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300k Organic Farmers To Sue Monsanto For Seed Patent Claims
microphage writes "Monsanto went after hundreds of farmers for infringing on their patented seed after audits revealed that their farms had contained their product — as a result of routine pollination by animals and acts of nature. Unable to afford a proper defense, competing small farms have been bought out by the company in droves. As a result, Monsanto saw their profits increase by the hundreds of millions over the last few years as a result. Between 1997 and 2010, Monsanto tackled 144 organic farms with lawsuits and investigated roughly 500 plantations annually during that span with a so-called 'seed police.'"
So what you're telling me is, all I have to do is develop an easily identifiable genetic strain of a common farm plant, copyright it, then let it pollinate whatever and wherever it can, and then I can sue EVERYONE? Forever?
Time to start reading up on genetic engineering!
Well, the very fact that second-hand seed is disallowed already is evil. So no grey in this case.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
300,000 plaintiffs... Monsanto has made a lot of enemies with their tactics. He who lives with the lawsuit...
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
No they aren't sterile. The terminator gene got SO MUCH bad press that they never were able to use it.
When you say "you cannot patent life", do you mean "you should not be able to patent life"? My understanding is that you can, in fact, patent life other than a fully-formed human being -- all other life forms are patentable. But perhaps I am happily incorrect.
It's frightening that genetically-engineered crops have become so prevalent as to contaminate small-scale organic farms. The intellectual property arguments are obvious, but more concerning is the health risks. Compared with thousands of years of human agricultural co-evolution, these modifications are nowhere near as thoroughly-tested. Food crops nowadays are even modified to produce their own pesticides! There are likely very consequential side-effects lurking that will only appear generations later. Organic farmers, the ones that don't cheat, are doing us all a service by maintaining pure strains of our most important crops. Surely everyone should want to support this and protect them against contamination.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Yes you can, in a limited way. You can patent genetic modifications. And that's what this is all about.
The problem here is that there's no foolproof way to prevent this variation of copyright infringement. (Monsanto is like the RIAA of the farm) And so they've bought the laws stacked heavily in their favor to make sure they can legally go after everyone they're entitled to, at a cost of being able to go after a lot of innocents as well. (one of my pet peeves, overly broad laws)
In this case the big issue is that if a farmer has a field near a Monsanto field, the wind WILL (not slim chance, not might, not maybe, WILL) cross-pollinate with some of the corn in his field. Then the goons can come in and find a kernel or two that contain DNA from their patented field, and by the law that makes you breaking the law and owing damagesa. So now the little farmer gets extorted out of his land. And that's just how the laws have been bought onto the books. It's not right, but that's the law now.
This isn't like music downloading where 95% is infringing and they're trying to hide under the "5% of it is lawful so you have to allow it" umbrella. There is a significant percentage of "unavoidable unintentional infringing" going on and companies like Monsanto abuse the law to their advantage as a result.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
It's alive and outside of anyone's control. The plants go where they want to. This is the basic problem with granting patents of this kind. The "product" spreads and infests everyone else's property. Pretty soon, you are stuck planting contaminated seed stock or nothing.
NO. It's it's Monsanto that should be getting judgements against farmers, it's farmers and entire countries that should be getting judgements against Monsanto.
This whole nonsense is like saying that Cheney owns your house just because his dog sh*t in your yard.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And meanwhile, these seeds are about as healthy as dioxin.
Exaggerate much?
Monsanto should be the ones who have to pay those farmers for contaminating their fields.
But of course we're talking about the USA, where justice is but a distant memory and bribery is now known as lobbying.
You can even patent body parts - guy found that a hospital patented an unusual genetic quirk of his while studying his blood...
ButButBut, he didn't BUY the seeds, he LICENSED them!
That if any pollen from monsanto crops were to stray onto my property, that is a form of industrial pollution. It's worse for my farm than radioactive fallout.
The damages should be in the millions, as now every grain of pollen must be removed. It's no different than if some asshole is crop dusting with toxic chemicals, and the toxins blow all over your land, and render your crops unusable. The soil needs to be dug up to a minimum 3 feet, hauled away, stored indefinetely, and replaced with arable soil.
