds from those. Monsanto is basically arguing for the end of agriculture as it was traditionally carried out, and certainly the end of subsistence agriculture (as their seeds, if they have a property that lets them out-compete other seeds, will spread everywhere). You'll either pay Monsanto or you won't eat.
If food is marked "contains GM stuff" no one in Europe will buy it. Consequently the supermarkets don't want it. The importers don't want it, and even if the yield is higher, most farmers here don't want it cos they can't sell it. A few farmers have been bribed by Monsanto to try it out for test purposes. Several of those have joined the protest movement, not least because they contaminated their neighbours crops after being told it wouldn't happen. (Most farms in Europe are under 100 acres, so farmers have a lot of neighbours, and they are not very far away!)
Any MP/MEP caught voting for GM stuff risks losing his seat, so there is a tendency for our laws to prohibit it until its adequately tested.
The US has problems selling it to us because of consumer resistance. So they are threatening retaliation on the grounds that it is "illegal interference with free trade". Surely its interference with free trade to force people to sell what their customers won't buy?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
If Monsanto can't control the self-installation of their own products, doesn't that make their product "malware". If any other company claimed a patent on a technology that would self-install itself on other people's property without their permission, they would be sued out of existance.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
No the problem is GM and not being able to choose if you grow GM food or not, the fact GM food is of a poorer quality than organic, the fact once it's released in the wild it can't be stop.
I agree the IP law is broken, but remember you can't eat IP law.
M0571y H@rml355.
Heh, well. I've yet to meet a anti-GM activist who's opposed to science in general. There's not one single person i mett (and i know a few) who's some kind of unabomber person. Most are quite into politics one way or another though.
As for your actual statement. Lets say you're a farmer and you have 5 fields of different vegetables. Naturally, you work hard for your money and then some research project is started near 1 of your fields. One of your fields becomes 'infected' with the GM seeds. What are your choices in your situation?
1) Keep it silent and sell it differently than it is given its now GM (it should IMO be obligated to label GM food as it is. It ought to be a right to be able to know what you eat as consumer).
2) Torch the field and start over which means money loss and/or the possibility you can't use the field anymore at all because its near a GM field. The possibility of 'infection' is always there though (wind, water, humans), its just less likely when the GM field is futher away. There's no alternative to 1 or 2 which doesn't involve a lot of money ('moving away' could be one, but thats expensive).
Is such situation likely right now? Given there's no widespread GM, not yet. But one should be warry to such situations, they're theories to evade for sure.
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
You would think so.....but the law in many countries is FIRMLY slanted in Monsanto's favour. One of the key issues with genetically modified lifeforms is who pays for any dmanage done. Today, the victim wears the cost....and the "owner" of the lifeform just whistles and walks away. So if your fields are contaminated with Monsanto's seeds, YOU need to pay to have it removed - or they will sue you. Fair? Hell no.....but that is the sort of law that has been put into place while most of us were watching TV and sipping beers. We - collectively - need to wake up and pay atention.
Only boring people are ever bored.