Sunday, August 8, 2010

Will Monsanto sue Mother Nature?

The chemical company Monsanto created an herbicide-resistant canola which is grown widely in Canada and Australia. When the wind blew seeds into Percy Schmeiser's canola field, Monsanto sued him for patent infringement and Schmeiser lost.

Now, grad students Meredith G. Schafer and Cynthia Sagers, from the University of Arkansas science department, have found wild canola bearing modified genes growing in a broad swath in North Dakota. They are growing in the wild, where they are not supposed to grow.

Scary stuff. Why is Monsanto allowed to tinker with the planets survival, and on top of that, sue people when their crops are contaminated by Monsanto's Frankensteinian creations?

Stories like these make growing your own food seem even more subversive.

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