Family Farmers Continue Their Fight Against Monsanto

The plain­tiffs brought the pre-emptive case against Monsanto in March 2011 specif­i­cally seek­ing to defend them­selves from nearly two dozen of Monsanto’s most aggres­sively asserted patents on GMO seed. They were forced to act pre-emptively to pro­tect them­selves from Monsanto’s abu­sive law­suits, fear­ing that if GMO seed con­t­a­m­i­nates their prop­erty despite their efforts to pre­vent such con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, Monsanto will sue them for patent infringement.

“Monsanto is known for bul­ly­ing farm­ers by mak­ing base­less accu­sa­tions of patent infringe­ment,” said attor­ney Dan Ravicher of the not-for-profit legal ser­vices orga­ni­za­tion Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT), which rep­re­sents the plain­tiffs in the suit against Monsanto known as Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association et al. v Monsanto.

Monsanto’s harass­ment of fam­ily farm­ers is well known in farm coun­try, the biotech seed and chem­i­cal giant has one of the most aggres­sive patent asser­tion agen­das in U.S. his­tory.  Between 1997 and 2010, Monsanto has acknowl­edged fil­ing 144 law­suits against America’s fam­ily farm­ers, while set­tling another 700 cases out of court for undis­closed amounts and impos­ing gag orders on farmers. 

Despite the fact that the plain­tiffs are at risk for being con­t­a­m­i­nated by genet­i­cally mod­i­fied seed and then sued for patent infringe­ment by Monsanto, Judge Naomi Buchwald of the Southern District of New York dis­missed the case last February because she didn’t find a case wor­thy of adju­di­ca­tion, say­ing “it is clear that these cir­cum­stances do not amount to a sub­stan­tial con­tro­versy and that there has been no injury trace­able to defendants.”

Plaintiffs feel oth­er­wise. Two of the plain­tiffs sub­mit­ted sworn dec­la­ra­tions in the case high­light­ing the preva­lence of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion by genet­i­cally mod­i­fied seed. Both Chuck Noble, an alfalfa farmer from South Dakota, and Fedco Seeds, a seed dis­trib­u­tor in Maine, have repeat­edly dis­cov­ered GMO con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in pur­port­edly con­ven­tional seed they sought to pur­chase. To pro­tect them­selves from being con­t­a­m­i­nated, they have had to adopt expen­sive and time-consuming genetic test­ing procedures.

“We have a right to farm the way we choose,” said Maine organic seed farmer Jim Gerritsen, President of lead plain­tiff Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA). “Yet Monsanto is unwill­ing to con­trol their GMO pol­lu­tion and they refuse to sign a bind­ing covenant not-to-sue our fam­ily farm­ers for patent infringe­ment should their seed con­t­a­m­i­nate our crops.

Monsanto’s pub­li­cized ‘Commitment’ promis­ing that they would not sue farm­ers was described by Monsanto’s own lawyers as being ‘vague.’ The law says we deserve pro­tec­tion under the Declaratory Judgment Act. We will con­tinue to pur­sue our right to farm, and the right of our cus­tomers to have access to good clean food and seed.”

“We need the courts to pro­tect farm­ers and con­sumers from genetic tres­pass and pol­lu­tion of our food chain,” said Mark Kastel, Codirector of The Cornucopia Institute, a cor­po­rate and gov­ern­men­tal watch­dog in the organic indus­try.  “This law­suit is crit­i­cal to the future of organic food and agriculture.”

Other plain­tiffs have sim­ply stopped grow­ing cer­tain types of crops due to the threat of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Bryce Stephens, a cer­ti­fied organic farmer from north­west Kansas, had to give up on try­ing to grow organic corn and soy once his neigh­bors started using Monsanto’s genet­i­cally mod­i­fied seed because it could eas­ily spread onto his prop­erty and con­t­a­m­i­nate his organic crops, which would put him at risk of being sued for patent infringe­ment by Monsanto.

“It’s time to end Monsanto’s scorched earth legal cam­paign of threats and intim­i­da­tion against America’s farm­ers. Family farm­ers should be pro­tected by the courts against the unwanted genetic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of their crops,” said Dave Murphy, founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Food Democracy Now!, a grass­roots com­mu­nity of more than 300,000 farm­ers and cit­i­zens ded­i­cated to reform­ing food and agri­cul­ture that is co-plaintiff in the suit.

In the brief filed today, the plain­tiffs point out numer­ous errors in the dis­trict court deci­sion that war­rant rever­sal. Among them are the lower court’s fail­ure to accept cer­tain facts alleged by the plain­tiffs that were undis­puted by Monsanto, appli­ca­tion of too harsh a legal stan­dard on the plain­tiffs to show the exis­tence of a con­tro­versy, and neglect of pub­lic pol­icy that encour­ages broad juris­dic­tion be avail­able to those chal­leng­ing bogus patents like Monsanto’s.

The brief filed by the plain­tiffs with the Court of Appeals is avail­able here.

Republished with per­mis­sion from The Cornucopia Institute.