Financial Times 13 Sept 99

GM FOODS GROUPS FACE HUGE LAWSUIT

The world's biggest life science companies and grain processors will face a
multi-billion dollar antitrust action to be launched in up to 30 countries
later this year.

The unprecedented lawsuits will claim that companies such as Monsanto,
DuPont, and Novartis are exploiting bioengineering techniques to gain a
stranglehold on agricultural markets. It will be the biggest antitrust suit
ever brought, with the possible exception of that against Microsoft. "It
has literally global implications," said Michael Hausfeld of Cohen Milstein
Hausfeld and Toll, one of the 20 U.S. law firms that have agreed to take the
cases on a "no-win no-fee" basis.

The action is being brought jointly by the Foundation on Economic Trends,
run by Washington-based biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin, and the U.S.-based
National Family Farm Coalition, together with individual farmers across
Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America.

The move represents the first global challenge to controversial techniques
for exploiting genetically modified crops commercially. Companies take out
patents on GM seeds and then lease, rather than sell, them to farmers to be
used for one season only. In the US, where GM crops are rapidly becoming
the norm, farmers have been sued for replanting GM seeds. Companies have
also developed "terminator" genes that cause GM crops to produce sterile
seeds.

Concerns about the potential control this gives life science companies over
food, particularly in the developing world, have been exacerbated by a bout
of takeovers and mergers within the sector.

Ten companies now own 30 per cent of the $23 billion annual commercial seed
trade, according to recent estimates, and five of those -- Monsanto,
Novartis, AstraZeneca, Aventis and DuPont -- control virtually all GM crops.

"By the early part of the next century, less than a handful of corporations
will possess control over the entire agricultural foundation for every
society. You can see the potential for market abuse and manipulation," said
Mr. Hausfeld. The legal action comes at a sensitive time for the biotech
industry, which is facing growing consumer and political resistance to GM
crops in Europe and in developing countries such as India.

The issue seems likely to be raised at November's World Trade Organisation
talks in Seattle. The companies can be expected to fight the lawsuit tooth
and nail. They reject any charge of market control. "There is fierce
competition around the world. We have a 42 per cent market share [of the
$20 billion corn crop] in the U.S. and we've had to work hard for it," said
Pioneer Hibred International, the U.S. seed company which is about to be
bought by DuPont. "We've had to prove to farmers that our hybrid is better
than any other." Pioneer added that farmers retained the choice of whether
to buy GM or conventional seeds.