While on my trip to the US, Eva (I’m not sure where she’s from) sent me an email telling me about this. Thanks Eva! I see a few other bloggers have also written posts on this.
A seed cleaner is someone who cleans seeds after harvest. You might think this isn’t very important, but in fact this is a critical service for most types of seed. This is when you separate the seeds from the chaff, which is critical for proper storage as well as being able to properly replant the seeds. If you are a small gardener, you can generally separate small amounts of seed from their pods, but when you are a larger farmer dealing with pounds or tons of seed, you must use tools to help you. Common tools are seed screens or winnowing machines. These tools require some skills to operate, and are sometimes expensive meaning small farmers cannot always afford to own them and must arrange for someone else to clean their seeds for them.
It appears seed cleaners are Monsanto’s and other large seed companies latest targets in the US. By threatening seed cleaners with lawsuits if they inadvertently clean patented seeds, they hope to drive them out of business. Of course the burden of proof seems to be with the seed cleaners themselves, to prove the genes in the seeds they clean are unpatented, rather than the agriculture companies to prove their seeds are involved. This is of course an impossible task for the seed cleaners. Monsanto wants to change local laws to make it easier to threaten seed cleaners in this way.
The Daily Kos has an article on this.
Hi Patrick. Great post. I’ve seen quite a few lawsuits related to GE seeds. In some cases Monsanto goes after farmers who are saving hybrid seeds and not paying patent licensing fees. Others involve farms suing Monsanto or Bayer Crop Science after their crops and farms had been contaminated with GE stock, particularly rice farmers in the midwest. It’s a very sinister issue.
This is getting ridiculous. These guys (big-Ag, Monsanto) don’t know when they are stepping over the line and one day they are going to go to far and someone is just going to loose it and take these guys out. Can’t they tell that the tide is building against them just as it is against the rest of the power brokers in the world? It’s only a matter of time!