November
2002
Percy vs. Monsanto: The New
David and Goliath
The Satya Interview with Percy
Schmeiser |
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Remember the story of the Canadian farmer whose crops
were contaminated by genetically altered canola, and was sued by Monsanto,
one of the largest
bioengineering companies, for violating their Genetically Modified Organism
(GMO) patent? Did you know that the judge and appellate court ruled in
Monsanto’s favor? That’s right, they ruled that farmers have
to pay Monsanto for the use of their GMO seeds even if their crops were
contaminated without their knowledge or will. Kind of crazy, right?
Percy Schmeiser is the Canadian farmer from Bruno, Saskatchewan,
who was sued, and he’s got a story to tell. What’s
even more disconcerting is that 500 other North American farmers
are experiencing the same story;
and millions of farmers worldwide may find themselves in the same situation
as well. But Monsanto chose the wrong guy to pick on.
Thin and plain-spoken, 71-year-old Percy Schmeiser is taking a
multibillion-dollar corporate giant all the way to the Canadian
Supreme Court. As more and more
countries grapple with the issue of GMOs, Percy has addressed governments
worldwide, from Central America, to Europe and Africa, to explain his precedent-setting
case, the outcome of which will determine the fate of the world’s farmers
and the global food supply. Catherine Clyne met Percy in San Francisco at
last month’s annual Bioneers conference, which focuses on environmental
issues worldwide, and was fortunate enough to get him to tell his story.
Could you tell us about your story?
I was a developer of canola seed for over half a century, and my
wife and I had developed our own varieties of seed, adaptable to
soil and climatic
conditions, and resistant to several diseases that we had in western Canada.
In 1998, Monsanto laid a lawsuit against us. They stated that I was growing
Monsanto’s genetically altered canola without a license and therefore
had infringed on their patent. That was quite a surprise to us because we
never ever had nothing to do with Monsanto and at that time we didn’t
even know there was such a thing as a patent on seeds. Sure, there were regulations
for seeds, like registration, certification and so on. So we were very concerned
that GMO canola was mixed with our pure seed, and we said to Monsanto’s
reps that if they polluted and contaminated our pure seed, then there’s
a liability issue.
Monsanto originally said in the lawsuit that we had stolen their
seed, but in two years of pre-trial, Monsanto withdrew all those
allegations—that
I had ever obtained seed illegally. They went on to say that the allegations
were false; but they said that did not matter, that because some of Monsanto’s
GMO canola plants were in the ditch along my field, I violated the patent.
What really alarmed people, not only in North America, but also
around the world, was the judge’s ruling (basic patent laws are the same in many
countries), which was later on appealed. He ruled that it does not matter
how Monsanto’s GMO canola gets into any farmer’s field—from
cross-pollination, direct seed movement (by wind especially, birds, bees,
animals, floods, etc.)—it becomes Monsanto’s property, even though
it destroys your pure seed against your wishes. So that was a startling decision.
He said that even if a farmer or gardener doesn’t know that he has
contamination, he still violates the patent. Now the fourth part, which really
hurt my wife and myself, was he ruled that all my seeds and plants, all my
profit from my 1998 crop goes to Monsanto, and I could not use my seeds again;
and if I wanted to grow canola, I would have to buy seeds from a seed company
or from Monsanto. So what it really meant is total control of the seed supply
by Monsanto and ultimately the food supply.
To get the reasoning straight; if this
is the law, then in time all crops that are contaminated—canola,
soy, whatever—are going to become the property of Monsanto.
How are people supposed to prevent this from happening?
It’s impossible, because once you introduce a life-giving form (when
you put a patent on a gene or you introduce a GMO seed or plant), you cannot
contain it. It doesn’t matter what crop it is, you cannot contain it
because you cannot contain the wind, you cannot contain pollen flow—pollen
can travel for miles and miles. The other thing is that you cannot have coexistence;
it’s either GMOs or no GMOs. Now to [show] you how extreme it has become,
it’s already a fact that in Canada, organic farmers can no longer grow
soybeans and canola. Some testing was just completed at the University of
Manitoba. They found that 32 out of 33 registered, certified-pedigree canola
stocks from different companies are now contaminated with GMOs.
The judge ruled that a farmer ought to know if his seed is contaminated,
and if it is, it is all contaminated. So he violates Monsanto’s patent
unless he buys the seed from them. That means he also has to buy the chemical—to
use Monsanto’s patented seed, a farmer has to use Monsanto’s
RoundUp Ready herbicide, which kills all green plants except GMO soybeans
or GMO canola. Now in my case, this year is the first since 1947 that I have
not been able to grow a canola crop, because the seed is contaminated. The
only way I could have grown it this year would have been if I had gone to
Monsanto, but there’s no way that I would ever grow GMOs.
