Fantastic Percy's Furphy's Fly Again: Fabulous Phantasms and Fibs Actually Repeated at a Blog.

I'm sure In Good Health means well and doesn't realise how weak their post is, despite snazzy high tech video news. But misinformation about GM crops is continuing to spread, started yet again by personable farmer Percy Schmeiser:

Percy Schmeiser has been growing canola for 40 years. He's been experimenting, developing his own varieties, using his own seed. Then Monsanto, the giant multinational agro-chemical company that is at the forefront of developing genetically modified foods, accused him of patent infringement and demanded restitution for its seeds. They stole his plants, seeds & research because of cross pollenation with GMO plants that other people had planted within pollenaton range. If GMO's touch your crops... Monsanto owns your crop and will sue you. Pollenation is not containable. "I never put those plants on my land," says Schmeiser. "The question is, where do Monsanto's rights end and mine begin?"

Percy gives a full account of the specific alegations and breaks down the facts about GMO's in this 13 minute video.

GMO Pundit's Response.

In this video at In Good Health Percy tells some whoppers. Only people who don't know the details of his history will miss how he willfully distorts the truth.

There are several solid pieces of court evidence that prove Farmer Schmeiser's claims of being an innocent victim of circumstances cannot be believed. His harvested seed was 98% GM. It is impossible for this to occur by accidental contamination. Not only that, there is conclusive evidence that he tampered with the evidence for his court case. This are the most serious reasons for treating anything he says on this issue with utmost skepticism.


From an earlier Pundit post on court evidence in Mr Schmeiser's trial:

So, the "honest broker" Mr Freisen tested two batches of seed taken from the same original sample. The sample that came directly from the HFM treatment facility scored 95-98% Roundup resistant, and the sample that had passed through Mr Schmeiser's hands scored 63-65% Roundup resistant.

How can this be? The test is reasonably reliable and accurate. There is no way such a divergent result could occur without dishonesty. Obviously, Monsanto could not have adulterated the batch going directly from HFM to Mr Freisen.

Internal to the opinion is the evidence that Mr. Schmeiser apparently tampered with the evidence on his subsample. Leaving aside that 63 to 65% Roundup Ready canola seed is too high a percentage for any of his "explanations" to be plausible, the fact that the independent sample was 95 to 98% Roundup Ready, just as Monsanto found in the subsample provided to it by HFM, means that Schemeiser must have tampered with the evidence. I now realize that Judge MacKay assuredly realized this. Judge MacKay concluded that Schmeiser was tampering
because he was lying.[For more details follow link]

Rick Roush made a list of Percy's tall tales in 2002 (Google Agbioview). Farmer Schmeiser is still telling many of them, plus some new inventions.

As a response to Percy's latest outburst Pundit has collected some of Percy's biggies below, drawing on, and adding to Roush's 2002 list to get the job done quickly. Readers may care to add to this list in the comments section.

Pundit's bottom line: Don't believe everything you see on the blogosphere.


Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 19:32:26 +0930
From: "Rick Roush"
Subject: Schmeiser's top ten tall tales

Dear All:

Many readers will be familiar with Percy Schmeiser's claim that he was the innocent victim of contamination from Monsanto's GM canola. During Schmeiser's recent visit to Australia, I made a study of his claims. Here are my favorites, with relevant facts from other sources that test his claims. I'll appreciate any comments, editorial or otherwise.

What can we learn from this about Schmeiser's credibility generally?

1. Schmeiser was the innocent victim of Monsanto

PERCY SCHEMEISER: "I lost it all to a contamination because a judge ruled in my case it doesn't matter how Monsanto's genetically modified canola gets on my land or any farmers land. You violate the pattern and you infringe on the pattern and your seed becomes Monsanto's property."
(Source: ABC 7.30 Report TV Transcript, 4 July 2002, from abc.net.au/news/indepth/featureitems/s599662.htm)

FACTS: The Canadian court's record indicates that the judge found that Schmeiser deliberately selected for and multiplied GM seed. In 1997 (for example) Mr. Schmeiser sprayed Roundup herbicide over "a good three acres" from which approximately 60% of the plants survived and continued to grow. At harvest, Schmeiser saved surviving canola seed from these plants and then used them in planting his 1998 canola crop ( see especially paragraphs 39, 40, 102, 103, 104, 119, and 125 of the judge's decision is at decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fct/2001/2001fct256.html ). Schmeiser could have saved seed from any part of his farm, but he took the unusual steps of spraying just part of the crop with Roundup (a very unusual step because
this should have killed three acres of crop, so Schmeiser must have suspected it would do otherwise) and then saved seed from the survivors, which any reasonable person would expect to have a high frequency of GM Roundup resistance.

(I am aware of a newspaper report from The Globe and Mailnewspaper in Canada, written by Stephen Strauss (June 7, 2002) that Schmeiser's lawyer is arguing in his appeal that the GM seed was saved but that Schmeiser was entitled to replant it as an "ancient right of a farmer." I am not counting this at present because there is no independent corroboration.)
[This was latter confirmed-GMO Pundit]

2. Crop yields are down because of GM.

FACTS: Record Yields for soybeans in 2005
http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/01/us-cotton-posts-record-crop-2005-soy.html


3. Schmeiser was a canola breeder for 50 years!

Canola was invented by Canadian breeders in the 1970s.


4. 1800 other (Canadian?) farmers are also being sued.(An old claim, echoed in latest video)

PERCY SCHEMEISER: (When asked about the host about whether he was the only farmer sued): "We estimated that there is (sic) at least 1800 lawsuits". (Source: ABC TV's Landline on 14 July 2002)

FACTS: Landline noted on air in the same program that they could find no support for this claim. I then wrote to 5 Canadian weed and agricultural scientists from across Canada, and they replied that they didn't know of any. I then wrote to Monsanto, who said there were 2 in Canada and 14 in the US, and that was all worldwide.

