Monsanto, the biotech
giant, is suing a Canadian
farmer for "illegally"
growing its GM oilseed
rape. But picking on
Percy Schmeiser was a
very public mistake

Illustrations by James Mealing

the business FT weekend magazine 04.12.99

SEEDS OF DOUBT
By Mary Ambrose

Sixty-eight-year-old
Canadian Farmer Percy
Schmeiser was considering
retiring last year, until he
was slapped with a lawsuit from Monsanto.
The charge was that he had grown its
geneticalty modified oilseed rape.

Having grown oilseed rape "every
year for 40 years", he had known
something was amiss. He used to
spray herbicide around the electricity
poles at the edge of his farm. Later, he
found oilseed rape growing there.
The plants from his own seeds had
died; these had withstood the
herbicide. And Monsanto's rape had
been designed to do exactly that.

Schmeiser realised that among the
seeds he'd collected from his previous
crop were some GM seeds. By planting
them, he'd unknowingly contaminated
his own crop, and if GM plants were

on the edges of his field, it was likely
they were in the middle of it, too.
It was impossible to determine the
extent of the contamination, especially
on a farm the size of Schmeiser s in
Saskatchewan, which is 1.400 acres -
as much as seven average English
farms combined.

As with most prairie, single-crop
farms, the land is not all apiece, so he
has many neighbours, some of whom
have grown GM oilseed rape: and
more than one road running through
his land has transported it. But
Monsanto's lawyers weren't interested
in how the seeds arrived on
Schmeiser's farm. They told him he
was being sued for using Monsanto's
seeds without paying for them.

Schmeiser was dumbfounded and
outraged. If anyone had asked him
about it, he says he would have shown
them where he found the GM plants
and discussed it with them. He'd never
bought any GM seeds. He'd never gone
to the meetings Monsanto held for
farmers throughout the area, where it
has extolled their benefits, and had no
idea that finding GM oilseed rape on
his farm made him in any way liable.

Monsanto's lawsuit concerns patent
infringement. The company is seeking
profits from Schmeiser's farm which
his lawyer understands to mean profits
from his 1998 crop. Monsanto is
seeking the return of "all seeds or
crop" containing the patented genes,
and punitive damages for illegally
obtaining the seeds, plus the
company's court costs.

It is impossible to separate a few
plants out of an acre of oilseed rape,
and Schmeiser believes that the GM
oilseed rape is on every part of his
huge farm. So the biotech company
may he asking for his entire yield.
"That's what's really frightening," says
Schmeiser. "How can somebody put
anything on someone else's land, then
say it's theirs and 'We'll take it, we'll
sue him, we'll fine him'."

Monsanto may have sounded a
warning bell to other farmers, but
Schmeiser calls it "a patent
entrapment". It was the first time
Monsanto had sued a Canadian farmer
and, in the slim frame of Percy
Schmeiser, Monsanto made a
dangerous enemy. Schmeiser is no
country yokel, easily bamboozled and
intimidated. He had been the mayor of
the nearby town of Bruno for many
years. He's been a member of the
provincial parliament. He wants his
children, the fourth generation of
Schmeisers, to work the farm, to
inherit it, as he did. And he insists that
he didn't watch his grandparents clear
the land and build a farm just "to have
the profits taken over by a big
multinational".

With help from his brother, a well-
respected constitutional lawyer,
Schmeiser countersued, alleging that
Monsanto had defamed his character.
Monsanto did not put a dollar figure
on its suit. Schmeiser did. He's suing
for C$10m (£4.2m) in punitive
damages for the "arrogant, high-
handed and shocking conduct" of
Monsanto. The suit cites the
company's "callous disregard for the
environment" by introducing GM
oilseed rape into his community,
defamation of his character, money
lost through being forced to change
his farming practices, and the cost of
clearing his farm of GMOs. Mediation
efforts have collapsed, and the case is
expected to come to trial next summer.
But Schmeiser thinks that Monsanto
will try to settle rather than submit to
the further publicity of a trial.

