those nice Monsanto people at it again

<snip>

McFarling's sin? He saved seed from one harvest and replanted it the following season, a revered and ancient agricultural practice.

"My daddy saved seed. I saved seed," said McFarling, 62, who still grows soy on the 5,000 acre family farm in Shannon, Miss. and is fighting the agribusiness giant in court.

Saving Monsanto's seeds, genetically engineered to kill bugs and resist weed sprays, violates provisions of the company's contracts with farmers.

Since 1997, Monsanto has filed similar lawsuits 90 times in 25 states against 147 farmers and 39 agriculture companies, according to a report issued Thursday by The Center for Food Safety, a biotechnology foe.

<snip>

http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2005/01/23/business/doc41ea6785e1223487765554.txt

1. The company will lose money if farmers save seed from harvest for replanting instead of throwing it away and buying new seed each year.

2. There is something terrible within these genetically constructed seeds that, if kept for a year will cause anyone eating the produce raised from them to turn into monsters - horribly deformed and disfigured. Maybe it contains "Soylent Green."

should apply. The jury is out on the GM question and until the issues are resolved, I'd be unhappy at messing around with nature.

I don't think it will turn us into "monsters", we will starve from the lower levels of nutrition first...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x1837

On one hand, he violated a contract, and therefore is liable in court, that is about as far as this will go. If he wants to save seed, then he needs to use non-GM seed to do it. However, I do not like the idea of given any private entity this much power over the food industry. This is dangerous, not only in health effects, but also in relation to freedom of growing your own food.

This goes back to the idea of these products being patented and packaged in such a way that in order to be competitive at all, farmers will have to increasingly violate the law in order to keep their farms. Living organisms shouldn't be patented at all, that is my personal belief, and I believe it sets a dangerous precedence for us all.

and he never purchased any of their products. His Field was contaminated by their "product". check out the test results, they found Monsanto plants in the ditch next to his field. First thing I thought of, someone threw that seed there, so in a few years they could sue him just like they did.

or cross-pollinated. even worse, because there's no way to protect yourself from that - nature's just gonna do what she wants. But Monsanto and a few other seed companies are buying out all the little companies. The situation is only going to get worse with judges actually upholding Monsanto's claims

But that contract was made with knowlege of the practice of saving seed - perhaps that practice becomes part of the contract; in which case, the provisions would conflict and drop out - maybe?

is the same as stealing software. It doesn't need to be GMO or from Monsanto. Some stains of seed take years to develop, by not buying seed from the developer you are denying compensation for the development costs and at the same time discouraging development of new varieties.
Solution is simple if a person wants to save seed, use a non-patented variety there are tons availible.

Monsanto apologists support theft of life.

Just simply kill Monsanto, no mercy to life stealers.

who I think did the wrong thing, but a possible hypothetical. Lets say there is an organic farmer who grows only non-GM crops. One season he notices GM hybridizing with his plants, so he does the right thing, he destroys the crops. However, in the process, he takes a huge dent out of his crop yield that year, so should Monsanto be liable for damages to the farmer's business?

seeds, the fruits of the seeds, and the regeneration of seeds produced from the fruits of the seed as a package to which Monsanto relinquished by the sale of its product, the original seeds?

Or is the farmer "borrowing" or "renting" the seeds and never had true ownership of the product, unlike a traditional sales transaction, like buying a piece of equipment or fertilizer?

might be worth Googling/Yahooing Monsanto for more info' on their business practices.

Think of a software license. When I buy a copy of QuarkXPress for $900, I get a CD with a copy of the software, a PDF of the manual (the manual is an upcharge; no one ever read the damn thing because it weighs 15 pounds, so they no longer pass it out free but rather give you a searchable PDF of it, which is very nice to use) and permission to use the application.

If I then turn around and run a million dollars worth of work through that program, I get to keep the million dollars and all of the work I ran through the app, but the program itself still belongs to Quark.

It's the same deal with Monsanto's seed: you purchase a license to grow x acres of Monsanto-seed plants in this growing season. You are entitled to keep everything you grow, but it's a license violation to carry seed over to the next season.

I don't have a problem with this.

Incidentally, the "grow some other seed" shit doesn't work when we're dealing with Monsanto seed, which is engineered to survive Roundup. Most farmers will not plant a Roundup-susceptible field next to someone else's Roundup-resistant field because if your Roundup carries over into my crop, I'm gonna be scratching for spare change come December.

This is the Monsanto practice I abhor: Let us say you are a farmer that grows...oh, wheat. Next door is a farmer that grows soy from Monsanto seed. During the harvest some of your neighbor's soy got blown into your field. Next year, you plant more wheat, and your neighbor's blown-in soy also sprouts. (Or some of the Monsanto seed blew into your field during planting.) Because you are growing Monsanto seed without a Monsanto license, Monsanto has the absolute right to take you to court and throw the book at you--and they have done it on a number of occasions. (No links; I have to go to work so I can't take the time to look now, sorry.)

wind, and they YOU are liable for it if an act of God (nature) cross pollinates your crops. That's despicable.

its seed licenses.

However, I've seen interviews with farmers who say that it has been their practice for decades to save seed and regrow and that they had no idea what was in the fine print of their licenses, and the contractual damages they agreed to (but didn't read) are really oppressive. (Incidentally, IIRC, farmers say that 10% of their seed needs come from the previous year's harvest -- so all this is basically so that Monsanto can sell 10% more seed.)

So you might have -- and I'm totally guessing here -- Monsanto salesmen going arround and having unsophisticated, un-lawyered-up farmers signing agreements that look exactly like the ones they've been signing for decades, but these new contracts have clauses in them that say that they'll pay liquidated damages that are really outrageous. And you're asking farmers to stop doing something that has been their custom forever.

