Appeals Court Binds Monsanto to Promise Not to Sue Organic Farmers

By: Ecowatch.com, 06/11/2013

A three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled yesterday that a group of organic and otherwise non-genetically modified organism (GMO) farmer and seed company plaintiffs are not entitled to bring a lawsuit to protect themselves from Monsanto‘s transgenic seed patents “because Monsanto has made binding assurances that it will not ‘take legal action against growers whose crops might inadvertently contain traces of Monsanto biotech genes (because, for example, some transgenic seed or pollen blew onto the grower’s land).’”

In the ruling issued yesterday in the case Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA) et al. v. Monsanto, the Court of Appeals judges affirmed the Southern District of New York’s previous decision that the plaintiffs did not present a sufficient controversy to warrant adjudication by the courts. However, it did so only because Monsanto made repeated commitments during the lawsuit to not sue farmers with “trace amounts” of contamination of crops containing their patented genes.

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