Edward Goldsmith: What is Percy Schmeiser’s story?
Percy Schmeiser: Monsanto undertook a lawsuit against me in 1998, saying that I had obtained canola seeds, planted them, and therefore infringed on their patent. They even stated that I had obtained them illegally. They went so far as to say that I might have stolen them from a seed house. However, in the two years of pre-trial, Monsanto had to withdraw all allegations that I had obtained the seeds illegally and they even admitted that it was a false allegation on their part. But they (Monsanto) said it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they had found some of their canola plants in the ditch along my field – not even in my field - and that meant that I had violated their patent. It was on the basis of patent infringement that I went to trial.
The judge concurred. For him it did not matter how the patented canola plants got on my land. It could be by cross pollination, by direct seed movement caused by the wind, which is the biggest cause of contamination, or from the farm right next to me which grew it. None of these mattered. All my seeds and plants were now Monsanto’s property, regardless of how they got there, even against my wishes.

Edward Goldsmith: So your crops are now Monsanto’s property. But can they actually take them away from you?
Percy Schmeiser: Yes. They can make me burn them, or destroy them by any other means, or they can make me harvest them, in which case I have to give them all the seeds from my plants as well as my profits.
The judge also ruled that in Canada, under existing patent laws, an infringement occurs when you use the patented seeds and spray them with their herbicides. I have never done that but the judge ruled that it was irrelevant.
I had eight different canola fields at that time and I had seeds from each of them sent to the University of Manitoba to see how much of my pure seed was contaminated. Their scientists found that half of my land had no contamination. But because I was a seed developer and a seed saver, using my seed from year to year – there remained the probability that there could be some of Monsanto’s seeds even on the uncontaminated land, so that even the profits from those lands had to be handed over to Monsanto.
Worse still, I was not allowed to use my seeds again. They had to be handed over to Monsanto. He (the judge) reminded me that in Canada, patents had precedence over and above farmer’s rights and cited a federal law to this effect passed in 1991. Monsanto wants to see exactly how far they can go in controlling a farmer’s use of seed.

Edward Goldsmith: That’s what Monsanto wants?
Percy Schmeiser: Yes, they admitted it in court. It was a test case.

Edward Goldsmith: Has this ever happened to anybody else?
Percy Schmeiser: No. There are other cases pending until the outcome of my case.

Edward Goldsmith: And these new cases will use your case as a precedent?
Percy Schmeiser: Yes, it is a precedent – a setting case.

Edward Goldsmith: You say that Monsanto is harassing you in all sorts of ways – some of them quite illegal. Tell us about that.
Percy Schmeiser: Well, to give you an example, Monsanto has its own police force, many of whom are
ex-Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). They will go into any farmer’s field that they choose and take away either seeds or plants, in whatever state they happen to be and even against the farmer’s will. In other words they steal them. If a farmer says to them, “You are trespassing – you are stealing some of my crops”, they will just laugh and say, “If you take us to court, we will drag you through the court system and you won’t have a farm left”. They now add, “We will do to you what we did to Percy Schmeiser”. Farmers know what it has cost me in legal fees to stand up to Monsanto. Few want to spend $100,000 or more and also put up with all the stress involved in fighting a powerful multinational. That’s how they intimidate farmers.
Monsanto also prints advertisements asking farmers if their neighbour is growing Monsanto’s canola or soya. If so, they are told to inform on their neighbour. As a result, farmers no longer trust each other, and are working together far less. What we are seeing is a veritable breakdown of our rural social fabric.
If Monsanto can’t find anyone at home they will send him what we call an “extortion letter”, telling him that they have reason to believe that he might be growing 100 to 200 ha. of GM canola without a licence and can ask him for $100,000 to $150,000 compensation, telling him that he may or may not be taken to court. They also specify that the farmer will be sued if he tells anyone about this threat. Every farmer who testified on my behalf at my trial had at one time received such a letter! Alternatively, they will fly in a small plane over a farmer’s canola fields and drop one of their Monsanto Round-up Ready spray balls which generally cover about 10 m. across. They will then come back in about 10 days and if the canola has died they know that the farmer wasn’t using Monsanto’s seed, if it hasn’t, they know that he was. The fact that it is illegal to spray from the air in Canada does not worry them in any way.

Edward Goldsmith: They are above the law?
Percy Schmeiser: Yes, but their case is strengthened by the contract they make those farmers who buy the seed sign. It states that:
1. You cannot use your own seeds. You thus sign your rights away.
2. You must always buy your seed from Monsanto.
3. You must buy the chemicals from Monsanto.
4. You must sign a non-disclosure statement that if you happen to commit some violation of their contract, you cannot speak to anybody.
5. You have to pay $15 an acre technology charge to Monsanto and then you must also permit Monsanto’s police to come onto your land with or without your permission. They can go into your granaries, into your fields – do whatever they like. They can demand your income-tax records, your farm records, the records of your children, etc., and actually do this for three years, even though you signed a contract for only one year. The new contract also has a clause in it that if something goes wrong with your crop, the seed or anything, you cannot sue Monsanto.

