Dupont complains that Monsanto is running a seed market monopoly

(NaturalNews) Chemical and agricultural giant DuPont has accused rival Monsanto of maintaining a seed monopoly, in a complaint filed with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Agriculture.

"Monsanto has engaged in numerous practices that improperly seek to expand the scope of intellectual property rights at the expense of competition, innovation, and choice," the 18-page DuPont report reads.

DuPont, which owns the genetically modified seed company Pioneer Hi-Bred International, is Monsanto's main competitor in the agricultural biotech field. The two companies are already in court over a failed licensing deal.

The complaint alleges that Monsanto controls 98 percent of the U.S. market in soybeans, 79 percent of the market in corn and 60 percent of the market in patented soy and corn genetics. It accuses the company of using coercive tactics to rope farmers and seed dealers into agreements that make them dependent on its patented and expensive products.

"The ag biotech trait market is firmly in the grip of a single supplier, acting as a bottleneck to competition and choice... it also threatens the global goals for agriculture in the 21st Century doubling the world's food supply by 2050," the report reads.

Monsanto has been accused of many of the same practices by biotechnology critics, who allege that Monsanto's herbicide-resistant crops increase reliance on Monsanto chemicals and point to the company's aggressive prosecution of farmers who save and replant Monsanto seed. The company has also been known to sue farmers whose crops become genetically contaminated through cross-pollination with Monsanto-modified crops.

Although biotech critics tend to single out Monsanto as the world's largest supplier of genetically modified seed, they also level many of the same criticisms at DuPont, Bayer, and other biotech companies. Big seed companies in general have come under fire for encouraging farmers to plant expensive modern hybrids over native varieties, thus reducing seed diversity and exposing the world to a greater risk of food shortage.

The DuPont complaint comes ahead of five planned Department of Justice and Agriculture hearings into concerns about competition and monopoly in the agricultural marketing sector.

Sources for this story include: www.reuters.com.

Lawsuit seeks to ban genetically modified sugar beets

(NaturalNews) A group of Oregon farmers are seeking an injunction against this year's planting of Monsanto's genetically engineered sugar beets. The groups of organic farmers, food safety advocates and conservationists, is seeking to persuade a judge to ban the crop until the USDA provides a proper environmental impact statement proving that the crops are safe and that they will not cross-contaminate nearby fields.

The debate over whether or not to allow GE crops into the food supply has been a hotly debated one, but the biotech industry has been the side unable to prove that its products are safe. Those concerned about the negative consequences of GE crops have plenty of unresolved questions that demand answers prior to any GE crop being approved. Yet in reality, the USDA has succumbed to industry pressure instead, jeopardizing the entire food industry.

Nearly half of the nation's sugar beets are genetically modified. They can be found planted on more than one million acres across ten states. The beets have been engineered to be resistant to Monsanto's "RoundUp" herbicide, but their components are not limited to the fields in which they are planted, spreading across the landscape via pollen and seeds carried in the wind. Because it is impossible to track where GE plant fragments end up, there is no ensuring that any crop is truly non-GE or organic.

Concerned groups already won a previous lawsuit that required federal officials to reevaluate their 2005 approval of unrestricted GE beet plantings in light of allegations that the government agencies failed to properly evaluate their environmental impacts. Now they hope to stop any further plantings of the crop until the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service conducts a proper analysis, a process which could take upwards of three years.

Until then, the plaintiffs hope to eliminate all sales of GE beet sugar because it was unlawfully deregulated in the first place. "Legally, they shouldn't be on the market," explained Paul Achitoff, an attorney for Earthjustice, in an AP article.

"The sugar beets were unlawfully deregulated," he opined. "The court has already found that."

Frank Morton, one of the Oregon farmers who is suing the USDA, explained that he has already found GE pollen on his own crops. He grows organic seed for vegetables on his farm, but because of the pollen contamination, his crops are now worthless in the organic market.

Sprouts from GE sugar beets are also randomly showing up in people's farms and gardens, including in compost sold at local garden centers in Oregon.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/art...