Mr. Andrew Walden of ”’Hawaii Free Press”’ chose to select some points from court documents for his story republished in ”’Hawaii Reporter”’, “How Schmeiser Gets His Seeds” while at the same time ignoring others. Once again, proof that some will not allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.
Mr. Walden makes an issue that Schmeiser “worked quite hard to get Monsanto’s seed into his fields.” That statement is absolutely false and it is obvious that Mr. Walden chose to ignore this. All levels of the court determined that it didn’t matter how the seed arrived on Percy’s fields. Monsanto had a patent on their RR technology and were entitled to the protections of the patent. Nevertheless, the reality is that …
*Yes there was a 3-acre patch where some volunteer canola was growing along the highway;
*Percy did spray it in a spring burn to clean the field of all canola, and weeds prior to seeding (which is a common practice);
*Some canola survived (about 60 percent of the plants) in clumps.
However, canola was seeded on the remaining 157 acres of that field (with that canola that survived the spring burn).
And then, the canola from part of this 3 acre parcel in question was mixed in with over 1,500 other bushels of canola from other fields that was used for Percy’s seed the next year. Mr. Walden’s suggestion is intentional, as he hopes to lead readers to believe that the canola that survived in “bunches” or “clumps” from 3 acres, could be used to seed over 1,000 acres the next year. This is laughable at best and intentionally misleading.
Furthermore Mr. Walden states “and a series of independent tests by different experts confirmed that the canola Mr.. Schmeiser planted and grew in 1998 was 95-98% Roundup resistant.” This statement also is false, but again makes a good story. The reality is Monsanto’s tests came back at 95 percent to 98 percent Roundup resistant, but independent tests conducted by the University of Manitoba on the same fields came back with a RR resistant of 0 percent to 66 percent with all but one of his canola fields at 0 percent to 15 percent resistant.
Opposite to what Mr. Walden states, the Web site does share Schmeiser’s statement of defense where evidence was presented from farmers who had drift occur off their trucks onto Schmeiser’s fields.
The Web site also has evidence in the statement of defense that an adjacent farmer was growing RR canola in the previous year. Another intentional attempt to mislead the reader.
Your statement that “the Court finds that he dumped his own seed voluntarily and tried to snag some free Monsanto seeds. Rather than opposing GM seed, Schmeiser apparently wanted them quite badly — he just didn