Battle Over GMOs Heads to Canada's High Court
Date: 20-Jan-04
Country: CANADA
Author: Randall Palmer
Monsanto has already won two lower-court judgments against Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser, successfully arguing he used its canola without a license. The grain has been genetically modified to be resistant to its herbicide Roundup.
Schmeiser portrays himself as a small-time operator who wants to grow crops and develop his own seeds without worrying about whether is infringing biotech patents if some of the modified seeds blow on to his property.
"I'm very concerned with the patenting of life forms, and to me, when you introduce a new form of life ... into the environment, there's no cutting back," Schmeiser, 73, told a news conference yesterday.
Anti-corporate activists and environmentalists have come out in support of Schmeiser and made him a champion for farmers around the world who want to stop the proliferation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
But the issue has also divided farmers. Some resent paying fees from their shrinking incomes to multinational corporations, while others want to see investment in new and improved crops and support GMOs.
"We feel what's at stake is the access to innovation," said Brian Tischler, a canola farmer at Mannville, Alberta.
Tischler is part of a canola growers group that has sought intervener status in the case, fearing the Supreme Court might overturn Monsanto's patent.
In the summer, fields across the Prairies gleam bright yellow with canola, a version of rapeseed that is used largely to produce cooking oil and margarine.
Nine out of 10 canola farmers now use Monsanto's Roundup Ready Canola or other forms of the grain that tolerate herbicides. The herbicide kills the competing weeds but the canola is left unaffected, increasing the farmer's crop yield.
Schmeiser insists the genetically modified canola that grew on his farm came from seeds that blew in from other fields or from passing trucks. The modified plants' dominant genes eventually take over a field, he says.
Monsanto said independent tests of his Saskatchewan farm found that 1,030 acres were 95 percent to 98 percent tolerant to Roundup - a level contested by Schmeiser.
Referring to the trial judge's decision in 2001, Monsanto said: "At such a high level of tolerance, Justice MacKay ruled the seed could only be of commercial quality and could not have arrived in Mr. Schmeiser's field by accident."
When a reporter asked Schmeiser at the news conference how his fields happened to have so much Roundup Ready Canola, the lawyer representing the activist groups stepped in to say it was an issue they did not want to get into.
Finally Schmeiser responded: "I don't like to get into the facts, and that will be one of the issues addressed."
In 2002, in what was known as the Harvard Mouse case, the Supreme Court of Canada denied Harvard University the right to patent a mouse that was more susceptible to cancer, despite U.S. and Japanese decisions to grant it patent protection.
The United States also allows for the patenting of seeds and plants, and a central question the Canadian justices will decide is whether to agree to patenting genes in plants.
