...With the wisdom of Solomon, Supreme Court Judge Kenneth Martin in his judgment on Wednesday whittled the Marsh v Baxter case free of all self-interested parties and “landmark” GM-breaking precedents, paring it back to its essentials.
In doing so, he found Baxter had done nothing wrong in growing and harvesting his GM canola crop, and could not be held responsible for strong winds that had blown some plants on to Marsh’s organic paddocks, causing contamination.
Martin also ruled that the GM canola plants were absolutely “benign”, posed absolutely no physical, health or harmful risk to the Marsh family, their property or animals, and that there was “zero potential” and “no scientific basis” for claims the GM canola from Sevenoaks had “impacted negatively against the neighbouring organic farming operations of the Marshes at Eagle Rest”.
Instead, Martin found the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture was to blame for Marsh’s financial woes, wrongly stripping 70 per cent of his farm of its organic status for three years, contrary to its own rules and Australian national organic standards relating to accidental or adventitious wind drift contamination by a few GM plants, through no fault or deliberate intent of the organic farmer.
Martin called the NASA’s decision to decertify Marsh’s farm once GM-canola stalks were found lying in some paddocks — despite their not being used at the time for organic sheep, wheat or rye production — a “gross overreaction”.
He also suggested Marsh might better seek to claim the loss of $85,000 of his organic income from NASA, rather than from Baxter, for its wrongful interpretation of what constituted “zero tolerance” of the accidental presence of GM organisms on any organic farm....
A snippet of great journalism @ Blowing in the wind | The Australian:
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