Are you afraid that the GM stuff that
blew into your fields is going to contaminate your soil as well?
It has; that is a big problem, especially with canola. When you
harvest canola, you have a lot of shelling, and it can lie in the
soil without germinating
for five or ten years, so you may think you are rid of GMOs but in five or
ten years you’ll have seeds that will germinate again, and you’ll
never get rid of it.
Now there’s a very important question that should be asked—why
were GMOs introduced? Farmers never asked for them; it was the multinationals
that pushed the doorknob, and when regulatory approval was given in 1996,
the farmers were told: first of all, it would be a bigger yield, secondly,
it would be more nutritious, and thirdly, less chemicals. You’ll hear
the industry promoting that yet, and it is a total falsehood. Within two
years, farmers found it was a poorer yield, up to 15 percent less; it was
not more nutritious (how could a plant become more nutritious when all you
do is put in a gene to keep it from dying if you spray a certain herbicide
on it?), and thirdly, we are now using more chemicals than ever. Canola has
developed into a superweed—a plant that has taken on the GMO genes
from two or three companies, and now it takes a multitude of chemicals to
try and control it. And worst of all, loss of biodiversity—our loss
of pure and indigenous seeds. So the whole plan with the introduction of
GMOs was not for increased yield or less chemicals, and we farmers were naïve
in 1996 to believe that. What chemical company would ever come out with a
policy where they would sell less chemicals—their shareholders wouldn’t
stand for it. Monsanto now is the second largest seed company in the world;
their patent has run out on the RoundUp Ready herbicide, and how they can
maintain their sales of RoundUp (equal to 50 percent of their profit worldwide)
is to control the seed supply, so that farmers have to buy their herbicide.
How are your fellow farmers faring?
Well there is really a big concern—if a farmer signs a contract with
Monsanto to grow any GMO crop, and he contaminates his organic or conventional
neighbor, they don’t know who’s going to be responsible for the
liability. Monsanto is saying they’re not responsible—the regulatory
approval they got from the government (from both our nations) allowed for
the unconditional release of GMOs into the environment. So now there’s
that big issue—fear: farmers not talking to one another about what
they’re doing, because it is very difficult to prove, if a farmer gets
contamination in his land, if it came from his neighbor or from five miles
down the road. But you would be hard-pressed to find one field in western
Canada now that is not contaminated. That’s meant increased use of
chemicals, and increased cost even to municipalities, universities, and shelter
belts and golf courses, because this new superweed has spread into our towns
and our cities, so everybody now—not only farmers—has a new problem
and new expense, and can’t control it.
With something like this you would expect
farmers to band together in outrage; is that what’s happening?
Yes. The National Farmers Union of Canada has taken a very strong
stand, and the organic farmers have launched a class-action lawsuit
against Monsanto
and Aventis on the liability issue. A patent does not give them the right
to introduce life-giving forms into the environment, where they destroy the
property of others. Indigenous people are also very concerned over the loss
of indigenous seeds. And canola has very close cousins like radishes, turnips,
cauliflower and so on, so now it’s cross-pollinating into those crops.
It just goes on and on and on.
It sounds like the ruling that came out
of your lawsuit was absolutely backwards, and yet this liability
case sounds correct and rational. What do you think is going to
happen?
My case is now in the process of what we call “leave of appeal” to
the Supreme Court of Canada, where all the issues would be addressed, not
just points of law, but the whole issue of how the introduction of GMOs has
affected society, the consumer, the environment, property rights and everything.
It’s also the issue of putting a life-giving form into the environment;
and then, can you patent a life-giving form in the first place? Patenting
was originally for an invention, now they’re patenting just discoveries.
We are told that there are over 500 lawsuits in North America that Monsanto
has laid against farmers and other individuals on patent infringement—the
same as mine—but basically they’re all on hold until they say
what happens with my case, so it’s a very precedent-setting case.
Now there’s another important issue that came out in my trial. In Canada
you cannot patent a seed or a plant, but you can patent a gene. So Monsanto
has come in through the back door, they say that when they put a gene into
a seed, they have invented the seed. But Monsanto never developed the canola
seed, they just put their gene into it, and when the seed becomes the plant,
there’s a transfer of the GMO gene into the plant. They then say they
have invented the plant. That plant and that seed could have thousands of
other genes, but by inserting one gene they claim total ownership. How ludicrous
can you get? But that is what is before the court, and that is what the judges
upheld, the total control of the seed supply through the insertion of one
gene.
We—my wife and I—plan to go ahead with a lawsuit against
Monsanto on the liability issue, because they destroyed a half-century
of our work
in developing a new seed.
