"Even if I'm not sued - doesn't change the fact that my customers want non-GMO."

Absolutely, and if that happens you have a real claim on damages and adjudication for such. And I fully support you in your claims.

"The non-GMO farmer is the only one at a disadvantage here."

What you have are competing business models. The GMO-reliant farmer pays a higher cost for seed in the hopes that they can have a higher yield and lower maintenance costs as a result. If their seed gets cross-pollinated with a lower-yield heirloom variety, they have spent that extra cost in seed and chemicals for naught. But they have no claim against the non-GMO farmer for their losses! (BTW - I used to work for a company that worked for farmers hauling sugar beets and had a friend who worked for Monsanto, so I have more than a passing knowledge of both sides of the industry despite my tech background.)

The purpose of the post was not to get into the merits of GMO vs non-GMO, but to point out that this particular judge's ruling effectively sidelines the facts of the case. By ruling against a stay of enforcement, the judge is saying that there is zero merit to the complaints of the GMO farmer who is to be impacted by the ruling even though the hearing hasn't taken place yet! The judge is basically telling the legislature that their efforts won't face judicial review. That to me is wrong regardless of my stance on GMO.

Jan, any plant selectively placed adjacent to another
of the same phylum (group -- whatever) is bred like a
genetically modified organism. . what is the distinction
which people call "GMO" -- is this apparent? -- j

p.s. AMeador1, could you answer this? . I see the
definition using the term "non-natural means" but don't
know what this designates.
.

Infected? Definition. This is all environmentalistmumbo jumbo. Why do you get the right to decide what others can do with their property? Is you concern based in reason? Can you be accused of the same thing? Aren't your products likely to "infect" other people's products? If so who should bear the burden of isolating themselves?

No, it means be more careful based on the circumstances. Deciding to till the ground with a new fangled tilling machine that does it faster in one step verses an old method that takes three steps is different than genetically modifying the food we consume (which has never ben done in the history of the world until now). Improper farming methods appear to have been the cause of the "Dust Bowl" - but relatively speaking - modifying farming methods has not caused problems until it comes to messing with the food - via pesticides, herbicides, etc... - And only because of their residues - not because we genetically changed the food into something else. There are plenty of advanced that can be made in society where the negative effects can be considered. The systems are simpler and can be analyzed more thoroughly before instituting them. And where there effects can be much shorter to see. This is our food. These are new chemical combinations that we have ever experienced. It is dangerous. On a product by product basis - I'm sure some - maybe many will be fine - but I don't want to find the one that's not by watching a loved one die from it. Or end up with some kind of disease or birth defect. So many medicine now days have a list or all the crap their side effects can do to you. Yet we're willing to tamper with out foods and not blink an eye?
Progress for the sake of progress is evil!
Our food supplies through heirlooms and hybrids have done us fine up until GMOs. Why all of a sudden are GMO's the only answer? We can't county on pharma to produce safe drugs anymore and you want botanists chemically/genetically altering our food supplies and think there's not a real risk?
If GMO ends up contaminating all of our heirlooms - there will be no option. If we made a mistake - then what?
Being cautious is not weakness - running blindly forwards simply because we can is dangerous.

This is a point that I have made on other threads. The truth of the matter is that 'what you do on your own property' does not necessarily _stay_ on your own property. The example I used was noise pollution, but pollen is an excellent example - one that would never have occurred to me.

I am tremendously in favor of GMO crops, but you have posed a well constructed problem that goes like this:

1. I, as a person, am not opposed to GMO.
2. My customers are.
3. Ethically, I sell what I say I sell.
4. I say I sell organic heritage produce.
5. If GMO pollen contaminates my plants, then the next generation of seeds will be heritage/GMO hybrids. I will not then be able to ethically label my crops as heritage.
6. The market does not support the additional cost of my buying new seeds every year.

"Pollen" is a physical substance, but one over which we have little control. If a herd of "cows" crosses a property line and damages a neighboring farm, we have ample precedent for considering this the responsibility of the cows' owner (even it he is not negligent). If a herd of "pollens" cross a property line, we really do not know what to do.

