Skip to content

Australia’s First Legal Attack on Monsanto for GM Contamination of Organically Certified Crops

Over the Christmas and New Year, whilst people on the east and south of Australia were suffering floods and their consequences, one farmer, much further west, discovered a far more insidious flood was occurring on his property. He is also reeling from the consequences. Steve Marsh is the farmer of an organic certified property near Kojonup, south-east of Perth in Western Australia. Well, I must correct myself – it is now more accurate to say that he was the farmer of an organic certified property…. In December, Western Australia’s Department of Agriculture conducted tests which confirmed that 70% of Steve’s wheat and oats crops have been contaminated by Monsanto’s Roundup Ready canola, grown on a neighbouring farm. Due to Monsanto’s inability to control the spread of their ‘product’, Steve’s farm has lost its organic certification, and is accordingly facing significant financial losses as a result.  The offending farmer has apparently “complied with his obligation to keep a 5m buffer between his GM crop and the adjoining farm.” (weeklytimesnow.com). We should know by now that the only way to stop the spread of GMO plants is complete elimination (see also). A bee can carry pollen kilometres in a day. A five metre buffer between GM and non-GM crops is meaningless fine print which only serves to hasten the rapid spread of Big Biotech’s ‘proprietary technology’, and create potentially new captive customers of the same. More…

News selected by Covalence | Country: Global | Company: Monsanto | Source: Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

Back To Top