errorPercy Schmeiser: Canadian Farmer Fights Back
Judge Finds Him Guilty of Infringing Monsanto’s Patent on a Seed He Never Planted

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2001 by Zenger’s Newsmagazine • Used by permission

Percy Schmeiser never expected to become a cause célèbre in the battle over genetic engineering of the world’s food supply and the “right” of companies to patent life forms. He was your average farmer in Bruno, an agricultural community in the Canadian province (state) of Saskatchewan. In his 70’s, he’d been growing rape — the source plant for canola oil — for over 50 years, and his main concerns were keeping his farm going long enough to retire and make sure he had a legacy for his five children and 14 grandchildren.

Then, sometime in the late 1990’s, a stray seed or bit of pollen from Monsanto’s trademarked and patented Roundup Ready canola drifted onto his land and cross-pollinated with one of Schmeiser’s own plants. Monsanto’s private investigator, a former Mountie from Saskatoon (the state capital of Saskatchewan), trespassed onto Schmeiser’s land (as well as the fields of other farmers in the area), stole some of his crop and had it tested to see if it contained Monsanto’s patented gene sequence. It did.

Monsanto took Schmeiser to court in 1998, alleging that he’d stolen their seed and infringed on their patent. They quickly dropped the theft allegation, but on March 29 a Canadian federal judge issued a sweeping ruling that the mere presence of a canola plant with Monsanto’s gene on Schmeiser’s farm was enough to prove patent infringement. Schmeiser was forced to give up all the profits from his 1998 canola crop to Monsanto — about $105,000 — and may be forced to pay Monsanto’s court costs, about $200,000, as well.

“The judge ruled it didn’t matter how Monsanto’s seed got on my field,” Schmeiser explained. “If my plants are cross-pollinated with their seed, they become Monsanto’s property. If I have a conventionally grown plant and it becomes cross-pollinated, it becomes Monsanto’s property. If I buy a genetically engineered seed from another company and that plant becomes cross-pollinated with Monsanto’s gene, that becomes Monsanto’s property.

According to Schmeiser, the judge in his case ruled that even though at most 1 percent of his crop was contaminated by Monsanto’s biotechnically altered gene, Monsanto was owed his entire crop because there was a “probability” that all his plants contained their gene. “If a direct seed from Monsanto’s GMO seed blows in my field and produces a plant, my entire crop becomes Monsanto’s property,” he explained.

The ruling also forbids Schmeiser to plant any more canola that he knows or should know contains Monsanto’s altered genes. That essentially prevents him from growing canola at all, unless he can plant it from seeds he developed himself before his crops became cross-pollinated with Monsanto’s genetically modified canola.

“This year I contacted two seed companies and asked for seed without contamination from genetically modified varieties, and they told me there isn’t any,” Schmeiser said. “All Canadian and U.S. seeds for canola and soybeans are contaminated with Monsanto’s genes. So I went for my seeds to a crop I grew last year on land I had not had canola on before.”

According to Schmeiser, Monsanto’s agricultural policies have more far-reaching implications than just their effect on himself and other independent farmers. “Monsanto admitted at my trial that when they released their canola seeds they knew they could not control them — and now they’re out of control,” Schmeiser said. “Genetic engineering will totally destroy the organic movement. There’s no way of stopping genetically engineered seeds from moving into non-genetically engineered crops. Genetically engineered farming, conventional farming and organic farming cannot coexist. As a farmer for 53 years, I know what I’m talking about.”

Asked how Monsanto got other Canadian farmers to grow their genetically modified canola in the first place, Schmeiser not only exposed the false information their agents gave farmers but also pointed to the hazards Monsanto’s policies pose to the overall environment.

“Monsanto originally told farmers the genetically modified canola would be more nutritious and a bigger yielder,” he said. “Now they’ve found out the total opposite. Because of cross-pollination between various genetically modified canolas from Monsanto and other companies, canola has turned into a superweed. We have six to eight times more contamination from agricultural chemicals than we had before, and in some areas of Canada chemical runoff from farms is the biggest single polluter in the water table.”

What’s Monsanto’s motive in all of this? Schmeiser is convinced it goes beyond simple corporate greed. “They’re after control,” he explained. “They want to make sure a farmer never uses his own seed. Monsanto is a chemical company and in the last three years they’ve spent $8 to $9 billion buying up seed companies. … Everything comes from seed, and in the end I look at it as control of the seed supply. … If you control the seed supply, you have control of the country’s food supply, and that means you have control of the country.”

