2-Plants: North Dakota, US, organic farmer fights Monsanto over GMO crop contamination

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TITLE:  ND farmer, organic certifier calls for farmers to organize against
        Monsanto over GMO crop contamination
SOURCE: Farm News from Cropchoice, USA, http://www.cropchoice.com
        by Terry Kemmet
DATE:   October 9, 2001

------------------ archive: http://www.gene.ch/genet.html ------------------


ND farmer, organic certifier calls for farmers to organize against Monsanto 
over GMO crop contamination

(Oct. 8, 2001 - CropChoice guest opinion) - The following is a piece by 
Terry Kemmet, a North Dakota grower of organic flax, buckwheat, wheat and 
conventional potatoes. Kemmet is also president of USA Organics, a small 
certification agency in Tappen, ND. He and other family farmers are looking 
into the possibility of launching a co-plaintiff action against Monsanto, 
for, among other things, trespass with its genetic engineering technology 
and harm to export markets. Please note that the views expressed in guest 
columns such as this one are not necessarily those of CropChoice.

by Terry Kemmet

Monsanto and other companies seem to be polluting organic and commercial 
crops across the fence, making them unmarketable or, at the very least, 
worth less money. Our basic constitutional right to property is soon to be 
lost. Our right to grow the type of plants that we want to grow and market 
is being overshadowed by the rights of a patent. Soon we won't even be able 
to save our own seed. If Monsanto does allow us to save it, how much will 
already be genetically altered? And our government allows this in the name 
of science and progress and the American way.

I think that an analogy is in order. You know that it may not be illegal 
for me to keep my wonderful, high-powered bull in a one-wire fence across 
the section line from your cows, but if my bull gets in and breeds your 
cows I’m to blame because I’ve trespassed on your property.

The situation is the same for Monsanto. It has all the right in the world 
to experiment with its GMO’s but it doesn’t have the right to breed my 
plants, nor yours, nor anyone else’s. The wind and the birds and the 
insects and the trucks speeding down the highway and countless other 
avenues of dispersion are taking the pollen, the progenitor of Monsanto’s 
technology, and spreading it to places it doesn’t belong.

The widespread transgenic contamination of organic and conventional crops 
that Monsanto and other agribusiness companies have caused with their 
genetic engineering technology constitutes criminal trespass and must be 
stopped through our judicial system.

Monsanto is messing with my future and the future of organic and 
conventional agriculture.

To learn more about how you can get involved in possible litigation against 
Monsanto, call or e-mail
Terry Kemmet at
+1-701-327-8285 or
tkembek@bektel.com

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