Edward Goldsmith: But why does anybody sign the contract?
Percy Schmeiser: A lot of people don’t know what is really in it – it is in such small print that they never even read it. Also, before you sign it you are invited to a special Monsanto informational evening where you are wined and dined. A lot of people are also taken on fishing trips. Eventually a lot of farmers signed up. Well, they didn’t like it, and are tied up for three years.

Edward Goldsmith: Why has Monsanto transformed itself into such a ruthless company?
Percy Schmeiser: Monsanto wants complete control of the seed market because they know that their patent on Round-Up ran out three or four years ago in both Canada and the USA and the sale of this herbicide represented
25 per cent of world sales and 50 per cent of the profits. Anybody can now produce Round-Up and sell it so the only way to control future sales is to control the world seed supply. So in the last five years, they went out on a buying spree and spent over $12 billion buying up seed companies around the world. They are now the second largest
seed company.

Edward Goldsmith: So they are now just too powerful to oppose, they can get what they want?
Percy Schmeiser: Yes, they’ve got you. Intellectual Property Rights (the new patent laws) now have precedence over private property law, the interests of the biotechnology companies over those of the natural environment, profits over food production, food quality over public health.

Edward Goldsmith: The government also insists that normal crops can co-exist with genetically modified crops.
Percy Schmeiser: Right. Scientists in the University of Manitoba simply sought to establish the distance that genetically modified pollen could travel. They found that wheat pollen would stay airborne for at least one hour. They related it to wind speed. If you had a 35 kmph. wind, how far could it travel? Now canola pollen stays airborne for nearly three hours. So if there is a 35 km.ph. wind it can blow so far, but if your pollen gets into a whirlwind or a 'desert devil', it can travel over 60 km.!

In any case, when my lands were contaminated, it was not by the movement of pollen but by direct seed movement. The seed was blown off trucks. We have to cut our canola into swathes – you lay it like hay so that it dries. It’s like tumbleweed, once it dries and you get a strong wind, it will shell out as it blows, so there is direct seed movement, in particular by the wind, but also of course by the birds, bees, etc. So to maintain, as the government does, that it’s safe so long as you keep the plots with the GM crops at a distance of ten or even 50 m. away from your conventional crops, is a joke. As farmers, we know that you can’t contain the pollen or the seed.

Edward Goldsmith: How about the field trials being conducted in England and elsewhere. What is their object?
Percy Schmeiser: They have carried out the same field trials several times in North America and other countries. It is a good way of getting first a toe in the door and then a foot. Their real purpose is to contaminate neighbouring fields, there is no other reason for them. They believe that when they have contaminated all the world’s crops they can go on getting royalties forever.

Edward Goldsmith: But no one is going to put up with that.
Percy Schmeiser: No, but their objective is to contaminate, and a short time ago, the head of the Canadian Seed Grower’s Association, which sells Monsanto’s seeds, a person by the name of Dale Adolphe said, “There is so much opposition in the world to any further releases of GM crops that the only way that remains to go ahead with them is to contaminate.” It’s a helluva thing to say, he admitted “but the way we do this is to take people’s choice away.”

Edward Goldsmith: I am told that you are thinking of going organic.
Percy Schmeiser: In Saskatchewan we use one third of all the chemicals – insecticides, herbicides, and pesticides in Canada – and we have the highest rate of cancer.In fact I don’t have a single neighbour left that has not had cancer, and only one is still living. I am the only one who has not had it. The alarming thing is that in villages of four or five hundred people it is not uncommon to find children – babies under the age of one year – having cancer, and not uncommon to find four or five babies with it in a single village.

Edward Goldsmith: Let’s get back to your lawsuit.
Percy Schmeiser: They know that my case has cost my wife and me about £200,000. We have mortgaged some of our land and our house and so on to pay our lawyers. Monsanto came after me – they said I was arrogant and stubborn because I wouldn’t do what they wanted. They have sued me now for another $1,000,000 for court costs – so I had to go back to court and the judge awarded Monsanto $153,000. Our appeals are now going ahead. If it goes ahead at the Supreme Court it will cost another $25,000. How can the average person pay all this money? If I hadn’t had help from sympathisers from around the world, I couldn’t have carried on. If I raise the $25,000 which it will cost for leave to appeal, if the case goes ahead, my court of appeal costs will probably be another $25,000. They know that, and probably believe I will give up. But they have a surprise in store. I shall go ahead, come what may.

The latest situation is that my case was heard before the Supreme Court of Canada on January 20, 2004. The case now covers more than just patent infringement and farmers’ rights to use their own seed. It now includes the patenting of genes in regards to higher life forms from seeds to plants to animals to ultimately human beings. We are currently waiting for the decision which is expected by the end of June.

To keep abreast of developments in the Percy Schmeiser case, log on to www.percyschmeiser.com