By Susan Audrey
Everyone knows that an oil spill is not good for the environment. Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser has been traveling the world for years, spreading the word that GMOs (genetically modified organisms) are just as detrimental—to the land, wildlife, farmers, our food supply, and to us.
Percy’s story is a famous one. He’s the canola farmer who battled the chemical company Monsanto for a decade and received, with his wife, Louise, the Right Livelihood Award in 1997 for fighting to defend biodiversity, the rights of farmers, and the future of seeds.
Initially, in 1998, Monsanto took the Schmeisers to court for patent infringement, claiming that they were growing the biotech giant’s patented GMO canola. It didn’t matter, according to Canadian patent law, that Monsanto’s GMO canola, freshly cut on a nearby farmer’s land, had drifted onto the couple’s farm and that they had no control over the ensuing GMO canola plants sprouting there. Nor did it matter that Percy and Louise had spent 50 years growing non-GMO canola crops on their land, working as seed developers and researching disease control. According to Canadian patent law, Monsanto could take the couple’s entire crop from them or make them destroy it. According to patent law, Monsanto now owned the crop.
For 10 years, the Schmeisers were in and out of court with Monsanto, fighting to keep their farmland, farm equipment and home as well as fending off a million-dollar lawsuit Monsanto filed against them claiming punitive damages. According to Percy, during the course of these legal battles, he and his wife were subjected to threats by the biotech giant and asked to sign release forms stating that they could never take Monsanto to court, no matter how much the company’s GMO plants contaminated their farm. These release forms also stated that—if the Schmeisers signed them—they would lose their freedom of speech, they would not be permitted to talk about the terms of their settlement with Monsanto.
(Wow! I didn’t know that Percy was on Democracy Now! See http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/17/percy_schmeiser_vs_monsanto_the_story
All told, the couple endured four legal battles with Monsanto. The fourth battle brought a victory for conventional and organic farmers, setting a precedent that if a farmer’s land is contaminated with GMO seed or plants, that farmer can seek retribution in court, which is what the Schmeisers did. They got Monsanto to pay for the removal of GMO plants from their land. (This was not for the initial contamination of their land but for a later contamination.)
The hard-earned personal victories for the Schmeisers included getting to keep their home and farm and not having to pay Monsanto a million dollars in punitive damages. The couple did not sign any release forms barring them from filing additional lawsuits against Monsanto or silencing them from talking about their settlement with the chemical giant. And, they are far from being quiet about their personal struggles with Monsanto. Percy talks at roughly 100 locations a year about his battle with Monsanto, the ill effects of GMOs on the environment, on farmers’ rights, on our food supply, and on our health. (He’ll be speaking in Northern California at the National Heirloom Exposition, which will be held Sept. 11-13, 2012, at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.)
Pollen Doesn’t Read Signs
One of the most important points Percy is hoping to stress these days is that once GMO seeds or plants are introduced into an environment there’s no containment. “You can’t contain pollen flying in the wind or spread by bees, or seeds dispersing, whether by wind or transportation by farmers’ processing,” he says.
This does not only affect the conventional farmers, Percy stresses, but also the organic farmers. Crops that have become predominately GMO crops, such as corn, canola, soy and cotton can no longer be raised organically, he says, “so their (the farmers’) freedom of choice is taken away. They cannot continue on as an organic farmer in those crops. Organic farmers should become aware of the dangers, that they could lose their organic certification overnight if their neighbor happens to grow a GMO crop similar to the conventional organic crop that they’re growing,” says Percy.
Another potentially dangerous process, Percy would like consumers and non-GMO farmers to know about is “gene stacking.” This process creates GMO seeds or plants that can have as many as eight genes in them, he explains. “What are the effects on health? We don’t know at this time. But you have to remember that every time you transfer a gene from one higher life form to another, you can never do it by itself, you have to use a virus or bacteria, and in the case of canola, you have to use an antibiotic-resistant marker gene. Those items are all in your food now that you never had before.