As manager of a large farm-
machinery dealership. Schmeiser
knows "thousands of farmers", and he
believes he's being made an example
of because other farmers have found
unwanted GM seeds GMon their farms.

"We have been told by the National
Farmers' Union that there are dozens
of Percy Schmeisers out there
receiving threatening letters," says
Jennifer Story of the Council of
Canadians, a watchdog group.

The unwanted seeds, Schmeiser
suspects, blew in from a neighbour,
who, in 1996, had planted the then
new GM oilseed rape so close to
Schmeiser that there wasn't "even a
fence line in between".It's also not
unusual for farmers to transport
oilseed rape uncovered. Schmeiser
says a scientist who worked with
Monsanto had assured farmers that, if
its oilseed rape seed flew out of a
truck, it couldn't travel very far. "1
wonder if he's ever been in a
snowstorm or a sandstorm," muses
Schmeiser. "There's wind on the
ground, too, and it'll spread."

Schmeiser believes that another
farmer told Monsanto about seeing its
oilseed rape on his land, where it had
survived herbicide spraying. Indeed,
Monsanto, by its own admission, has
received many calls from farmers.
Monsanto vice-president Ray Mowling
told CBC Radio, in an interview quoted
in Schmeiser's suit, that the company
had received about 30 tips from
farmers about its oilseed rape being
planted without permission.(Despite
repeated efforts, no one at Monsanto
Canada agreed to speak to 'the
business'.) "They're pitting farmer
against farmer and destroying our
serial fabric," says Schmeiser.

Whatever lesson (not to mention
money) Monsanto might have hoped
for by suing Schmeiser has been lost in
lawyers' fees and bad public relations.
Schmeiser himself has become a
cause celebre in north America, and
was recently filmed by French
television. He keeps up a constant
campaign, recently writing to MPs
asking how a company could actually
"own" a plant, even if its gene was in it.

But, while Schmeiser may not have
wanted Monsanto's crop, many other
farmers did. About 60 per cent of the
oilseed rape grown in the Canadian
west is GM. Many farmers embraced it
to increase their margins. For many,
the past few years have been
disastrous. The drought on the
prairies has been worse than in the
depression of the 1930s. The low
price of oilseed rape has been
compounded by a much lower level of
government subsidy (9 cents per acre,
per year) than American (38 cents) or
European farmers (56 cents) get. And
there is very little emergency money
from the government available for
farmers when they are up against it.
This means that bigger farms can hold
out longer against Monsanto's
blandishments. But for small farms,
running on small margins - as Corey
Oilikka, president of the Canadian
National Farmers' Union, says:
"Anything can make the difference."

Many farmers have happily chosen
a crop guaranteeing a higher yield and
requiring less herbicide. (Monsanto
says 20,000 Canadian farmers grow its
products. Schmeiser says that's a
figure from the first year of GM-
production, and it has since dropped
considerably.) "Cleaner fields, higher
yields", was the promise.

What no one predicted was that the
rest of the world might not want GM-
altered rape. Given that Canadian
farmers' crops make up 80 per cent of
the world's oilseed rape, this was a
serious blow. In less than eight
months, the price of oilseed rape has
dropped by C$4 a bushel from an
average of C$9 a bushel. Oilikka says:

"Farmers are beginning to question
the profit-making potential that's
shutting them out of markets." When a
big American rape exporter asked
farmers to segregate their non-GM
crops, it was shocked. More than half
the soybean and 75 per cent of the
corn in the US is GM.

It could be argued that farmers
knew the risks when they chose to
grow GM crops. Perhaps they should
have asked more critical questions.
Even if farmers grow their GM crop
separately from the non-GM, they
cannot guarantee, or even label, any of
their oilseed rape as GM-free. They
didn't think they would ever need to
separate it. The growers were
confident that the Canadian
government's endorsement meant the
crop was safe for human consumption.
But Jennifer Story points out that since
Monsanto won't make its data
available, the Canadian public "can't
have access to the information that
was used to make the decision on
whether the food was safe."