I did a little search and found out how Monsanto does business in Argentina. There you're allowed to save seed from Monsanto GM plants, but you have to weigh the saved seed you're going to plant, make a sworn statement listing the weight of the saved seed, then send Monsanto $1.50 for each 55 pounds of saved seed.

I have never given Monsanto or anybody else the right to patent forms of life, or US patent office to grant such patents.

Turning life-forms into property is pure and simple stealing.

Kill Monsanto.

on EVERYTHING.

Sometimes I think they polute lakes in rivers just to make sure the adage, "teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" won't be true.

Monsanto is buying up water rights all over the world, btw

selection of seeds over many generations of farmers yields the perfect seed for the environment. In come transnational corporations who claim the seed as their property and demand the local farmers pay fees to use the seeds. note: this doesn't even involve genetical modification.

the McFarling case is just the tip of the iceberg.

here most of you don't know jack about agriculture and are just anti business.
If a grower doesn't read his contract he's the only one to blame.
If any pesticide drifts from one grower's land to another he is responsible for the damage. Even if the drift causes no damage the grower may still be responsible if the pesticide that he let drift isn't registered for the crop it drifted on.
Older varieties of plants and seed are known as heirloom and can't be patented.
Most of the people the large companies have gone after weren't just saving seed for themselves, they were also selling to others for profit.

and claimed as property of some corporation.
all it takes is a corrupt government to make a deal with such a corporation.

before they help destroy the planet completely!

What kind of anti-capitalist creep are you? Small farmers are obsolete anyway.
(sarcasm off)

Head's up, people. Save the heirloom stuff before it's all gone. By the time the chemical companies are through with the plant world, we'll have four or five crops grown and everything we eat will be made from them....

Iraqi farmers are now forbidden from saving their own seeds, because the market is now the property of the huge transnationals and their genetically-modified, patent-protected product. This, according to Paul Bremer's "100 Orders," which engraved Iraq's economic thralldom into law before the "handover of sovereignty." Specifically, "Coalition Provitional Authority Order 81: Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law."

More:
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/10/iraq-against-grain.html

Way cool.

The film produced and directed by Deborah Koons Garcia (Jerry Garcia's widow).

"This stylish film is not just for food faddists and nutritionists.
It is a look at something we might not want to see: Monsanto, Roundup and Roundup-resistant seeds, collectively wreaking havoc on American farmers and our agricultural neighbors around the world. In the end, this documentary is a eloquent call to action."

--- The Telluride Daily Planet

Link: http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade.

From the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada to the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, this film gives a voice to farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by this new technology. The health implications, government policies and push towards globalization are all part of the reason why many people are alarmed by the introduction of genetically altered crops into our food supply.

Shot on location in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, THE FUTURE OF FOOD examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world's food system. The film also explores alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture, placing organic and sustainable agriculture as real solutions to the farm crisis today.

The patenting of life forms is neo-fascist exploitation of humanity at is most vile and pernicious level. These ruthless bastards would require farmers to build sky-high walls to prevent the inevitable drift of their precious bastardized seed. These "people" and their much revered corporations are vicious and consumed by a greed that knows no bounds.

In Chief Seattle's oft misquoted speech he asked something like "How can one sell the air?" It is obvious that these heinous corporate structures and the corrupt governments of the west will stop at nothing less. Would you like to have your bank account debited everytime that you draw a breath? Or every time the wind blows across a farmer's field, the farmer becomes the thief?

The science behind these GMO products is as corrupt and perverted as the corporations that push it. They love to argue how their "products" are indistinguishable from the natural and traditionally developed life forms to prevent labeling and other regulations. At the very same time, they love to argue that their perversions are "unique" and therefore must be granted patents.

These people are depraved.


In 1994, Monsanto Agricultural Company gained approval
for their genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.
That hormone became the most controversial drug application
in the history of America's Food and Drug Administration
(FDA). Monsanto's hormone caused cancer in laboratory
animals, and was banned in Europe and Canada. Monsanto's
genetically engineered crops continue to make headline
news throughout the world, and their patented seeds have
become the seeds of controversy.

Before the Bush Administration began, Monsanto donated
hundreds of thousands of dollars in PAC money and soft
money to political candidates.

Who got the most from Monsanto? The winner of the Monsanto
sweepstakes with $10,000 was a republican from Missouri
by the name of John Ashcroft.

When the election was in doubt, who gave Bush the presidency
with his Supreme Court swing vote? It was Monsanto's
ex-attorney, Clarence Thomas.

Who became the most powerful man in the Bush presidency,
and the architect of America's slash and burn Gulf War
policy? Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, was
president of Searle Pharmaceuticals, acquired by Monsanto.

Who made the decisions regarding Monsanto's genetically
engineered seeds and crops? It was Ann Veneman, Secretary
of Agriculture. She was on the board of directors of Calgene
Pharmaceuticals, purchased by Monsanto.

Who became the Secretary of Health, boss of the Food and
Drug Administration? It was Tommy Thompson, ex-Governor
of Wisconsin, and Monsanto's best biotech friend. He
received $50,000 from biotech firms is his election run,
and used state funds to set up a a $317 million biotech
zone in the state of Wisconsin.

Monsanto's way of doing business is more than a betrayal
to us common folk. It's a model for young people and
future generations as a standard way of doing business.
Ethics be damned. -- Robert Cohen



For more in depth information and links: http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/issues/ge.html

"More than 20 public opinion polls show the overwhelming majority of Americans want mandatory labels on GE foods. Considering the FDA says consumers should know if orange juice is fresh or from concentrate, it makes sense to label foods that have transgenic material. If these foods are different enough to be patented, they're different enough to be labeled."

Scum.