We all know Percy Schmeiser, our Canadian hero who dared to stand up against corporate giant Monsanto for farmers rights. If you don’t, he was the guy whos field was contaminated by GE Canola seed, and then Monsanto sued him for patent infringement. Since he had Monsanto’s patented gene on his land, and he was collecting and selling his seeds just as he and his fathers had done for generations, Monsanto took him to the Supreme court, who upheld Monsanto’s patent in a 5-4 decision, but refused to order him to pay in a 9-0 decision.

Percy is back. He is taking Monsanto to small claims court for $600,000 to cover the cost of his cleanup. Monsanto agreed to pay the $600,000 if Percy agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement, but of course he refused. If Percy Schmeiser wins this case, it could set a precedent for other farmers and food producers to sue biotech companies like Bayer, Syngenta, and of course Monsanto for contaminating their land or food.

I believe that if biotech companies were held financially accountable for all cases of contamination, it would effectively kill the genetically engineered crop industry. Crops are, by their very nature, extremely hard to contain. They have evolved to try to get their pollen and seed to spread far and wide, and in some cases contamination has occurred tens of kilometers away. If those same companies that enforce their “technology fees” on unsuspecting farmers had to pay cleanup costs and other environmental liability under the “polluter pays” principle, it would be an enormous financial burden. The Liberty Link rice contamination would cost Bayer billions in liability.

We will keep following Percy’s case, and hope for the best.

When reading the article “Clone, Clone on the Range” in this weeks Georgia’s Straight, I was having flashbacks to reading articles on the regulation of GE crops. Essentially every non-commercial scientist has stated that meat and milk from cloned animals are not the same as their conventionally bred counterparts. Between 95 an 99.5% of all attempted a clones fail to make it to birth, and even if a clone is born, half of them have life-threatening birth defects. In short, a clearly unsafe agriculture technology is being allowed without proper safety testing.

The striking difference between the USDA report on GE crops, and that for cloning, is that the GE report denied knowledge of any safety issues. The basis for the allowance of genetic engineering for food was that the USDA had no knowledge of any harmful effects, or meaningful differences between GE crops and conventionally bred crops (later revealed to be a total lie). With cloning, however, the USDA revealed that they are aware of major differences between cloned and not clones animals. They are aware of the truly staggering number of birth defects, and they made reference to studies which clearly demonstrated that more testing needed to be done. The conclusion: meat and milk from cloned animals is essentially the same as from conventionally bred animals. Furthermore, the USDA is allowing the livestock that die of birth defects to be sent to rendering plants, and fed to pets and humans (in lard)

What do we do now? I will never again eat meat from the United States. Cloned beef could be on shelves in the US in a couple months, and there is no labeling requirement. Furthermore, unlike GE food, there is currently no test that can be performed to identify meat or dairy from cloned animals. Health Canada is now reviewing the USDA report and may reconsider our ban on eating clones. This is likely because once the US starts doing it, we either have to shut down our border to American meat and dairy (a political nightmare, especially for Steve, who is so close with the Bushes), or follow our friends to the south by relaxing our laws. I certainly hope we take a stand like we did with the anti rBGH ruling.