It has altered the biological nature of the crops in an unnatural way -- it is a toxic by-product of Monsanto's business. An organic farm would be irrepairably ruined by such an act.
It should be assumed that farmers did not illicitly buy Monsanto seed - as we have an assumption of innocence. It should be assumed that Monsanto knows, that absent extreme measures, there will be cross pollination and contamination of neighbouring farms. They should be liable for this widespread damage.
As long as Monsanto is picking up the tab, I'm fine with them winning lawsuits in the cases where it can be shown the farmer intentionally sowed their seed without "consent".
For all those who think that because they can't see the problems with GMO there's nothing to worry about, this is one of the most important things to grasp.
Millennia of co-evolution is why all those soft-headed hippies are so keen on "whoa, man, natural". It's extremely thorough testing of interoperability. Not only that, it's continued refinement, of both plants and humans, so that the co-evolved plants approach ideal foods for the co-evolved humans. Ironically, rather a sophisticated scientific concept that these hippies grokked out intuitively.
It's not necessarily Luddite or anti-technology to be opposed to GMO and other "scientific" advances in food. Opposition may be based on a deeper understanding of how these systems operate.
The contempt that GMO advocates have for their opposition is embarrassingly hypocritical. It's a special kind of ignorance that leads one to believe that a lack of seeing problems is the same thing as an actual absence of problems. Folks, these are complex systems.
"What could possibly go wrong?"
Organic does not mean no pesticides. There are pesticides that are certified organic, see here.
Some organic pesticides can cause cancer. Others are extremely toxic to surrounding wild life due to runoff. Organic pesticides may require more applications than equivalent non-organic pesticides.
I am not saying to not eat organic, but everyone needs to understand what "Organic" does and does not mean. And that term is under constant attack by large scale commercial farming organizations to water it down as much as they can. And most organic farms are not owning up to exactly how much organic pesticides they actually use. Or even disclosing the use of such pesticides.
Not necessarily. Organic food has gotten the notice of big business. With so many Monsanto lobbyists working in the federal gov't & Obama administration, expect to see attempts to weaken organic standards. http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_24575.cfm
Genetically modified is just creative breeding
You are so wrong.
Regular breeding is the breeding of existing varieties of a species in the hope to achieve a better offspring
Genetic modification is done in a laboratory at microscopic level, right at the genes and often genetic traits of non-related species are put in the mix.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
If my farm's product is supposed to be organic, wholly natural agricultural products, imagine the damages resulting from finding out that said farm is actually producing genetically modified produce. Why, that could destroy the whole farm, not just the current crop.
Countersue. Monsanto's product was not adequately controlled and got out of control. Why, there might even be some (extremely major) criminal liability on Montsanto's part.
IANAL.
SEC. 2105. 7 U.S.C. 6504 NATIONAL STANDARDS FOR ORGANIC PRODUCTION.
To be sold or labeled as an organically produced agricultural product under this title, an agricultural product shall --
(1) have been produced and handled without the use of synthetic chemicals, except as otherwise provided in this title;
(2) except as otherwise provided in this title and excluding livestock, not be produced on land to which any prohibited substances, including synthetic chemicals, have been applied during the 3 years immediately preceding the harvest of the agricultural products; and
(3) be produced and handled in compliance with an organic plan agreed to by the producer and handler of such product and the certifying agent.
I see nothing in that definition that prohibits "genetically modified" seed being used. In addition, the CFR seems to be most interested in restriction who can used the official USDA "organic" label, not in what can be referred to as "organic".
Interestingly, the "pesticide-built-in" plants are already losing their effect on pests which are now becoming "super-pests." There was a story here on slashdot a few weeks ago I believe.
It's amazing to me that current science fails to appreciate the power of nature to overcome our tweaking and fiddling. We have been seeing this for decades with antibiotics and more recently with poisons. So before long, the "value" of Monsanto GM seed will be lost while we selectively breed super-pests which will be even harder to kill and/or manage. Will Monsanto be penalized for creating these super-pests? I doubt it.
