Monsanto's Seed Police Keep Harassing US Farmers

Monsanto's Seed Police Keep
Harassing US Farmers

Monsanto is going after growers who reuse its seeds' technology.
http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=1831

USA: Beans and Big Business

Monsanto is going after growers who reuse its seeds' technology.

By Rita Giordano
Philadelphia Inquirer
February 18, 2002

Trouble came knocking early at farmer Scott Good's door in August.
"They showed up at my door 6 o'clock in the morning. They flipped a badge
out," said Good, a Burlington County soybean grower. "It wasn't polite what
they were saying. They acted like FBI."

The two men were private investigators. They had been watching him.
Monsanto, the St. Louis agribusiness giant, had sent them. They wanted to
know about his beans.

Under advice of his lawyer, Good finally told them: The beans had been grown
from seed saved from the previous harvest, a practice that goes back to the
beginning of farming.

But those unassuming, pea-sized yellow beans were high-tech Monsanto beans.
Good, 42, is now the target of a federal lawsuit he fears could break him
financially. It is one of about two dozen pending suits, not to mention
hundreds of complaints, pursued by Monsanto about alleged misuse of its
genetically altered cotton, canola, corn and soybean seeds.

The case against Good involves such highfalutin legalese as violation of
intellectual property rights, patent infringement, and seed piracy.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/bigbeans022602.cfm

He had to have paid for them back then, so until they grow they belong to him.

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear



Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.
by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele May 2008 No thanks: An anti-Monsanto crop circle made by farmers and volunteers in the Philippines. By Melvyn Calderon/Greenpeace HO/A.P. Images.


Gary Rinehart clearly remembers the summer day in 2002 when the stranger walked in and issued his threat. Rinehart was behind the counter of the Square Deal, his “old-time country store,” as he calls it, on the fading town square of Eagleville, Missouri, a tiny farm community 100 miles north of Kansas City.

The Square Deal is a fixture in Eagleville, a place where farmers and townspeople can go for lightbulbs, greeting cards, hunting gear, ice cream, aspirin, and dozens of other small items without having to drive to a big-box store in Bethany, the county seat, 15 miles down Interstate 35.

Everyone knows Rinehart, who was born and raised in the area and runs one of Eagleville’s few surviving businesses. The stranger came up to the counter and asked for him by name.





http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805

Maybe now with the adults back in charge, something will be done about Monsanto. Heavy fines and long prison sentences are in order.