Two weeks ago, Percy and Louise Schmeiser, a pair of 76-year-old Saskatchewan farmers, received a Right Livelihood Award—commonly called the "Alternative Nobel Prize." If you haven't heard of the Schmeisers, you owe it to yourself to follow this link to an overview of the ordeal that they had to endure at the hands of Monsanto: The couple says that pollen from a neighbor's genetically modified Canola (patented by Monsanto) blew over their GM-free fields in 1997, but the company begged to differ.
What happened next provides stark insight into the topsy-turvy legal terrain where 19th-century laws collide with modern biotechnology: Monsanto not only sued the Schmeisers, but won.
That's right. It didn't matter that the farm couple hadn't planted the GM canola, or that they insisted they didn't even know it was growing on their fields, or that they didn't want it on their land, or that they viewed it as an unwelcome invader. Legally, all that counted was that the genes were on the Schmeisers' land and that Monsanto owned those genes.
It now looks like the corporation's lawyers might have bitten off more than they could chew when they took on the elderly couple. New legislation is working its way through Canada's Parliament that would update the absurd patent law that allowed Monsanto to sue. Meanwhile, the Schmeisers are giving as good as they got. They've sued Monsanto, claiming that the GM genes were harmful to their traditional crops and that therefore any damages should be paid for by the genes' "owner."
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