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Seed battle heads to Canada's highest court
(Sunday, Aug. 3, 2003 -- CropChoice news) -- Tim Hirsch, BBC News, 08/01/03: A single farmer from the Canadian Prairies is preparing to take on a
mighty biotech corporation in his country's Supreme Court.
Percy Schmeiser, a sprightly 72-year-old from Bruno, Saskatchewan, has
become a hero to the anti-GM movement worldwide for resisting Monsanto's
attempts to enforce its patent rights over the seeds it promotes.
The outcome of the case could have major implications not just for
genetically modified crops, but for the patenting of genetic techniques
in many other areas.
Mr Schmeiser's battle with Monsanto dates back to 1998, when it accused
him of planting the company's genetically modified canola (oilseed rape)
on his land without permission, and demanded that he pay it the same fee
required of those growing GM crops under contract.
He refused, saying that he had simply followed his usual practice of
collecting seeds from his own crop to plant for the following year, and
that it must have become contaminated from GM canola grown nearby.
Legal fields
Mr Schmeiser told BBC News Online: "I was very concerned, because we
realised that there was contamination of the pure seed we had been
developing for half a century.
"We said to Monsanto when we received the law suit, 'if you have any
GMOs in our pure seed, you should be liable and there should be a law
suit against you people'."
Monsanto claimed the level of herbicide resistance in the crop was such
that it could not have happened accidentally, but the company did not
prove this in court - it did not need to.
Because the judge in the original case ruled that it did not matter how
the seed came to be in Mr Schmeiser's field, he was deemed to have
infringed the company's patent rights simply by growing and harvesting
it without permission.
It made no difference that he did not spray the crop with Monsanto's
Roundup weedkiller and therefore did not benefit from the altered
genetic structure of the plant.
Unwelcome 'volunteers'
Stuart Wells, of the Canadian National Farmers' Union, says the ruling
has deterred some farmers from complaining when they find unwanted GM
"volunteers" or "weeds" in their fields.
"I suspect that there are a lot of farmers who are not even reporting
contamination to Monsanto because they don't want a company with the
control they have to know that they have been polluted.
"It's sort of a Catch-22 situation, if the farmer has no control
whatsoever, and might end up in the sort of trouble that Monsanto is
heaping on Percy Schmeiser."
Monsanto itself says it will never pursue farmers when GM seeds
accidentally appear on their land, but says it will protect its patent
rights when its technology is deliberately misappropriated.
Might and mouse
Mr Schmeiser's lawyers will argue in the Supreme Court that companies
have no right to patent an entire plant, and they have been heartened by
a recent ruling from the same court involving the "Harvard Mouse".
In that case, Harvard University claimed a patent on a mouse genetically
altered to make it more susceptible to cancer for use in medical
research, but the court ruled that a "higher life form" could not be
classed as an invention.
Percy Schmeiser has had to mortgage much of his land to pay his legal
fees, and admits that the five-year battle has caused enormous stress,
but he says he does not regret it.
"We felt that what we were fighting for was not only for ourselves, but
for farmers around the world, for their right to use their own seed.
That's why we stood up to them." | |
