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Politics : foreign affairs, unchaperoned -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: marcos who wrote (47)	5/9/2003 4:52:07 AM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Respond to of 261

Hi marcos, I be doing fine, thanks... <g> Sure do hope that farmer wins his case. Monsanto sure does have some brass balls with the tactics they're using. Would serve them right if farmers everywhere boycotted their products. KJC

To: marcos who wrote (47)	5/9/2003 1:31:46 PM
From: Alastair McIntosh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 261

You may not be aware that Schmeiser changed his story several times. He no longer claims that the canola was blown into his field by passing seed trucks. He now admits that he deliberately planted Monsanto's product but states has the right to replant it. purefoods.org First Percy claimed that the offending seed bounced off of passing trucks. When challenged as to how these seeds neatly planted themselves in straight rows on his field, Percy's story changed. He then claimed that pollen from "neighboring" biotech fields (which happened to be over 5 miles away - note, canola pollen rarely travels more than a few hundred feet) contaminated his crops. When confronted with the fact that testing revealed over 95% of his nearly 1,000 acres of canola were identified as containing the technology he claimed to not want - a condition for which random pollen contamination could not possibly account, Percy's story changed, again. Finally Percy decided what had really happened was that one year he decided to "experiment" on a portion of his fields by spraying them with the weed-killer Round-up. While it's an odd idea for any farmer to spray weed-killer on his valuable crops, let's take Percy's every-changing word that this might have happened. Then he claimed that to his surprise, some of the plants survived. This indicated to him that these were the (his words) "evil" biotechnology crops he detests and never wanted on his property. So what did Percy then do with these "evil" plants which he never wanted? He then chose those, and only those, surviving technology plants from which to collect seed and then re-plant his entire farm for the next growing season. And, even though he detests the technology and the technology company Monsanto, he then purchased large-volumes of their Round-up weed killer (which farmers who want the technology would buy to spray on their technology-planted fields to control weeds). However, major media outlets continue to mislead readers into believing that Schmeiser was prosecuted because his conventional canola was contaminated by pollen from nearby biotech fields. This is absurdly untrue. The judge explicitly rejected the pollen-drift tale because the facts don't support it. Moreover, no biotech seed company would even think of prosecuting a farmer simply because of cross-pollination. The negative publicity would kill their market - which explains why anti-biotech activists have mischaracterized this case from the beginning. Since his fight with Monsanto began, Schmeiser has become a cult hero within anti-biotech circles. He has toured the world railing against "corporate control" of the food system and testified at government hearings on biotechnology. In actuality, Percy Schmeiser is nothing more than a seed pirate who saw a superior product but didn't want to pay for it.