Jan

this is disgusting. . we have a tree farm, currently
managed by Ma Nature, but if we wanted to plant
some "super-trees" we couldn't? . so, ya gotta have
a driver's license for trees? . aaaarrrrgggggghhhhh -- j
.

The account I read indicated that he discovered he had some cross pollination and explicitly saved the seeds from that area for future planting. This deliberate act was the reason for the decision going against him..

I have been raising plants of a wide variety for better than 30 years. I collect my own seed and use them to grow crops the following year. I have studied plant reproduction, as well as many plant related topics for many years. If your sited article says that cross-pollination cannot effect the seeds I will collect, will not produce hybridized heirloom/GMO byproducts then I will dispute the correctness of your cited article. The plain fact that Monsanto has sued an a farmer for growing seed produced by that same process explicitly shows is happens - and at a large enough scale that Monsanto was willing to sue over it.
Monsanto can sue whether the intent was there or not to intentionally raise these hybridized seeds. Much like copyright law - you can't copy their stuff - even in part without opening the door to suit.
Let me propose a conspiracy theory - what if Monsanto were a large company. And suppose they wanted to control the seed market. Suppose they locate farms that raise and sell seed for heirloom or competing hybrid seed. Suppose they contract with local farmers upwind of these opposing seed producers so that they will cross pollinate their crops - ensuring that more and more of their seed stock in contaminated with their GMO variety. Could they do this - eliminating the competition?
If they've gotten protection from the government via cronyism so they can't be counter sued - what is the recourse?
The product is only better by some peoples standards - others disagree that it is better and are skeptical due to the lack of science that these varieties are in fact safe in the long term.
Monsanto and others of their nature are exactly Ayn Rand's example of crony capitalism. They are big business in bed with government for protection and handouts. They are effectively taking away the rights of their neighboring farmers when they use biology against them... Biological warfare per se.
BUT, I also have a problem with government regulation. At best right now - with our current structure - I would hope that we would have the option to request for an injunction against them moving forward until the matter can be heard in a court where peers can listen to the matter to settle the disagreement without regulation. So, I agree with you on that point - simply banning entire regions is an overstep - but how to deal with my conspiracy theory? It only takes them being successful a handful of times to alter the market in their favor by trampling the property rights of other farmers via biological warfare from doing what they wanted to with their farms.

Um, it's a very far cry to claim equivalent outcomes from the disparate processes of herbicides and cross-pollination. The one kills plants while the other just has the possibility of hybridization, but you still get living plants in the end. To say that the effects of the two are the same is simply not supported.

Are there potentially negative effects from cross-pollination? Those most definitively DO lie within the realm of possibilities. But until it actually happens, there have been no damages. Part of any civil proceeding is that you have to prove _actual_ damages in order to have standing to litigate. You can't sue otherwise. You can't sue based on what another party _might_ do - only on what they _actually_ did.

"If it only start manifesting itself in 40 or 50 years, how many decades after that would it take to figure out that (if ever) that the GMOs were the cause?"
Applying this policy strictly means humans would never take action, never progress, because we can never be sure of the repercussions and unforeseen direct effects.

There was a case of a non-GMO farmer (not sure if organic) in Canada who was sued for IP infringement because GMO pollen hit his crops from up the road, and he sowed the seeds produced by these crops, unaware they had GMO DNA. Lower courts supported him, but Monsanto threw their full legal war chest at him, and finally the Supreme Court sided with Monsanto.

This has huge adverse ramifications for common law, since the guy did not go through the normal phases of a contract - offer, acceptance, exchange of considerations, informed agreement. To me, this goes against every tenet of free trade and (non-IP) property rights. At the very least, it pits one form of property rights against another.

To use an internet analogy - how would you feel if you noticed your computer running slightly faster and better? Happy, I'm sure - and you'd just go about your business. Then, how would you feel if you copped a lawsuit some months later from a software vendor, saying that you're pirating their IP, and it turned out that their software was installed without your knowledge or consent via a virus you accidentally picked up when you were simply just visiting a website? Would you feel violently offended, and fight them with everything at your disposal, or would you sheepishly just pay them the legal remedies they were demanding?

