U.S. farmer lawsuits over Syngenta GMO corn granted class status [View all]
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A St. Louis lawyer has secured the right to proceed with a national class-action lawsuit that could pit more than 440,000 U.S. corn farmers against Switzerland-based seed giant Syngenta.... The legal dispute against Syngenta first emerged in 2014 and is centered on allegations that the company “prematurely and irresponsibly” released new seed varieties that were not approved in China. Eventually those varieties, Agrisure Viptera and Duracade, contaminated U.S. corn exports to China, leading to a trade ban in late 2013. Plaintiffs say the trade ban and China’s continued unwillingness to buy genetically modified corn from the U.S. has resulted in estimated losses of $5 billion to $7 billion for domestic corn growers.
“Once you’ve lost a foreign market, it’s very difficult to get it back because they tend to look to other countries to fill their needs,” Downing said. He explained that China has turned to Ukraine as its primary supplier of corn imports. He says China now also uses imports of milo, a sorghum product, as a feed grain substitute to replace American corn.... “When we lost the Chinese market, it affected the Chicago Board of Trade price for corn,” Downing said. “All farmers across the country were affected on a per-bushel basis, equally.”
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“The Court’s ruling will make it easier and less expensive for farmers to pursue their claims against Syngenta,” said Scott Powell, another of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, in a released statement. “Instead of having to retain and pay individual counsel, file their own lawsuit, produce voluminous farm records, sit for a deposition and appear at trial, the Court found that all class members may attempt to prove their claims through a limited number of class representatives. If those class representatives win, all class members win. No individual farmer has to file a lawsuit to seek a recovery.”
Downing ... was the co-lead counsel in a $750 million settlement reached between Bayer and U.S. rice farmers in 2011. In that case, U.S. long-grain rice exports were embargoed after an unapproved, test variety of seed — called LibertyLink 601 — contaminated the domestic rice supply.... He says many in the grain industry warned Syngenta that China’s failure to approve the seed varieties in question presented an unnecessary risk to an important foreign trade partner.
Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/u-s-farmer-lawsuits-over-syngenta-gmo-corn-granted-class/article_0a0307d3-6a21-5db8-bbb8-57038ca809a7.html
I hope this leads both to economic justice for farmers financially ruined by predatory agribusiness and to greater understanding that the straw-man debate about whether GMOs are safe to eat is a false flag intended to mask the problem of GMOs as a monopolistic business model which is destroying independent farms.
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