Why does monsanto always win

Monsanto brought false accusations against Gary Rinehart—shown here at his rural Missouri store. There has been no apology. So far, the company has produced G. Many more products have been developed or are in the pipeline, including seeds for sugar beets and alfalfa. Even as the company is pushing its G.

Louis—based corporation into the largest seed company in the world. In Iraq, the groundwork has been laid to protect the patents of Monsanto and other G. One of L. As recently as , no genetically modified crops were grown in the U.

In , the total was million acres planted. Worldwide, the figure was million acres. Many farmers believe that G. Another reason for their attraction is convenience. By using Roundup Ready soybean seeds, a farmer can spend less time tending to his fields.

With Monsanto seeds, a farmer plants his crop, then treats it later with Roundup to kill weeds. That takes the place of labor-intensive weed control and plowing.

Monsanto portrays its move into G. Like it or not, farmers say, they have fewer and fewer choices in buying seeds. And controlling the seeds is not some abstraction. During the growing season, Investigator Jeffery Moore, through surveillance of Mr. Moore observed the Defendant take the brown bag soybeans to a field, which was subsequently loaded into a grain drill and planted. Moore located two empty bags in the ditch in the public road right-of-way beside one of the fields planted by Rinehart, which contained some soybeans.

Moore collected a small amount of soybeans left in the bags which Defendant had tossed into the public right-of way. Faced with a federal lawsuit, Rinehart had to hire a lawyer. Rinehart later learned that the company had been secretly investigating farmers in his area. I felt like I was in another country. Ever since commercial introduction of its G. Lawyers who have represented farmers sued by Monsanto say that intimidating actions like these are commonplace.

Pilot Grove, Missouri, population , sits in rolling farmland miles west of St. The town has a grocery store, a bank, a bar, a nursing home, a funeral parlor, and a few other small businesses. The little traffic it has comes from trucks on their way to and from the grain elevator on the edge of town.

The elevator is owned by a local co-op, the Pilot Grove Cooperative Elevator, which buys soybeans and corn from farmers in the fall, then ships out the grain over the winter. The co-op has seven full-time employees and four computers. In the fall of , Monsanto trained its legal guns on Pilot Grove; ever since, its farmers have been drawn into a costly, disruptive legal battle against an opponent with limitless resources.

Neither Pilot Grove nor Monsanto will discuss the case, but it is possible to piece together much of the story from documents filed as part of the litigation.

Monsanto began investigating soybean farmers in and around Pilot Grove several years ago. There is no indication as to what sparked the probe, but Monsanto periodically investigates farmers in soybean-growing regions such as this one in central Missouri. The company has a staff devoted to enforcing patents and litigating against farmers.

Once Pilot Grove had been targeted, Monsanto sent private investigators into the area. At least 17 such surveillance videos were made, according to court records. The investigative work was outsourced to a St. It was a McDowell investigator who erroneously fingered Gary Rinehart. McDowell, like Monsanto, will not comment on the case.

The co-op provided more than pages of documents pertaining to dozens of farmers. Monsanto sued two farmers and negotiated settlements with more than 25 others it accused of seed piracy. Although the co-op had provided voluminous records, Monsanto then sued it in federal court for patent infringement. In effect, Monsanto wanted the co-op to police its own customers. In the majority of cases where Monsanto sues, or threatens to sue, farmers settle before going to trial.

The cost and stress of litigating against a global corporation are just too great. The more the co-op has resisted, the more legal firepower Monsanto has aimed at it. Monsanto next petitioned to make potential damages punitive—tripling the amount that Pilot Grove might have to pay if found guilty. After a judge denied that request, Monsanto expanded the scope of the pre-trial investigation by seeking to quadruple the number of depositions.

Monsanto gave them two weeks to comply. Whether Pilot Grove can continue to wage its legal battle remains to be seen. Whatever the outcome, the case shows why Monsanto is so detested in farm country, even by those who buy its products. The future of the company may lie in seeds, but the seeds of the company lie in chemicals.

