50 animal, vegetable, miracle
are the forgotten commoners. We’re losing them as fast as we’re losing
rain forests. An enormous factor in this loss has been the new idea of
plant varieties as patentable properties, rather than God’s gifts to human-
ity or whatever the arrangement was previously felt to be, for all of prior
history. God lost that one in 1970, with the Plant Variety Protection Act.
Anything owned by humans, of course, can be taken away from others;
the removal of crop control from farmers to agribusiness has been power-
The Strange Case of Percy Schmeiser
In 1999, a quiet middle- aged farmer from Bruno, Saskatchewan, was sued
by the largest biotech seed producer in the world. Monsanto Inc. claimed that
Percy Schmeiser had damaged them, to the tune of $145,000, by having their
patented gene in some of the canola plants on his 1,030 acres. The assertion
was not that Percy had actually planted the seed, or even that he obtained the
seed illegally. Rather, the argument was that the plants on Percy’s land con-
tained genes that belonged to Monsanto. The gene, patented in Canada in the
early 1990s, gives genetically modified (GM) canola plants the fortitude to with-
stand spraying by glyphosate herbicides such as Roundup, sold by Monsanto.
Canola, a cultivated variety of rapeseed, is one of over three thousand spe-
cies in the mustard family. Pollen from mustards is transferred either by insects,
or by wind, up to one- third of a mile. Does the patented gene travel in the pollen?
Yes. Are the seeds viable? Yes, and can remain dormant up to ten years. If seeds
remain in the soil from previous years, it’s illegal to harvest them. Further, if any
of the seeds from a field contain the patented genes, it is illegal to save them for
use. Percy had been saving his canola seeds for fifty years. Monsanto was suing
for possession of intellectual property that had drifted onto his plants. The laws
protect possession of the gene itself, irrespective of its conveyance. Because
of pollen drift and seed contamination, the Monsanto genes are ubiquitous in
Canadian canola.
Percy lost his court battles: he was found guilty in the Federal Court of Can-
ada, the conviction upheld in the court of appeals. The Canadian Supreme Court
narrowly upheld the decision (5–4), but with no compensation to Monsanto. This
stunning case has drawn substantial attention to the problems associated with
letting GM genies out of their bottle. Organic canola farmers in Saskatchewan
have now sued Monsanto and another company, Aventis, for making it impossi-