Australian Organic Farmer to Take GM Contamination Case to High Court
A battle that's been going on for years
(Natural Society) We’ve been reporting on the case of Steve Marsh, an organic farmer in Australia who has been fighting Monsanto and his neighbor and childhood friend Michael Baxter due to the contamination of his farm from genetically modified canola.
Steve Marsh lost his organic certification for more than 70 percent of his West Australian wheat farm due to the cross-pollination by his neighbor’s herbicide-resistant, GM canola crops. Marsh sued his neighbor, Baxter, in Supreme Court, but lost, partly due to the fact that Monsanto reportedly paid some very hefty legal fees for his opponent. Baxter won in a two-to-one vote in September of last year.
Marsh now wants to take his plea to the Australian High Court, unsatisfied with the obvious collusion between his neighbor and one of the most hated corporations in the world – Monsanto.
Though the two neighbors have been hashing it out, Monsanto has been allowed to stay on the sidelines, patiently refusing to take any responsibility for transgenic contamination. Odd, since the corp has been suing farmers with convoluted patent laws which have been passed as of late. Monsanto would give farmers grief for saving seed for years now – a time-honored tradition which is now threatened with lawsuits like the one between Marsh and Grant.
Marsh is seeking special leave to appeal in the High Court in an act of tenacity and resilience that will help all organic farmers, should he win. Though he likely could use help funding his legal battle since Monsanto will undoubtedly up the ante to try to defeat him again.
 | Christina Sarich is a humanitarian and freelance writer helping you to Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and See the Big Picture. Her blog is Yoga for the New World. Her latest book is Pharma Sutra: Healing the Body And Mind Through the Art of Yoga. |
Good luck to Steve Marsh, and may Monsanto’s GMO filth and board of directors rot.
Just why Australia is going down the GM path is confusing, seeing as how most of our major trading partners refuse to allow the stuff. Basically, GM will kill our agriculture markets.
It’s killing our agriculture markets already and on 2 fronts: 1) wise countries and individuals refuse to buy GMO filth and 2) formerly organic food is no longer marketable because (as in the case of Steve Marsh) it has been contaminated by GMO filth.
Given that we live in a world with wind, rain and floods, birds and bees. it should be as obvious as the nose on ones face that there is NO way that genetically modified plants can be stopped from spreading wherever the above-mentioned forces of nature take them. Only a substantially biased court could find otherwise, or in any way allow a farmer to devastate his neighbour’s farming business without awarding compensation.
In the face of such a travesty of justice, it seems obvious that “the writing is on the wall” for real food. The powers-that-be are determined that, given a little time we will all be subject to the food monopolies they have allowed to develop. Consequently we will all have to face the holocaust of foods that have been genetically manipulated for the profits of their short-sighted manipulators.
Every organic farmer, and every individual that values the right to eat natural food should be paying into a trust fund to help Marsh fight this abomination of a court system. Is there such a fund?
I don’t know of such a fund. – The “please sir, will you stop destroying our crops, our businesses, our health?” is wimpy and deferential. It’s time to restore the labor protest practices of the 1920s and 1930s and be directly confrontational, to stand in solidarity with French activists who pulled up GMO crops at night, with Oregon activists who burned GMO sugar beets to the ground, with the Hungarian government (yes, the actual Government) that burned GMO fields. – And then Monsanto et al. must be prosecuted for deliberately, knowingly putting carcinogens and other poisons into our food supply.
I am inclined to agree with everything you’ve said. There’s just one problem:
When governments, as a result of legislation enacted as representatives of “We the People” pull out GMO crops, its a recognised legal activity proving that “We the People” consider GMO’s to be potential devastation. But when protesters do the same thing, they are seen as law-breaking red-necks performing acts of vandalism, and that damages the case against GMO’s as public sympathy will be with the owners who have been economically destroyed.
Working through legal channels is slow indeed, but it is NOT saying, “please sir, will you stop destroying our crops, our businesses, our health?”. It is saying, “Sir, you will not, under any circumstances, any longer destroy, …[etc]”.
There is something else that must happen: We must break the 2 party political cycle of thinking we live in a democracy, exercising our democratic vote at election time to throw out the mob that just sold our country down the drain and re-elect the mob we threw out for the same reason just 3 or 4 years ago, and then go back to sleep until next election being lulled & entertained by endless sport and the sleazy lives of our movie stars.
You’ve made good points; thank you. I think it’s past time for slow legal action against GMOs, however. Monsanto says it wants to control the world’s food supply (giving Monsanto the power of life and death over Any country), and Every GMO crop to date has escaped into the wild to irreversibly contaminate normal crops, making the normal crops unhealthful and thus of no market value. If Monsanto is economically destroyed, then GOOD. It has deliberately, knowingly poisoned the food supply and groundwater, and this accusation has been upheld by court cases. Monsanto’s BOD belongs in prison for its crimes against humanity.
You’re totally correct about the media and about needing to break the 2-party system that was deliberately set up to dupe and whipsaw the voters. I hope we can Do it.
Absolutely. And thank you.
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