Monsanto was founded in by John Francis Queeny, a tough, cigar-smoking Irishman with a sixth-grade education. A buyer for a wholesale drug company, Queeny had an idea.

So he went into business for himself on the side. Queeny was convinced there was money to be made manufacturing a substance called saccharin, an artificial sweetener then imported from Germany.

Louis waterfront. With borrowed equipment and secondhand machines, he began producing saccharin for the U. The young company faced other challenges. Questions arose about the safety of saccharin, and the U. Department of Agriculture even tried to ban it. His persistence and the loyalty of one steady customer kept the company afloat. That steady customer was a new company in Georgia named Coca-Cola.

Monsanto added more and more products—vanillin, caffeine, and drugs used as sedatives and laxatives. In , Monsanto began making aspirin, and soon became the largest maker worldwide. During World War I, cut off from imported European chemicals, Monsanto was forced to manufacture its own, and its position as a leading force in the chemical industry was assured. After Queeny was diagnosed with cancer, in the late s, his only son, Edgar, became president.

Where the father had been a classic entrepreneur, Edgar Monsanto Queeny was an empire builder with a grand vision. Under Edgar Queeny and his successors, Monsanto extended its reach into a phenomenal number of products: plastics, resins, rubber goods, fuel additives, artificial caffeine, industrial fluids, vinyl siding, dishwasher detergent, anti-freeze, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides.

Courts in all three countries determined that, as a product of genetic engineering, Roundup Ready soybeans are protected by domestic patent law. How strict patenting of seeds affects innovation, however, is a matter of debate.

The Brazilian lawsuit is a sign of growing uneasiness with the control Monsanto has over farmers, my research on biotechnology and seeds finds. Its biotech seeds have proved attractive to farmers because they simplify farm management. Monsanto says its genetically modified seeds also increase crop yields , and thus farmer income — but evidence on this subject is not probative.

In the United States and Canada, Monsanto requires buyers of its genetically modified seeds to sign extensive licensing contracts that prevent them from saving seeds. North American farmers who violate those agreements have been sued for patent infringement and compelled to pay tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

In April , a civil court agreed with the farmers , affirming their rights to save seeds and sell their harvests as food or raw material without paying royalties. Monsanto got this ruling overturned on appeal. The law gives producers the right to multiply the seeds they buy and nowhere in the world is there a requirement to pay again.

Monsanto, however, has appealed the decision and the case is ongoing. In essence, Monsanto argues that once a farmer buys their seed, they have to pay the global bio-tech giant a yearly fee in perpetuity — with no way out.

The current bill expires in ; when it went through Congress, Monsanto filed more lobbying reports on it than any other organization. The process of piecing together a new proposal is already well under way.

To give you another example of how Monsanto has been able to carefully position itself and its wares into a near-invincible position, consider this: The reason why genetically engineered food hazards have never been studied beyond 30 days, nor are currently being studied, is because the corporations controlling the patented seeds, such as Monsanto, are allowed to prevent independent studies per current patent laws.

And the corporations controlling the seeds only allow them to be studied under very limited conditions, and rarely if ever do they permit them to be studied for safety by anyone but the USDA—which conveniently has not yet seen the need to conduct rigorous long-term safety studies on genetically engineered foods.

To do this, the President has rounded up the usual suspects, which includes Monsanto. However, unlike the U. An interesting article from last year by Mike Ludwig, titled "Why Monsanto Always Wins," sheds light on the shady approval process of genetically engineered crops. This is why supporting this initiative is so important, as victory in California will likely eliminate most genetically engineered foods from the rest of the U.

As you may recall, two years ago, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine AAEM called on all physicians to prescribe diets without genetically engineered foods to all patients. At that time, the AAEM called for a moratorium on genetically engineered foods, long-term independent studies, and labeling, stating:.

There is causation…". In the U. This is a powerful strategy that could have the impact of a national law. Due to lack of labeling, many Americans are still unfamiliar with what genetically engineered foods are.

We have a plan to change that, and I urge you to participate and to continue learning more about genetically engineered foods and helping your friends and family do the same.