Monsanto Sued.
Saturday, January 1 2000
MONSANTO HAS LED a global cartel engaged in biotech product- and price-fixing, charges a landmark class action lawsuit filed in December in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The Foundation on Economic Trends and the National Family Farm Coalition filed the suit on behalf of both U.S. and international farmers who purchased genetically modified (GM) corn and/or soybeans, as well as farmers engaged in farming non-GM crops in the 1999-2000 growing season.
A 1996 internal Monsanto document known as the "Maize Protection Business Plan" describes how the company, along with numerous co-conspirators, including DuPont, Dow Chemical, Novartis and AstraZeneca, formed a global cartel to monopolize and restrain trade in the GM seed market, effectively precluding additional competitors from entering the marketplace, according to the plaintiffs' complaint.
The lawsuit also alleges that Monsanto failed to adequately test GM seeds and crops for human health and environmental safety prior to marketing them, thereby causing a collapse in international consumer and regulatory confidence in GM food products. As a result, U.S. and international farmers suffered economic losses, the complaint alleges.
Because of cross-pollination in the field and intermingling during handling and storage, even farmers who grew non-GM seeds suffered in the market, the suit alleges.
The lawsuit seeks both damages and injunctive relief, with the plaintiffs petitioning the court to ensure that GM seeds are no longer sold until Monsanto has "adequately tested GM seeds and crops for human health and environmental safety, and subjected such tests to independent scientific review and public disclosure."
"It is my hope that this class action lawsuit will refocus the global discussion around GM foods by shifting the public debate away from the more narrow issues of trade relations and government regulatory protocols toward the broader issue of corporate concentration of power over world agriculture in the emerging biotech century," says Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends.
"Monsanto and the other co-conspirators named in this class action litigation represent a new and potentially dangerous exercise of influence over agricultural markets just as was the case at the beginning of the twentieth century when Standard Oil controlled much of the oil market and used its influence to dictate the terms of industrial life," Rifkin says.