I really can't imagine the audacity of patenting a seed or a life form. Monsanto hires the best local lawyers from the firm where 70% of our judges once practiced.
Percy versus Monsanto
Martin O'Malley
CBC News Online
Bruno, Sask.
Driving east from Saskatoon, heading to the Manitoba border, the sign on Highway 5 said "Bruno, 6K." That was the road to Percy Schmeiser's place, but I decided t'hell with it, Percy's been done.
Watched the documentary on him on CBC-TV's The National. Soon he'll be on CBC-TV's The Fifth Estate. And television crews are coming to Bruno from Japan, Germany, and England. Even the Bloc Quebecois is sending a representative from Quebec to meet with Percy Schmeiser and discuss his quixotic battle with Monsanto, a David and Goliath affair if ever there was one.
A year ago, Monsanto put the squeeze on Percy for illegally growing Monsanto's special, genetically modified canola, called "Roundup Ready." Monsanto launched a lawsuit against the 68-year-old farmer, who has been farming in this part of Saskatchewan for 40 years. Now Percy's fighting back, having launched his own $10 million lawsuit against Monsanto, accusing the biochemical giant of contaminating his farm.
It works this way. Monsanto sells its special genetically modified canola seeds to farmers, but the farmers are not allowed to use the Monsanto seeds from one crop to grow another crop, which is what farmers traditionally do. They must buy new seeds from Monsanto every year.
The selling point for Monsanto's canola is that it can survive Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, which kills other plants without killing Monsanto's genetically modified canola. Monsanto now has a new breed of canola called "Terminator," which produces sterile seeds that can't reproduce.
Somehow, Monsanto discovered there was Monsanto canola growing on Percy's 1,400-acre spread, so they decided to get tough and make an example of him. Boy, did the folks at Monsanto pick the wrong guy. They probably didn't know much about him, like his having been a popular local mayor and an MLA in the Saskatchewan legislature. I'm sure they didn't know about Percy's three attempts to climb Mount Everest, getting "only" 23,000 feet up.
Fifteen kilometres beyond the road to Bruno, I did a U-turn on Highway 5 and headed back. I had to at least say hello to Percy Schmeiser. When would I be in the neighbourhood again?
Stopped at a farm implement dealership on the edge of town to ask directions.
"Hullo!" I shouted inside the open but empty dealership.
"Hullo!" came a distant reply, whereupon a tall man in jeans appeared from a corner office.
"Where would I find Percy Schmeiser?" I asked.
"I'm Percy Schmeiser," said Percy Schmeiser.
When I told him what I knew about Roundup Ready genetically modified canola, he ushered me outside his dealership, walked to a hydro line, knelt down and showed me a growth of canary-yellow canola. "This is it," he said, then he took me to the north side of the building where another shoot of Roundup Ready genetically modified canola was growing next to the building in the shade.
"All over the place," he said. "It blows in the wind, cross-pollinates." He knelt down and pulled off one of the flowers, popping open a pod of canola, displaying the freckle-sized, black seeds. "Little plant like this makes a minimum 4,000 seeds…maybe 10,000 seeds," he said.
"Now they're not saying I stole their seed," Percy said. "Now they're saying it doesn't matter how the (Monsanto canola) gets into a farmer's field. Doesn't matter if it's blown onto the field or if it's by cross-pollination. They say it's their patent and if they find it on your field they'll take your crop, they'll sue you, they'll fine you."
He looks out the window of his cluttered office, across to the railway tracks, deep in thought - looking for a metaphor, as I soon learn.
"What if a farmer has a scrub bull?" Percy asked. "And his neighbour's got a herd of purebred registered cows? Through negligence, the bull gets over the fence and impregnates his neighbour's cows. Now the guy with the scrub bull says those calves are his. The cows too! Same thing, eh?"
Percy says he has spent $35,000 in legal fees going up against Monsanto. There was a mediation hearing on the case in August but it didn't resolve anything, so Percy and Monsanto are due to meet in court next June 6. Now a multi-billion antitrust suit has been filed in a U.S. Federal Court against Monsanto and other agribusiness companies.
Monsanto dearly would love to extricate itself from this mess. The David that is Percy Schmeiser has become a royal pain in the ass to the Goliath that is Monsanto.
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