This morning I found an alarming article claiming that Senate Bill S510, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, will make it illegal to grow, share, trade or sell homegrown food.

Steve Green at Liberation Wellness also claimed, "Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it, but Monsanto’s Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designed it and is waiting as an appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to administer the agency it would create — without judicial review — if it passes. S 510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food AND FARMING."

That sounded a bit overstated to my friend and coworker Lane, so I looked closer. It seems that S510 is sort of dead, but reanimated in another bill, and what it seems to mean is a lot more paperwork for people selling garden produce at farmer's markets. That seems spectacularly unfair since it is the large factory farms that have ignored existing regulations, resulting in several large scale food poisonings and recalls.

But Monsanto came up again in Democracy Now's interview of Canadian farmers Percy and Louise Schmeiser. As farmers do, they had been cross-breeding seeds on their property, trying to develop a seed that was best suited for the land and climate. A neighbor had bought genetically-modified organic (GMO) seeds from Monsanto, some of which managed to find their way to the Schmeiser's land, "seed drift" they call it, where they took hold, grew and actually ruined the Schmeiser's breeding efforts.

At this point one might assume that the Scheisers would have grounds for a complaint against the neighbor. But as it turns out, Monsanto claimed that they owned the plants no matter where they grew, based on patent law.

PERCY SCHMEISER: Well, initially they wanted so-much-an-acre fine, but it ended up that they laid another lawsuit of $1 million against my wife and myself. And that also, we had to fight. And besides that, there was another lawsuit in the seven years before it went to the Supreme Court, where they tried to seize all our farmland. They tried to seize our whole—our farm equipment, so they could stop us, because we were using mortgages on our farmland to pay for our legal bills.

 

AMY GOODMAN: And so, then explain what happened. You appealed this right to the Canadian Supreme Court?

PERCY SCHMEISER: It went all the way. It went through the lower courts and the court of appeal and so on, and then it went all the way to Supreme Court of Canada. But there were other issues at the Supreme Court we could bring in that we could not bring in at the lower courts—first of all, farmers’ rights, farmers’ rights to use your own seed from year to year to develop them, and then also the whole issue that we said, in regards to patents, there should be no patents allowed on higher life forms—basically, anything that comes from a seed. So that was one of the main things. We said to the Supreme Court that life is sacred. No one, no individual, no corporation, should ever, ever control it.

You have to remember that in Canada, and I believe also in the United States, that there’s nothing in our patent acts of 1867 and 1869 that talks about genes, because it was unknown at that time. So even at the present time, all these decisions are only decisions of the court and of a judge. And I should also mention that in the Supreme Court, it was a split decision, five-four, where they ruled that Monsanto’s patent on the gene is valid.

AMY GOODMAN: So, they ruled against you or for you?

PERCY SCHMEISER: Against me.

Schmeiser feels they achieved a victory of sorts because the court sent the case back to Parliament to establish law, and disallowed the financial penalties and punitive damages. But living through Monsanto's campaign was frightening:

LOUISE SCHMEISER: It was scary at times. You just never know.

PERCY SCHMEISER: And the phone calls, you know, where there would be somebody on the line saying, "You better watch it. They’re going to get you." So it was pretty scary, and I was very concerned, when I was gone, that something would happen to her.

LOUISE SCHMEISER: And when they would watch us, especially in our own house here—they watched days on end every move we made, in our house and for our office, what we use for the land, I felt like I was a prisoner in my own home.

PERCY SCHMEISER: They did everything to bring us down financially and mentally. And that’s what they’re doing, is to mentally and financially break people. They are totally ruthless. They have no ethics. They have no morals. It’s the bottom line.

And they are also trying to control ownership of seeds so that farmers will have to buy new seeds every year:

PERCY SCHMEISER: I hope my battle with Monsanto is over. But I realize that as long as I bring awareness around the world about Monsanto’s patent—not only Monsanto’s patent, but Bayer, Syngenta, DuPont—what their patents do for the control of the future of our seed and our food supply, and that’s what it was all about. GMOs were never meant to feed a hungry or starving world. They were meant to get control of farmers’ seed supply. That gives them the control of the world food supply. And so, that’s where we stand at now, to bring that awareness around the world.

I watched, and reviewed, Soylent Green this afternoon, but as corporations go, Monsanto may rival the Soylent Corporation.