ISIS Report 06/04/09
Percy Schmeiser is a real life hero who played David to Monsanto’s Goliath, and like David, he won Sam Burcher
Governments approve Monsanto’s GM crops
Percy Schmeiser and his wife Louise are third generation farmers from the prairies of Western Canada in the province of Saskatchewan near the city of Saskatoon. They feel really blessed not only that his grandparents moved there, but by the fact that in Central Saskatchewan so many types of grain crops can be grown; pulses, oil seeds, in what the locals call God’s Country.
The Schmeisers, like hundreds of thousands of farmers all over the world, were using their canola (oilseed rape) seed from year to year and developing new varieties suitable for climatic soil conditions on the prairies. Percy had also been the Mayor of his town for over thirty years, a member of the provincial Parliament and an active member of agricultural committees representing his province on new agricultural policy, law and regulations for the benefit of farmers.
In 1996, the Canadian Federal Government and the US Government gave regulatory approval to four genetically modified (GM) crops: soya, corn or maize, cotton and canola. At the time not all GM crops in Canada were herbicide tolerant except for Monsanto’s Roundup Ready canola and soya, both resistant to the company’s herbicide Roundup. The US Government had also approved Bt cotton and Bt corn that has the added GM toxin from Bacillus thuringenisis (Bt). The Canadian government were fully complicit in allowing Monsanto to develop GM crops on Government test plots and research stations in return for a royalty on every bushel of GM crops sold.
Monsanto versus farmer
In 1998, two years after the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Canada, the Schmeisers received a lawsuit notice from Monsanto which said that they were growing Roundup Ready canola without a licence from Monsanto and that this was a patent infringement. Monsanto had a patent on a gene to make GM canola resistant to the glyphosate herbicide in its formulation Roundup. This came as a complete surprise to the Schmeisers who immediately realised that all their research and development on canola over the past fifty years had been contaminated by Monsanto’s GMOs. They felt that they had a case against Monsanto for liability and the damages possibly caused to them, and that was the beginning of [1] Schmeiser's Battle for the Seed (SiS 19). And 10 years on, the Schmeisers have been invited to London to tell their full story [2].
The Schmeisers stood up to Monsanto’s claims of patent infringement in the Federal Court with just one judge and no jury. The pre-trial took two years to go to court in which Monsanto claimed that despite having no knowledge of Percy Schmeiser ever having obtained any GM seed, he must have used their seed on his 1 030 acres of land because ninety- eight percent of the land was GM contaminated. And, because the Schmeisers had contaminated their own seed supply with Monsanto seed, ownership of the Schmeisers seed supply reverted to Monsanto under patent law.
Read the rest of this article, and/or comment here
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/whoOwnsLifeNotMonsanto.php
GM Soya, Deforestation, Landgrab, Glyphosate Poisoning
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/roundTableOnResponsibleSoy.php
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Monsanto
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Schmeiser
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=GMOs
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=GM+Soya
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=deforestation
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=glyphosate
