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Monsanto May Have To Repay 10 Years of GM Soya Royalties In Brazil
scibri writes "Biotech giant Monsanto is one step closer to losing billions of dollars in revenues from its genetically-modified Roundup Ready soya beans, after the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled the company must repay royalties collected over the past decade. Since GM crops were legalized in 2005, Monsanto has charged Brazilian farmers royalties of 2% on their sales of Roundup Ready soya beans. The company also tests Brazilian soya beans that are sold as non-GM — if they turn out to be Roundup Ready, the company charges the farmers 3%. Farmers challenged this as an unjust tax on their business. In April a regional court ruled against Monsanto, though that ruling has been put on hold pending an appeal. The Supreme Court, meanwhile has said that whatever the final ruling is, it will apply throughout the whole country."
It's nice to see somebody standing up to Monsanto. Never has one company been so close to totally controlling the food supply for the entire planet. Their abusive practices with farmers both home and abroad have been well documented, and yet our elected leaders turn a blind eye.
I hope this happens in other countries as well.
To have one company have total control over a food source is disturbing. They essentially have a monopoly and have risked destroying non GM crops through cross-contamination and I think it should be Monsanto that should be paying damages to farmers who do not want to deal with GM crops.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
And I'm not even against GM foods, I find most of those people to be clueless Luddites. I'm just against their corrupt business model enabled by corrupt governments.
Monsanto needs to rethink their business model. While some may have emotionally based reactions toward GM in general, the consensus is that it's an essential tool in the effort to feed the world's growing population. In order to continue, Monsanto needs to stop thinking in terms of genetics as intellectual property, and being paid for wherever their genomes spread. Instead, they need to focus on their relationship with the farmer, and making that relationship essential enough to pay for on a yearly basis. Aside from the product of seed, there are a wide number of services that Monsanto can and should be providing to farmers to help ensure that yields remain high as well as managing business and ecological concerns. Instead of alienating, they should be making themselves as useful as possible.
I know patents protect against independent invention, reverse engineering, etc. but if your product produces seed that "infects" another field or wind blows those seeds to another field, you are NOT entitled to royalties on those seeds.
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So from everything I've heard and read about Monsanto, it is the epitome of evil and functions with impunity here in the US. That Brazil would be the stand up (and win) against them is very inspiring and should set an example.
However to play devil's advocate, are there any benefits to a company such as Monsanto?
By examining every United States Citizen.
If it's determined that we've eaten food that is GM'ed by Monsanto, we will all have to pay a 3% royalty for their intellectual property now being a part of our genetic makeup/biosystem.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
What?! The linked article doesn't say anything of the sort! It says:
When someone says, "Any fool can see
I generally think of Monsanto as evil. The power that Monsanto has over large portions of the global food supply frightens me. That said, the "Roundup Ready" gene is really useful to farmers. People complain about Monsanto's use of terminator seeds, patents, lawsuits, etc. only because it is so difficult to compete without using Monsanto's products. Otherwise, no would care.
Soya beans and civilization in Brazil are both older than Monsanto. The Brazilian state could have banned the import, distribution, and cultivation of GMOs - but it did not. And Brazilian farmers could have used their existing seeds, but they did not. They used the piper's awesome seeds. Given what I know about Brazilian politics and trade practices, and human nature, I suspect this case is rooted more in the desire not to pay that piper than in actual law.
Monsanto doesn't need to rethink their business model. When it comes to greed and capitalism, they have succeeded. They're raking in gigantic profits. Why should they change?
It's the countries that allow this which need to rethink whether they want to allow Monsanto - which they should not. Businesses which are anticompetitive are supposed to be penalized by antitrust, etc.
If the GMO soya beans can be shown to be contamination, like a small fraction primarily adjacent to road or property boundaries, perhaps Monsanto should be charged 3% for spoiling exportability to Europe or as "non GMO organic". Monsanto should be required to show that its current license fees relate to unexpired patents.