Thank you! That's really all I want is for people to think and look at all sides and be rational. :)
I REALLY dislike regulation, but I don't think it makes sense to wait for the damage to happen before trying to put a stop to the activity in the first place - BUT that does mean having a hearing with thinking, knowledgeable, and rational people being involved.
Damages don't always equate to fair in these matters. Proving the case can be even harder and more expensive. I'd hate to be in a position to have the pay for genetic DNA testing of a sampling of my small crops. That is itself would be more than I could pay for I'm sure.
I also dislike the idea that some religiously environmentalist could move in next door and take me to court every time they think I'm doing something evil to the environment.
I see the potential issues and ramifications - but haven't settled on a viewpoint that I'm comfortable with.
Objectivism is not so clear cut as it initially appears on such issues. Especially when such outcomes can so easily be foreseen. I want to say - "my property and I'll do what I want with it!" But I can understand how that could be abused - and under our current system - not justly valued if it goes wrong.
I guess I would hope that the neighboring farmers would value each other enough to not do these things to each other in the first place. But, until everyone is a rational, educated, objective minded person - you have such court cases.

I am not a botanist, but I do understand asexuality in regards to seeds. There is an article linked to above which supports my points. While I am sure such events happen on farms (the round up dumping) I would think that farmers at least attempt to be decent neighbors, like any property owners. It is anti-property right to support a community or county or some governed area banning the use of GMOs. GMO seeds do not cause irreparable harm to plant. If that were the case, they wouldn't be so popular.

Interesting input. Thank you for your 'from the trenches' perspective.

Jan, thinking now

Maybe I'm misunderstanding - I think the farmers should have been stopped from proceeding until the arguments are heard.
Dumping toxins is not different. If you are a farmers growing a completely different crop - and my toxin is an herbicide - it kills part of your crop - that is effectively no different than your cross-pollination effectively destroying seed crop. Weather it is dead or unusable - either way money is lost. If you know I'm getting ready to dump the herbicide - and you intervene before I can, I'm sure you'd want to have someone hear your argument before allowing me to proceed. What if was simply spraying and the herbicide mist wafted over onto your property damaging crops? Very similar to my little pollen wafting over and causing you monetary loss as a direct result.

Even if I'm not sued - doesn't change the fact that my customers want non-GMO. If my seeds are infected with GMO, I have to re-spend money to make sure I'm not selling GMO product to my clients in future years. That's an extra expense on my part. It is not the case the other way around. If my heirloom varieties cross pollinate with their GMO - it won't hurt their current year's production and they are re-buying seed to plant the following year. The non-GMO farmer is the only one at a disadvantage here - incurring additional costs with doors open to lawsuit.
I have no interest in Organic Certification - I have an interest in selling what I advertise. And I can't do that if my crop gets contaminated - without re-buying new seed.
And, read my earlier post. I'm not ok with regulation on the matter, just the option to have my case heard in court if I want to argue it before the offending farm operation is allowed to move forward. Thus my agreement with not allowing the offending farm to move ahead without hearing the case.

As I posted below, I believe that there are actually two circumstances that bear scrutiny. The one is the civil case of the GMO seed company suing for incidental use. The second is the civil case of one farmer suing another for damages.

In the first, I think there is an opportunity to declare a Fair Use standard for incidental use. I don't agree with the seed companies being able to go after any farmer for incidental use - especially if they didn't plant the seeds.

In the second, however, I think it is necessary that one show actual damages. Cross-pollination between GMO and non-GMO is a far cry from toxin dumping. What is possibly affected is the market to which the product may be sold and the resulting revenue. All of that is measurable and can therefore be weighed as actual damages. But to preclude one method of doing business by legislative fiat in favor of another is nothing more than blatant favoritism and subsidy.

The thing that stuck out most to me in this article was that the judge denied the stay. That ruling effectively was a ruling which effected a verdict in favor of the government even before the case could be heard. That to me is incredibly dangerous.