When will the liability trial begin?
We plan to go ahead the first part of the year, and my liability
issue against Monsanto is going to cost roughly about U.S. $55,000.
I have to raise that
money, and it’s very hard to find a lawyer that will work for nothing.
But I’m sure I can raise that from the world community, from farmers,
organizations throughout the world, because my case is no longer a Percy
Schmeiser case, it’s a case for farmers, property rights, and control
of the seed supply, for people throughout the world.
It’s all on the issue of the control of the seed supply and
a lot of nations around the world are very concerned about the
loss of biodiversity.
And as a farmer for half a century, I know that if you get down to one or
two varieties of any seed or plant and you have a disease or a blight, you
have nothing to fall back on, and we could have some major major problems
later on. Instead of increasing our food supply, what we are doing is a danger
of decreasing our food supply.
You’ve mentioned that Monsanto’s attack on each farmer
is fragmenting the social fabric of rural communities. Can you
talk about that some more?
How Monsanto works, they get farmers to sign contracts to grow these various
GMO crops, and to me that contract is the most vicious and suppressive contract
on the face of the earth. In the contract, you have to give up the right
to use your own seeds, you have to buy the seed and all your chemicals from
Monsanto, and you must pay Monsanto a $15 technology charge every year. You
also must sign a nondisclosure statement, where if you commit some infraction
of the contract, Monsanto can say anything about you, but you cannot say
anything to the press or to your neighbor about what Monsanto has done to
you. And last, you must permit Monsanto’s private police force to come
onto your land for three years after, to look in your fields, into your grainaries.
Monsanto has hired ex-Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and in the U.S. they
have Pinkerton Investigation Services—we call them “gene police.”
Monsanto will advertise in their brochures and in the papers, that
if you think your neighbor might be growing Monsanto’s GMO canola without
a license, you should inform or squeal on your neighbor. Farmers tell me
if they do this, they get a leather jacket from Monsanto. When Monsanto gets
a tip, they’ll send their police to a farmer’s home or yard and
accuse a farmer of illegally growing a Monsanto crop. They’ll harass,
intimidate, say you’re lying, and threaten to drag you to court. So
when these police leave a farmer’s home, you can imagine what a farmer
thinks—Which neighbor has done this to me? Now you have suspicion developing
between farmers who worked together in good times and in hardship. You have
a breakdown of the rural social fabric, and to me, that’s one of the
worst things that could happen with the introduction of GMOs.
If they can’t find a farmer at home, they’ll send out what farmers
call “extortion letters,” and I have many of these letters in
my possession that farmers have turned over to me. In that letter Monsanto
will say, “we have reason to believe you might be growing GMO canola
or soybeans without a license and we estimate you have 200 acres or 500 acres,
and we’ll fine you for that”—just based on that they think
you might be growing it. So you can imagine the fear that goes through a
farmer when they receive a letter from a multibillion-dollar corporation
saying, “Send us $50,000, send us $100,000 and we may or may not lay
a lawsuit against you.” They also say you’re not allowed to tell
anyone anything about the letter or what they have done to you, so we don’t
know how many thousands of these letters have been sent out to farmers.
Is there anything you’d like to
add?
Farmers should never ever sign a contract giving up their rights
to use their own seeds, because if they do they’ll just become serfs of the land,
and you’re back to the feudal system. But worst of all, you will destroy
the property of others and you open yourself up to all kinds of lawsuits.
So farmers should seriously think, if they ever want to grow GMOs, the damage
they’re doing not only to their neighbors, but to the environment in
general. You might have a short-term gain, but you’ll have a long-term
pain.
And again, I always hate to ask people for help, but I no longer
can fight this case. My wife and I, our legal bills alone have
been about a quarter
million dollars, just to pay our lawyer fees. We’ve used our retirement
funds; we’re 70 and 71 years of age, and we’ve mortgaged some
of our land just to fight Monsanto. We can’t afford it anymore, and
we don’t want to let the case stop now, we’ve got to go to the
Supreme Court, and Monsanto’s got to be faced with the liability issue.
How can people help and find out more?
I have a Web site: www.PercySchmeiser.com,
and a trust fund is set up there that is administered by a law firm who’s
doing it free of charge, so I do have some help. And all the money that goes
into it helps to fight the legal part of the battle.
Visit Percy Schmeiser’s Web site to make a donation and to learn more
about his case and the struggles of other farmers. Readers can also send
checks to: “Fight Genetically Altered Food Fund,” Box 3743, Humboldt,
SK SOK 2AO, Canada (U.S. $ accepted). For info. about the annual Bioneers
conference, see www.bioneers.org or
call (877) 246-6337.