I am surprised there are not more fat crocodiles in Brazil full of Monsanto nonGMO long pig.
Monsanto is a subject that has so much hyperbole on both sides (usually those against GMOs), calling the Monsanto pollen a "contaminant" is way overboard and doesn't make much sense at all. Saying Monsanto doesn't attack small farmers is a bit of a stretch, but all companies abuse copyright/patent laws. Just loosen up the laws, reform copyright, patents, licensing, etc. This is not as easy as "it's a contaminant!, let farmers sue!" (and wouldn't they sue the -other- farmer anyhow? Not Monsanto?) Instead it a genuine problem across the spectrum of commerce. From Apple, Motorola, Microsoft and yes, Monsanto. Intellectual property rights are a relatively new idea, and it's going to take decades for it to be sorted out to be more optimal.
Monsanto designed these seeds to be sterile, ...
I can't believe this post was moderated "Informative".
The seed are not sterile! Are perfect fertile seeds Else they would be useless.
Why farmer will buy sterile seed? Why Monsanto will prosecute farmers who re-used his sterile seeds without paying royalties?
MOD THE CHILD UP!
Instead of doing the impossible tasks of charging people for seeds in developing countries, they should just accept the loss and focus on making a profit on selling them RoundUp.
Suppose a company creates a way to insert a gene into a human egg, perhaps to imbue some immunity to a disease or correct for a genetic defect. Under the current law, the company could patent their new gene. Add according to Monsanto, that person's children would be using the company's gene and would have to pay a royalty for their own existence.
Each of those statements alone is true of some GM crops (particularly, crops engineered specifically to increase quantities of a particular nutrient are often "more nutritious", and those engineered specifically to resist locally-prominent pests have been shown to reduce the quantity of broad-spectrum pesticides used and that therefore contaminate the environment.) They aren't generally true of the same GM crops, and for many GM crops, the opposite of one or more of those statements is true. For instance, Monsanto's best-known GM product -- RoundUp-Ready crops -- which are expressly designed to resist a particular broad-spectrum herbicide, which Monsanto also has a big business selling -- and, until the patent expired in 2000, also a legally-protected monopoly -- have been shown to vastly increase the use of (and, consequently, the environmental impacts of) the broad spectrum herbicide.
Reread the linked article there. It doesn't say anything about cocoa farmers. It says something about coca farmers. There's a bit of a difference between the two crops.
Say that after your crop lost 30% of its value because it got a positive for GMO testing.
And yes, the devaluing is severe, mostly because lots of European countries that won't accept it anymore.
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Sure, Monsanto are the baddies for extorting farmers. If that 'd be just the usual human competition where arguably one party is pulling every dirty trick in the book, then I'd be fine. But I'm not.
One cannot foresee the effects that GM will have on the longer term and on a global scale. Sure, time will tell. And when time comes knocking, Monsanto's capital will have shifted into manager's pockets, the company will never be able to cover damages, it will fold and another Monsanto will rear up.
It's not so much the dirty games that concern me but more the extraordinary risks contained in GM that worry me. Speeding up or bypassing evolution could leave us all screwed by a couple of idiots saying they could never have known. Indeed they couldn't have.
Legislation shouldn't be there to simply block everything but it should control bastards from taking risks they will never be able to carry. Financial wizardry which can cause global crises and GM which can cause global famine are the two fields to be protected from ruthless idiots.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
What I mainly think is that if Monsanto wants their crops to be considered as their property, a farmer should be able to sue to "get your property off my field".
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I still don't understand how it works in the first place. people can get charged for products they never bought, or even made concious effort to aquire simply out of someone elses due negligence. Then we have the idea you can own a DNA pattern, or have exclusive rights to a speices, sub-species or other type of living organism. this is more than milding disturbing
or Brazil is found to be harboring Al-Qaeda and hiding weapons of mass destruction?