Story feels that some consumers
are also reluctant to demand more
information in case they're construed
as criticising farmers. Now some
farmers are stuck with a crop which,
says Schmeiser, takes from five to 10
times the normal amount of herbicide
to kill. He says prairie farmers are
calling it "a new noxious weed".

The farmers' love affair with GM crops is
understandable. As in Britain, the
biotechnology industry has been
welcomed by Canada's government,
initially as an environmental saviour.
Even the most anti-GM food protester
admits that they've conducted
interesting research into "bio-
remediation" - growing organisms
which could help reclaim toxic sites,
developing plants for growth in
abandoned mine sites, and organisms
which eat spilt oil. The biotech
business is also involved in exciting
pharmaceutical work. Food,
originally, was only a small pan of the
business. But not for long. The
Candian biotech industry has grown to
500 companies, 25,000 employees
and an C$800m revenue, a third of
which is in agriculture.

The government sees it as a source
of high-tech jobs and research, and
has backed its support with money.
The exact extent of the financial
support to the industry is hard to
calculate but, according to Statistics
Canada - the government statistics
bureau - biotechnology receives
C$314m annually from the federal
government. In 1997-1998, it
reported that "virtually all (99 per
cent) of the biotech expenditure was
devoted to research and
development".

Friends of the Earth (FoE) wants
the government to give the organic-
farming movement C$17m, arguing
that it has stacked the deck by
financing only one part of the
agriculture industry and limiting the
consumer's choice.

Giving consumers a choice is the
one modest goal to which all the
environmental groups in Canada
aspire. They want the estimated
60 per cent of food containing GM
products which is available on
Canadian grocery shelves to be
labelled as such. They hope this will
spark at least public awareness, and at
best concern.

At the moment, there is little
demand for non-GM produce - if
supermarkets are anything to go by.
Organic produce is rarely available;
Canadians tend to trust the
government to look alter their health.
They have not had the BSE crisis
which led many Britons to conclude
that their government had misled them
about what was safe to eat. "If this
were 10 years ago, before the BSE
crisis," Pete Reilly of FoE UK admits,
"there would have been a stampede"
to get into growing GM crops.

In an effort to calm public health
concerns, Tony Blair has extended the
moratorium on growing GM crops
from one year to three. But will the
current crop trials put fears to rest?
According to many scientists, they
shouldn't. The trials are testing for the
impact GM crops could have on the
bio-diversity of the British landscape.
But one fence has already been
cleared. In the UK, GM foods have
been passed as safe to eat by the
advisory committee on novel foods
and processes, which reports to the
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Food. This is what concerns
toxicologists, such as Vyvyan Howard,
a lecturer in foetal and infant toxico-
pathology at the University of Liverpool.

Howard believes that the testing of
GM food's safety has been woefully
inadequate, and crop trials aren't the
complete answer. He says: "There is
very much more they could do in the
laboratory than is being done." The
American US Food and Drug
Administration may have deemed GM
foods safe, but it recently leaked
documents showing that some
scientists were concerned they were
approved too rapidly. As Howard
points out, the FDA "does no follow-up
tests", and is currently being sued by
the American Centre for Food Safety.

Philip Regal, ecology professor at
the University of Minnesota, was
quoted in Canadian Business
magazine as saying that the US
government found it too hard to test
genetically-modified organisms and
"just gave up", characterising the
approach as one of "If the people want
progress, they're going to have to be
guinea pigs."

The long-established and rigorous
procedures for testing drugs are, to
Howard's mind, the way in which GM
foods should be tested. "The only way
that you can test for human allergy is
to have human-feeding trials. That is
what you do with pharmaceuticals."