“One of the biggest concerns also by the population now is the massive increase in the use of chemicals. With GMOs, you’re now using at least four times more powerful, more toxic, more dangerous chemicals than we’ve ever seen on the face of the earth before in the growing of our food. What about the effects on our health in regards to our water, our soil, our air, and, as I said before, on our food?”
On Farmers’ Rights
“Farmers should always have the right to use their seeds from year to year, develop them and plant them from year to year,” says Percy. “Farmers should never lose their rights to their own seed and plants if it’s grown on their own soil and farm property, because when you lose that right, you’re going to lose biodiversity, which we have already, because, as I mentioned before, you cannot stop the contamination of GMOs into other crops.
“Farmers should have the opportunity to purchase seeds that they want. That it’s not only GMO seeds. . .those rights should not be taken away. Basically, now if a farmer wants to grow canola here (in Canada), they can only buy GMO canola seed.
“The biggest issue that I’m concerned about is the whole new fear culture amongst farmers,” Percy shares, “in regard to the contracts and what happens to a farmer if he (his property) is contaminated (with GMO plants), his loss of rights, and not only that, but Monsanto’s investigators coming out to a farmer’s farm and going out into his field and taking samples to see if he’s growing Monsanto’s seed, in this case soy beans or corn or canola, without a license from them.
“It’s very difficult for a farmer to stand up to a corporation,” adds Percy, who can most certainly attest to this.
“These companies call themselves ‘life science’,” he adds, “but to me, it’s not anything about ‘life science,’ it’s ‘death science’.” The chemical companies attempted to introduce what has been dubbed “the terminator” gene in Canada a few years ago, he explains. “This is how it works. The terminator gene is put into a seed. When the seed is planted and becomes a plant, all the seeds from that plant are sterile, in other words, it will not germinate, so that would definitely force a farmer to buy seed from year to year.
“But there’s a greater danger to that,” he adds, “in that the terminator gene, if it’s in a plant in the pollination stage, can cross-pollinate with cousins in its own plant variety, in other words, in your organic farmer’s crop, in your conventional farmer’s crop, and render all those seeds sterile also. But it doesn’t really stop with plants. Terminator gene, if it’s inserted in any higher life form can cross-pollinate or enter into any higher life form, whether it’s a bird, a bee, an animal or ultimately a human being. That’s the greatest danger we have now on the face of the earth, the termination of the future of life, where corporations would own the control of seeds and plants with the terminator gene.”
Even more ominous is the development of what is called the “cheater gene,” Percy reveals, and how the terminator gene and the cheater gene could be used together (neither has been approved for use as of yet). A possible use, if approved, could involve inserting both genes into a seed, according to Percy. This seed would grow a plant that “will not produce a seed unless you spray a chemical on the cheater gene. So when you spray a chemical on this plant with the cheater gene in it, it will produce seed. Then the terminator gene will kick in on the seed and render that seed sterile. That would give the corporations total control of all our future seed supply.”
This would not only affect commercial farmers, Percy stresses, but farmers’ market growers—everybody. “When GMOs first came out, a lot of consumers thought, well, that’s a farmer’s issue, that really doesn’t effect us. Believe me the patents on genes effect everybody.”
What can we do?
As consumers, our power is in educating ourselves about GMOs, according to Percy, and in persisting in getting foods containing GMOs labeled as such. Also, we can “cast our vote” for a non-GMO food supply by purchasing non-GMO foods.
“That’s why there’s a new movement afoot in Canada and the United States, and it’s called ‘The Right to Know’,” the right to know what’s in our food. In other words, we should have labeling,” Percy stresses. In Europe, foods containing GMOs are labeled as such. “We are about the only two first world nations in the world that do not have labeling, and we think that it’s absolutely criminal that we don’t know what’s in our food, one of the most important things in our life.”
For more information regarding “The Right to Know” in California, visit www.labelgmos.org. At the national level, visithttp://www.opencongress.org/people/representatives to find contact information for your local congressman or congresswoman to urge their support of the Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act (H.R. 3553). Read on Rareseeds.com …
Susan Audrey is a Northern California writer, editor, photographer and artist. She can be reached at tosusanaudrey AT gmail.com