United States Farmer gets $1.3 million for Bayer’s deliberate GM rice contamination

Brus­sels — “We wel­come the Woodruff County, Arkansas court find­ing that Ger­man cor­po­ra­tion Bayer Crop­Science ‘inten­tion­ally’ con­t­a­m­i­nated US rice sup­plies. We applaud the deci­sion requir­ing the com­pany to pay Lennie Joe Kyle, the farmer who suf­fered losses when his rice was con­t­a­m­i­nated with Bayer’s genet­i­cally mod­i­fied (GM) prod­uct, a total of US$1.3 mil­lion. This amount includes the first puni­tive dam­ages for loss of future earn­ings ever awarded against Bayer.”

“The case is one of a raft of hun­dreds of cases stem­ming from the 2006 con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of US rice sup­plies with Bayer’s exper­i­men­tal GM LL601 rice — an inci­dent which con­tin­ues to under­mine US exports years later. The com­pany has already been ordered by fed­eral courts to pay four other farm­ers a total of US$3.5 million.”

“While we are pleased to see the courts step in to pro­tect farm­ers and con­sumers when reg­u­la­tory bod­ies fail, it is a pity that farm­ers have to go to these lengths to get sat­is­fac­tion for their losses. As Mr. Kyle said, ‘It’s a lot to do with the way the big com­pa­nies act. They think the farmer is just going to tuck his tail and take it, but we’re not going to anymore.’”

“GM is clearly an unpre­dictable tech­nol­ogy that has proved both dif­fi­cult to con­tain and dam­ag­ing when it escapes. It is sim­ply not nec­es­sary to take these chances with the safety of our food sup­ply or the via­bil­ity of our farms. It is impor­tant to see Bayer being held account­able for the dam­age they have done. Hope­fully the court deci­sion will act as a warn­ing to other GM companies.”

Addi­tional Infor­ma­tion about Food & Water Europe

Food & Water Europe is a pro­gram of Food & Water Watch, Inc., a non-​profit con­sumer NGO based in Wash­ing­ton, DC, work­ing to ensure clean water and safe food in Europe and around the world. We chal­lenge the cor­po­rate con­trol and abuse of our food and water resources by empow­er­ing peo­ple to take action and trans­form­ing the pub­lic con­scious­ness about what we eat and drink.

Don’t let U.S. food aid force GE crops on devel­op­ing coun­tries!

An effort to fight global poverty and hunger may become a Tro­jan horse to force genet­i­cally engi­neered crops on coun­tries and farm­ers that do not want them. Recently, Senators Bob Casey (D-​Penn.) and Dick Lugar (R-​Ind.) intro­duced the Global Food Secu­rity Act, which increases des­per­ately needed fund­ing for agri­cul­tural research in the devel­op­ing world. Unfor­tu­nately, the bill also requires invest­ment in genet­i­cally engi­neered crops favored by a hand­ful of com­pa­nies like Monsanto.

Farm­ers and gov­ern­ments in the devel­op­ing world have the right to make their own choices about genet­i­cally engi­neered crops. Food aid and devel­op­ment assis­tance should never be pre-​conditioned on accept­ing unwanted and inef­fec­tive genet­i­cally engi­neered crops.

Can you sign our peti­tion to ask mem­bers of Con­gress to keep genetic engi­neer­ing out of any food aid and agri­cul­tural research leg­is­la­tion? Click here to sign the peti­tion (http://action NULL.foodand­wa­ter­watch NULL.org/​t/​741/​petition NULL.jsp?petition_KEY=1920)

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