Monsanto is a multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation who
claims to support American farmers. One of the advertisement slogans says “Americans
grow America.” From the advertisements they seem like a great support for our
farmers but what about the dirty little secrets most people don’t hear about. Although
they claim to support American farmers, they have had lawsuits with a lot of
small town farmers. For example Monsanto tried to make a small farmer from Bruno,
Saskatchewan Canada pay them because his canola fields had been contaminated
with Monsanto’s Round-up Ready Canola. Schmeiser had been growing canola on his
field for over 40 years. Monsanto tried to sue the Schmeiser for patent infringement.
Although Schmeiser’s defense contained evidence that, he didn’t not knowingly
contaminate his fields with their canola. Schmeiser brought up a second trial
stating that Monsanto has deliberately trespassed on his land and took samples.
In the end Schmeiser won the case.
But this isn’t the only time where Monsanto has been in a lawsuit with
small farmers. A band of 30,000 farmers sued Monsanto for harassing and
threatening organic farmers for patent infringement if any type of GM product of
theirs ends up on the farmer’s property. It seems Monsanto has a problem keeping
their seed on their own property. It is wrong for Monsanto to threaten these
farmers. It is not their fault that Monsanto’s seeds end up on their property. If
Monsanto has that bad of a problem with it then why don’t they find a way to
stop the spread of their seed instead of trying to start lawsuits against American
farmers they claim to support.
Monsanto claims to be good supporters but they don’t support organic
small farmers. It’s the small farmers that produce our purest foods, not the
foods that contribute to undernourished and obese kids and adults.
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