Well! It has finally happened. Wondered when it would occur and now it has.
"Planned Lawsuit To Fuel Biotech Debate
By Julie Vorman Sep 13 5:21pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. farm and environmental groups said Monday they would file a lawsuit seeking billions of dollars in damages from major agribusiness companies that have allegedly amassed too much control over genetically-modified (GM) seeds.
The planned antitrust lawsuit, to be filed in a federal court by December 1, would raise a fresh issue in the growing international debate over bio-engineered crops.
Consumer groups throughout Europe have demanded labels on U.S. food made with GM soybeans, corn and other crops.
U.S. growers, who eagerly embraced GM crops to improve yields and pest resistance, are beginning to worry about a consumer backlash to bio-engineered foods. And farmers in less-developed nations have complained that patents on GM seeds unfairly bar them from re-using seed the following season.
``We're moving from the GM food labeling issue to an even broader issue of GM seeds and concentration in world agriculture,' Jeremy Rifkin, an environmental activist and head of the Washington-based Foundation on Economic Trends, said in a telephone interview from London.
The foundation and the National Family Farm Coalition are working with dozens of farm groups around the world to plan the U.S. lawsuit and similar ones in other countries.
The U.S. lawsuit will seek billions of dollars in damages from all major seed companies including Monsanto Co, DuPont Co, Zeneca Group, Novartis, as well as agribusiness giants Archer Daniels Midland and privately owned Cargill Inc., Rifkin said.
Most of the companies declined to comment on the planned lawsuit, but asserted the seed industry is competitive.
``We have 42 percent of the market share (for corn), but we have to fight for that every year and give farmers a choice,' said a spokesman for Pioneer Hi-Bred International.
Although details about the planned lawsuit remained sketchy, the U.S. groups said they were concerned about growing concentration of ownership in the commercial seed business. Fewer than a dozen companies now control most GM seeds sold throughout the world, and they are quickly buying out smaller competitors, Rifkin said.
The two U.S. groups also want seed companies to stop claiming patent rights that bar farmers from re-using GM seeds the following spring. That requirement is especially onerous for poor farmers in developing countries, he said.
But seed companies have already abandoned that approach in favor of another way to recoup their millions of dollars invested in GM seeds, according to Per Pinstrup-Andersen, director of the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Companies are developing GM seeds that can ``turn on' a special characteristic -- the ability to repel pests or drought -- only if a farmer buys a special chemical to treat the seeds, Pinstrup-Andersen said.
``If the seed it not treated, it will revert back to its original characteristics. That means the farmer is no worse off, but can choose to pay to become better off,' he said.
``We don't go after bigness just because it's there,' said Michael Hausfeld, an antitrust lawyer representing the groups. 'It's only a problem when it has the inherent potential for abuse, like with these seed companies.'
The filing of the antitrust lawsuit will be timed to coincide with the World Trade Organization gathering in Seattle in late November. Heads of government and agricultural ministers are scheduled to launch a new round of trade talks aimed at phasing out government crop subsidies, improving food safety standards and discussing the impact of biotechnology.
At the current pace farmers are adopting GM seeds, in five years virtually all U.S. agricultural exports will be genetically modified or combined with bulk commodities that have been altered, according to U.S. officials.
The farmer complaints about alleged concentration in the seed industry have also been heard by Congress.
Sen. Paul Wellstone, a Minnesota Democrat, is drafting a bill to call for a one-year halt to all mergers among agribusinesses with net revenues of more than $50 million.
Wellstone, speaking in an interview, said he was concerned about ``the potential for abuse' amid rapid consolidation in the grain, livestock and seed sectors of agribusiness.
``This is an area of concern for many farmers, who don't want to be able to buy seeds from just one company, much like they don't want to market their livestock to a single company, and sell their grain to one company,' said Richard Stuckey, vice president of Council for Agricultural Science and Technology.
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