See also GMO Pundit
FACTS:A Law professor summarise the legal situation

5. GM canola had become a "superweed"

Schmeiser said that GM canola had become a "superweed" that was virtually impossible to eradicate. (source: The Stock Journal 11 July 2002, page 3, reporting on a meeting held in Clare, South Australia)

.....canola itself had developed into a "superweed" that no chemical would control and was becoming a menace to farmers and municipal authorities alike (source: The Land, 11 July 2002, p. 28)

FACTS: "Canola volunteers are not generally found to be harder to manage in Canada. For example, a recent study prepared for the Canola Council of Canada (Winnipeg) surveyed 650 western Canadian canola growers on numerous issues, one of which was management of volunteer canola. Half of the producers surveyed grew transgenic herbicide-tolerant canola and half grew non-GM canola. Of the producers planting transgenic herbicide-tolerant canola in 2000, 61% said that the difficulty of managing volunteer transgenic herbicide-tolerant canola was about the same as that of volunteer conventional canola. Interestingly, 16% said that managing volunteer transgenic herbicide-tolerant canola was easier than managing conventional canola varieties. The remaining 23% said that it was more difficult to manage volunteer transgenic herbicide-tolerant canola.... for example, spraying with 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) controls this problem. This chemical application means an additional cost to the producer of 1.50-2.00 Canadian dollars (C$) per acre" (source: Stuart Smyth, George G. Khachatourians & Peter W.B. Phillips, Liabilities and economics of transgenic crops. Nature Bio/Technology (June) 2002 Volume 20
(Number 6) pp 537 - 541)

6. Monsanto covertly dropped herbicide bombs to test a crop it suspected
illegally contained its genetically-modified canola (A GOLDEN OLDIE, NOT IN LATEST OUTBURST

"Percy Schmeiser made the claim in Perth yesterday during a Greenpeace-sponsored speaking tour" (source: The West Australian, 11 July 2002, p. 33). This claim was also madeby Schmeiser at the Wagga meeting (S. Sutherland, unsolicited email, 24 July 2002).

RESPONSE: This is so crazy that it doesn't really justify a response, but just what would a Roundup bomb look like, and wouldn't be easier, cheaper (and more stealthy) just to collect some plants from the road to take them back to the lab for a test, or even just spray some with a hand sprayer?


7. "(Schmeiser) said GM canola in Canada was already cross-pollinating into other Brassica species such as cabbages and cauliflower, as well as wild mustard" (source: The Land, 11 July 2002, p. 28) (ANOTHER GOLDEN OLDIE)

Response: This was flatly denied by Canadian weed scientists.




This Just in:

Monsanto Responds To Article By Michael Meacher MP In Independent Newspaper Wednesday 6th August

In response to today's article in The Independent newspaper "To know the truth about GM, ask the Canadians", Monsanto in the UK has sent this letter for publication:

Dear Sir,

There are many factual errors in Mr. Meacher’s article about GM in Canada. (To know the truth about GM, ask the Canadians, August 6). Amongst the more obvious is that his trip, funded by organic farmers, did not seem to ask the majority of farmers who increasingly grow GM canola, about the very truths his article claims.

This is quite an achievement, given that 73% of all the 11.6 million Canadian canola acres planted this year are GM. The 18,000 or so Canadian farmers choosing this year to plant Monsanto's variety of this commodity crop, have previously reported benefits of better weed control, increased yield, higher returns and improved profit (www.canola-council.org). No one forces them to plant GM; Monsanto also sells conventional canola seed.

Mr. Meacher quite erroneously reports that contamination of the seed supply resulted in Mr. Schmeiser "extraordinarily" being taken to court by Monsanto. A quick check of the judge's ruling, (unanimously upheld subsequently by the appeal court which rejected all 17 of Mr. Schmeiser's points of contention) shows Justice Andrew MacKay ruled how Mr. Schmeiser "knew or ought to have known" that he had saved and planted seed that was GM.

The judge concluded his infringement arose "not just from occasional or limited contamination", saying the seed could only have been of commercial quality and could not have arrived in Mr. Schmeiser's field by accident. Monsanto only took court action as a last resort and with great reluctance - it remains the only court case of its kind in Canada after eight seasons GM use.

For the record, unlike the UK's NFU, the Canadian NFU is not representative of most farmers. Rather, it is a minority grouping of specialist growers.

Yours faithfully,

Tony Combes
Director of Corporate Affairs
Monsanto UK Ltd.
The Maris Centre
45 Hauxton Road
CAMBRIDGE
CB2 2LQ
Tel. 01223 849492
Pager 07659 120 014

In addition, Mr Meacher mentions the court case "extraordinarily" bought by Monsanto against a Canadian farmer. Contrary to Mr Meacher's assertion, this was nothing to do with alleged "contamination" of the seed supply. Please see comments following the unanimous Federal Court of Appeal rejection of all 17 of Mr. Schmeiser's points of contention in September 2002, and the full Appeal Court ruling. Mr Schmeiser's original case resulted in a 62 page ruling by Justice Mr Andrew MacKay in March 2001. (This is available in full, but the relevant paragraphs giving the reasons why he did not find in Mr Schmeiser's favour are from [115] to [127] inclusive.)

Finally, there is an article entitled "Misinformation Dominates GM Debate" by Jackie Fraser in a recent Canadian Guelph Mercury edition, which mentions the Canola Council of Canada report conclusions that genetically-modified varieties resulted in both higher yields and reduced crop input costs. This report is available at www.canola-council.org.

Tony Combes
Director of Corporate Affairs
Monsanto UK Ltd