It's not necessarily only about whether it is "safe for human consumption." There are other considerations that make GM foods like these a BAD IDEA.
My neighbor's dog come into my yard and damage my yard...my neighbor has to pay for restitution
Mosanto pollen come to my yard and modify/damage my plant and its output...Mosanto has to pay for restitution, No ?
Or should it that i have to pay Mosanto for the opportunity of getting my plant screwed up without asking for it ?
Logical legal and patent system please.....please
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You, sir, are categorically wrong. I have known a family for years, with their own fields dedicated to seed production, that were entrapped in Monsanto's corruption. Their own land. Their own seed. Their own equipment.
They were threatened with a lawsuit, and they could not afford the money to defend themselves. Everyone around them was using Monsanto seed- they were positive it meant their crops had been contaminated with whatever blew over the fences over the 40-plus years their family had owned the operation.
One is now a cashier at Walmart. The other tries to be a woodworker. They don't raise seed on the place anymore- they lease it to someone who uses Monsanto seed.
ButButBut, he didn't BUY the seeds, he LICENSED them!
You're modded "Funny", but that's actually Monsanto's argument.
The scary thing is that the scientific studies that are peer reviewed about gmo's is shockingly close to zero.
Some of the gmo's are possibly a lot better for you and some are possibly as bad as the grand parent post claims, and the industry doesn't seem to want to know, which leads to some uncomfortable thoughts about the safety of our food supply and monocrops that are enabled by gmo's.
Did you know that if a five digit PLU code starts with the number 8 it is GMO, but nobody uses that code, the idea was that maybe GMO foods would be higher in vitamins or have some other positive value and be worth more to consumers. The reality is that food industry believes that if it was easy to tell if food was GMO it would not sell except at very steep discount. Sort of like Chinese peppers are about 1/5 the price of peppers grown in Chile in the San Francisco area (at least at the stores I shop at.)
The food industry's behavior around GMO food is similar enough to how the tobacco industry behaved that people are very suspicious of GMO foods.
If the food industry was willing to have clear labels on all GMO food maybe there would be some studies that would allow us to say what GMO food is and isn't fit for human consumption. Some of it is probably fine, some of it probably not so.
Work bio at MMWD
Remeber that _tiny_ test plot of Bayer Life Sciences unapproved for consumption GMO rice that managed to contaminate the entire states rice supply in sufficient quantity that the states entire crop was wasted.
Hmmm... a tiny test plot, and and entire states crop ruined.
Some of that may have happened here too.
Monsanto GMO pollen trespasses on the organic farmers land, contaminating his crop. Farmer collects the seed. Seed exchanged with other farmers (genetic diversity is a good thing normally). Now the contaminated seed has spread well beyond the original farm.
Monsanto should have to pay for the cleanup of its contamination. And any losses the farmers suffered.
Wild rape seed in Canada is GMO now, due to "Roundup Ready" genes hopping over from GMO Canola. Containing GMO is a fantasy. And the costs for GMO contamination are born by the innocent party who was damaged in our corrupt corporate run country / world.
Indeed they should be able to.
Unfortunately there is a certain asymmetry in the legal resources that can be deployed by Monsanto and by the small farmers.
I believe that when there is crop contamination of an organic farm it takes a very long time to re-establish the accreditation and all that time results in loss of earning that ought to be compensated by Monsanto, imo. Let;s add to that the cost to reputation, some opportunity costs, etc...
I hope Monsanto has enough money to cover all those for all those farm that have been and will be contaminated even by a single GM plant found on their fields.
The legalization of GM crop is one of the most idiotic output of the legal system. There is no way that cross contamination will not occur, even without any action by a legitimate organic farmer. What is worse, it will increase and spread. It is totally impossible to contain... the genie is out of the bottle and he is not benign, far from it.
The Monsantos of the world will be perceived in the future as worse than cigarettes companies are now, they have unleashed an uncontainable plague.