Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Mass. farming group hits Monsanto with lawsuit

By Kyle Alspach

A Massachusetts-based farming association is spearheading a lawsuit against biotech giant Monsanto that challenges the company’s patents on genetically modified seed.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Massachusetts chapter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association by Public Patent Foundation. The suit was filed in federal district court in Manhattan.

St. Louis, Mo.-based Monsanto has sued farmers for patent infringement in cases where the company’s genetically modified seed has landed on the farmers’ property, said Dan Ravicher, lead attorney in the case and the Public Patent Foundations’s executive director, in a statement.

“It seems quite perverse that a farmer contaminated by GM seed could be accused of patent infringement, but Monsanto has made such accusations before and is notorious for having sued hundreds of farmers for patent infringement,” Ravicher said.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare that if farmers are ever impacted by Monsanto’s modified seed, they cannot be accused of patent infringement. 

Organic farmers have been angered by the use of genetically modified seed because it competes with their organic seed when it spreads. According to the statement, organic canola seed has become virtually extinct since Monsanto introduced genetically modified canola seed, and “organic corn, soybeans, cotton, sugar beets and alfalfa now face the same fate.”

“Monsanto is developing genetically modified seed for many other crops, thus putting the future of all food, and indeed all agriculture, at stake,” the statement reads.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of a recent USDA decision to deregulate genetically modified alfalfa, according to the statement.