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According to this article, the Minnesota Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor of Oluf Johnson, an organic farmer who sued the Paynesville Farmers Union Cooperative Oil Co. because pesticides sprayed on its crops contaminated his fields.  The court ruled that the drifting of pesticides onto Johnson’s farm constituted trespass.

This victory is potentially very meaningful, if it is used as a precedent in cases involving GMO crops. Every time Monsanto genetically alters a seed, it patents that seed.  That patent allows it to sue any farmer whose crops are contaminated by its seeds – even if that farmer doesn’t want the GMO seeds and has not intentionally planted them – claiming the farmer has violated Monsanto’s patent.

However, this ruling could lay the groundwork for organic farmers to claim that the drifting of GMO seeds onto their property, like pesticides, is trespass.  It is not organic farmers who violate Monsanto’s rights, but quite the opposite.

The ruling could give victimized farmers a vehicle for claiming damages.  What’s more, due to the fact that, when GMO seeds are planted, it is inevitable that they will be wafted onto neighboring farms, it could give courts the legal grounds for preventing Monsanto from continuing to plant GMO fields, at least in certain locations.  If GMO crops are planted close enough to non-GMO farms that planting them necessarily leads to illegal trespass, then surely it must be illegal for Monsanto to plant in such locations.  It seems sometimes that Monsanto always wins when it goes to court, but this ruling appears to be a step in the right direction.

Related:
8 Ways Monsanto is Destroying Our Health
Is Your Body Contaminated with Pesticides?
First GM Plants Found in the Wild

“The deeper you can manipulate living structures, the more you can control food and medicine.” Dr. Vandana Shiva

Lots of talk these days about the bullying of young boys and girls in school by more aggressive students. This brings to my mind the biggest bully of all: the biotech company, Monsanto Corporation. Taken in context, Monsanto’s list of corporate crimes should have been enough to pull their corporate charter years ago. And yet we allow them to continue to destroy our food supply, our health and the planet. Monsanto or Monsatan? Take a look at the company’s track record and decide for yourself.

Agent Orange: Monsanto was the major financial beneficiary of this herbicide used to defoliate the jungles of Vietnam and destroy the health of American troops and their offspring. It also allowed Monsanto and other chemical companies to appeal for and receive protection from veterans seeking damages for their exposure to Agent Orange and any future biotech creations.
 

Aspartame: as far back as 1994 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a report listing 94 health issues caused by Aspartame. It has been shown to cause slow but serious damage to the human body and yet it is used extensively in many commercial products.

7 Foods Banned in Europe Still Available in the U.S.

Saccharin: studies have shown that saccharin caused cancer in test rats and mice; and in six human studies, including one done by the National Cancer Institute, that consuming artificial sweeteners, such as saccharin and cyclamate, resulted in bladder cancer.

More than 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides are used in the United States and multiple studies show that they are finding their way into the bodies of the average person.

One pesticide, chlorpyrifos (CPF), was found in eighty-two percent of urine samples from a broad range of Americans aged twenty to fifty-nine.

In a Canadian study, the herbicide 2, 4-D, was found in fifty percent of the semen samples of men. That’s a scary proposition when one considers that semen carries the genetic material of a possible fetus or child and we know little about the effects of pesticides on developing brains and bodies.

These are just two examples of the approximately 900 pesticides and herbicides registered with the Environmental Protection Agency. Research into the long-term effects of pesticides is still in its infancy.

Currently, The World Health Organization estimates that one-half of the ground and well water in the United States is contaminated with pesticides. Pesticides travel via groundwater and in the air and can be carried by wind to destinations miles away from the application site. Pesticides are washed into our streams, lakes, rivers, and underground aquifers that supply our drinking and bathing water, and these poisons are making their way into our bodies.

This is the stuff of my nightmares: Genetically-modified (GM) plants escaping the confines of agriculture and invading the wild. We thought regular invasive species were bad? They seem tame compared to genetic contamination of the wild. Even more alarming: Some of the plants had a mix of modified genes, indicating that they are reproducing on their own.

Although GM plant populations in the wild have been found in Canada, this is the first time they have been found in the United Sates.

Meredith G. Schafer, from the University of Arkansas, and colleagues established transects of land over 3000 miles long including interstate, state and county roads in North Dakota from which they collected, photographed and tested 406 canola plants.

The results show that transgenic plants have clearly established populations in the wild.  Of the 406 plants collected, 347 tested positive for CP4 EPSPS protein (resistant to glyphosate herbicide, aka Roundup) or PAT protein (resistant to glufosinate herbicide, aka LibertyLink). The finding shows that genetically modified canola plants can survive and thrive in the wild perhaps for decades–the study was presented today at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America.

The team’s key finding was two plants that each carried both types of herbicide resistance — a combination that is not commercially available. The only way this can happen in the wild is if the plants are reproducing on their own. “There were  two instances of multiple transgenes in single individuals,” said coauthor Cynthia Sagers, University of Arkansas. “Varieties with multiple transgenic traits have not yet been released commercially, so this finding suggests that feral populations are reproducing and have become established outside of cultivation. These observations have important implications for the ecology and management of native and weedy species, as well as for the management of biotech products in the U.S.”

Once a GM crop is released it cannot be unreleased, and there are no systems in place to prevent genetic contamination through pollen flow, spills or human error. Although the GM plants found by the roadside are assumed to be the result of escaped seeds during transportation, the GM plants found away from roads suggest that the plants are taking on a life of their own.