Schmeiser pointed to the exploitative contracts farmers who buy Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds have to sign. These not only specify that a farmer can’t save seeds from this year’s crop for next year’s planting, they also give Monsanto’s agents the right to come onto a farmer’s land any time they want to, without advance warning or permission, to make sure the farmer isn’t saving seed or otherwise violating the contract. The contracts force farmers to pay Monsanto a “technology charge” of $15 per acre, on top of the price of the seeds themselves.

Perhaps most important, if they farmers using Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds spray a glyphosate herbicide over the top of their plants — which is the whole point of the technology: to make the farmer’s plants resistant to the herbicide so weeds die and the farmer’s plantings don’t — it has to be Monsanto’s own branded Roundup, even though their patent on Roundup ran out in 2000 and cheaper generic versions of the chemical are now available. The reason, according to scientist and genetic engineering opponent Brian Tokar: “Monsanto is still dependent on Roundup for something like two-thirds of its operating income. Their corporate bottom line is completely dependent on the sales of this one herbicide.”

Schmeiser filed an appeal of the ruling against him with the Federal Court of Canada on June 19. He’s also pursuing a countersuit against Monsanto in provincial court. His appeal centers mainly on the liability issue, he explained. “This is destroying farmers’ crops. I was a seed saver and developer, and because my canola crops were contaminated I lost 53 years of seed development and got sued in the bargain. … Farmers in North America are developers of seed. Historically, seed development came from farmers, not research scientists. If you get into a situation where farmers cannot save their own seed, you lose a lot of production.”

One of Schmeiser’s other concerns is the ability of Canadian farmers to sell to the international market — especially in Europe, where public opposition to genetic engineering has led to sweeping bans on imports of genetically modified food. “We can no longer sell any canola into Europe,” he explained. “All our sales have been cut off by the European Union. The price of canola has dropped by one-half in a year’s time. The economic impact runs into the billions of dollars. Many farmers have stopped growing canola because of Monsanto’s policy — and the government’s policy of mixing genetically modified and non-genetically modified canola at the processing level.”

Schmeiser sees his case as one of liberty and basic human rights. “My ancestors came from Europe to be free of this kind of control from landowners,” he said. “I’ve told farmers they should never give up the right to save their seed, or they’ll become serfs of the land. … “Even though you have a patent on a life-giving form, that does not give you the right to destroy another person’s property. … A lot of farmers don’t realize the true value of property rights.

“I’m 70 years old, and I don’t know how many good years I have left, but I think it’s totally wrong for farmers to lose their rights to a multinational corporation. I have five children and 14 grandchildren, and do I want to leave them a legacy of a land filled with poison — or a land without poison?”

How can Monsanto get away with this? Do the patent laws
really give them these kinds of sweeping rights? And the other
provisions of their exclusive licensing sound like the kinds of
tactics that landed Microsoft in hot water with antitrust
regulators in the US.

The poor farmer in Canada has but one chance to defend what is right.

Percy Schmeiser is a common thief. Over 95% of his field tested positive for Roundup-Ready soy, and the nearest biotech field was over 5 miles away!

Tell it to the judge, Percy. You were BUSTED, and rightly so.

MR.SCHMEISER is a hero to us all. It is time for us to take the twisted logic of monstrous corporations and challenge them on all levels. Mr. Schmeiser's case should set a precedent to protect all farmers from genetically altered frankenfoods. We still have a few small farmers in Mendocino and are saving loads of local seed. We support Mr. Schmeiser's bravery, his truth and his search for justice. We will be triumphant. The whole world is rising up. Yippee!!!

According to this article, the judge ruled that how it got there
is no excuse. It seems that Chuck U Farley disagrees with the
judge in the case, because he disputes only Percy Schmeiser's
claim that the wind carried the mutant pollen into his field. Whereas,
the judge ruled that if Schmeiser knowingly OR unknowingly
profited from Monsanto's legal monopoly on mutant canola,
he must abide by their licensing terms and pay the same as any
other farmer who deliberately planted it.

The genetic contamination which affected Percy Schmeisser's crops has become so widespread, and the GM plants are so difficult to remove because they are resistant to the Roundup herbicide, that Monsanto is now offering to send crews to affected farms to hand-pull the intruding plants, which, weed-like, are interfering with crops other than canola.

In just a rew years, their "masterpiece" of genetic engineering has achieved the status of a pest.

Ironic, no?

Chuck Farley's email address apparently does not exist. So I'd not take his remarks too seriously. However, I've heard contradictory accounts of the Schmeiser case. I can't remember the source off hand, but one article I read says the judge ruled that the large amount of crops on Schmeiser's land showed it couldn't be accounted for by incidental cross-polination. In which case, it was probably the right ruling. Has anybody got the full scoop on this?

-Joel Hanson

Here's an update on Percy -- informative audio interview with him at Bioneers:

http://portland.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=37286&group=webcast