He says that we should err on
the side of caution, as once these
plants are released, there is no turning
back. 'What we're worried about is
subtle, long-term, low-dose
toxicology. Because what we see in the
[biotech industry and government]
plan is to change every single staple in
the human food chain - soya, cereals,
potatoes." Or, as Schmeiser puts it,
Monsanto wants "control of the seed
supply which would give them
complete control of the food supply".
Howard believes that too much of the
government's confidence is based on
"risk assessment". "Too many
decision-makers see it as the same
thing as hazard assessment. But it's not
necessarily based on science. It's
opinion - usually from the industry."
He compares it to the archaic system
of food-tasting. When the food taster
keels over after eating, you draw your
own conclusion about the safety of the
food. A GM food taster would, for
Howard, be a "direct hazard
assessment of biological systems".

His worries carry weight because
there are so few truly independent
scientists testing CM products. Most of
the government's conclusions in
Canada are based on the industry's
own research. The current UK trials
are being conducted by the
government, but all subsequent tests
are to he carried out by GM-food
manufacturers, and then checked by
the government. Each crop trial costs
at least £1. 1m which is one reason the
government will now he relying on
industry data.

On October 18, more than 200
scientists working in the area of food
health for the Canadian government
signed a petition to the minister of
health saying their inability to test
products for themselves put the health
of Canadians at risk. Days later, the
award-winning science broadcaster
and geneticist, David Suzuki, said in a
speech that eating GM foods is "a
massive experiment", the results of
which will not be known "until
millions of people have been exposed
to these foods for decades".

The testing of these plants may be
open to criticism, but the government
warns environmental groups that the
more they continue to rip up trial
crops of GM products, the less Britain
will have to add to the EU debate, one
way or the other, about the future of
these products. Yet when the advisory

Committee of Releases to the
Environment, which is conducting the
crop trials, declares that if ,"in the
unlikely event", pollen from GM crops
travelled into a non-GM crop of the
same plant, the risk to human health
and the environment is "none", one
wonders how it can be so sure.

The committee uses isolation
distances of 200m, as agreed by
Scimac, the umbrella group
monitoring the trials of GM foods,
which includes both farmers and :
industry. In oilseed rape, it asserts, this
guarantees seed purity "in excess of
99 per cent'.

But tell that to Percy Schmeiser.
"It's pretty windy here in the prairies,"
he says, drily.

Brewster Kneen, a sheep farmer for
15 years, with degrees in economics
and divinity, is the author of
'Famaggeddon: Food and the Culture
of Biotechnology'. He sees the move
towards acting first and responding to
the fall-out later as "the arrogant pride
that dominates the biotech industry -
that 'Oh, we know what we're doing,
and if we make a mistake we'll correct
it with another technology'."

British environmentalists hope that,
even if the biotech-agriculture
industry clears the few hurdles left in
the UK, GM food will not necessarily
succeed. According to MORI, health
tops the list of most shoppers'
concerns; hence Salisbury's
description of organic produce "as the
fastest-growing sector in British
supermarkets". Worth £340m
last year, it is expected to rise still
further.

In Canada, government scientists
and Monsanto stress that they have
tested GM foods under international
standards, using the best science
available. But are we asking the right
questions? wonders Sheila Forsyth, a
biologist and agricultural food
scientist who worked on the
guidelines: "We have to develop
regulations along with the science."
And Pete Reilly, of FoE, says that "if a
big farmer like Percy has problems,
you can bet a farmer in Norfolk is
facing trouble."

So what price the possibility of
keeping any farms GM- free?

Percy Schmeiser is gloomy. "If one
farmer gets it in Europe, in just a
matter of years, there'll he nobody
who won't have contaminated crops -
whether they like it or not," FT

[Box: Percy Schmeiser's law suit
has made him a star of the air-
waves in north America and he
appears on TV and radio
programmes. He even has a
website dedicated to him,
www.fightfrankenfood.com)
though he admits he's never
seen it") don't even have a
computer." he says]

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