Again - if you can't understand the simply biology of pollination and hybridization then you are in fact denying science.
And two, buy you premise - you should not be concerned if I dump my excess RoundUp on my property killing vegetation on your property.
The cases Monsanto have won, open the doors to being sued even if you didn't want the cross pollination - I don't have the money or resources to fight such an operation.

Counter productive how? They can use these tactics to get money from those not buying their products - by force - through government cronyism. If they contaminate crops and the varieties cannot be readily obtained any longer, then they can effectively force farmers to have to use their products or use nothing.

Anti-science is denying the science of biology in how these processes work and how they can be used with cronyism to manipulate the market.

Ignoring the lack of long term outcomes of these products is denying science. Science requires study over reasonable time frames related to the experiment involved. The use of GMO should be a very long term study - and would have to be done on an individual products basis as each GMO could have its own unique issues.

Taking one narrow view and ignoring the full spectrum of possibilities and outcomes is anti-science and anti-human. What if it turns out that corn GMO engineered to be resistant to RoundUp (an herbicide) leads to cancer in 40 years after long term consumption of corn covered in RoundUp. or due to the genetic manipulation somehow causes improper cell division when exposed to other compounds?

It is very complicated and nearly impossible to know what the long term outcomes could hold. Would the cancer patients 40 or 50 years from now that end up dying from it think it is pro-human? If it only start manifesting itself in 40 or 50 years, how many decades after that would it take to figure out that (if ever) that the GMOs were the cause?

there is no evidence to support your claim that organic farmers' crops are in any danger of contamination. As well, why do one set of farmers get to dictate what all the farmers in a region can grow? Monsanto has won lawsuits against farmers, but in each case juries determined that the farmer actually desired and propagated the seeds or broke licensing agreements. In all those cases, the harm is reduced yields and compromised crops. The same is true with Heirloom strains. You want quality control. But the demands you may have for your own acreage should not be another farmer's burden, IMO

Another myth about GM crop that is often relayed by critics is how organic farmers have had their crops “contaminated” by GM crops causing loss of certification or being sued by the companies that own the patents on the GM crops.

Both GM agriculture and organic agriculture have flourished in the past 20 years. In all that time there has not been a single example of an organic farmer losing certification for trace amount of GM in their organic fields.

Likewise, no organic farmer has ever been sued for trace amounts of GM showing up in their organic field.

http://www.civilbeat.com/2014/07/science...

The point is that if you are growing heirloom and you do use your own seed from year to year (which is common and not illegal), these GMO strains can contaminate the heirlooms you raise. And, based on this issue of Monsanto patents on their GMO and hybrid plants/seeds, they then have the option to sue you over using your own seeds in the following year as they would now have some genetics matching their patented varieties. This is a double edged sword. You can not use your own seeds as they break to non-GMO business model by using them and as they've been contaminated - you have the added expense of having to re-buy your seed from an uncontaminated source. Also you are opening the door to being sued by Monsanto (or others like them) - simply because they, or a farmer that uses their seed, planted a crop near yours.

This whole topic is way too complex for someone such as myself to understand all of the subtleties and fine points. However, there is one thing I do understand. It's OK for a knowledgeable person to adjudicate conflicts, but it's not OK for the government to mandate procedures. Sometimes this may be a fine line, but it's a line that never should be crossed. Never!

I agree, but see two different avenues of litigation involved. I fully agree that the seed company should be able to protect their intellectual property from intentional infringement, but they are currently being allowed to litigate for incidental infringement as well. I see an opportunity for lawmakers to declare incidental infringement immune from the enforcement of legal penalties.

The other issue is also one of civil litigation, and involves the damages caused to one farmer by another. I think there is an opportunity for the farmers to get together and structure a basic framework under which such disagreements can be adjudicated. But in protecting one business, one can't also exclude another, which is what concerns me about this ruling here.

GMO companies work extremely diligently on the concern of "cross pollination." It is counter productive to their success with the product. I am surprised that on this site we have such environmental luddite-ism. It is anti-science and anti-human.