Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are controversial in the farming and food industries, with proponents touting their durability and yield and skeptics worrying about their effect on the environment, their safety, and the mixing of GMO and non GMO crops on
farms and in the food supply. Since the year two thousand, there have been at least four class action lawsuits against biotech companies involving GMO crops that became improperly intermingled with other crop shipments, with three of the cases settled so far, including one about wheat in which event is paid about a billion dollars. Here did they talk about the impact of this kind of litigation over GMO contamination? Is David Schultz,
environment reporter for Bloomberg b NA. David, how exactly is it that the GMO crops end up mixed together with non GMO crops and shipments? What's going on here? Look, can happen a number of different ways. One of the most basic ways is that you have to different fields um neighboring each other, and there's some cross pollinations. So let's say you have GMO corn, the corn releases, it's it's pollen and it goes across to a neighbor's field and then that uh, non gmo corn pollinates with the
GMO corn and it creates some some problems. But another, um more common way is that, you know, the when farmers send their their grain to grain silos for storage, they're supposed to sort of keep the GMO and non GMO crops separate for export reasons, because there are a lot of countries that have different rules about GMOs and the US do does I should say, and um, but that doesn't always happen the way it's supposed to do, and so sometimes there's traces of GMO crops that get
into these exports silos and get sent to other countries, which creates a big problems. Very basic question, Do all GMO strains have to be approved by the Department of Agriculture and what's the process? Yes, they do. All um GMO crops do needed U s d A approval, And essentially what the U. S d A is looking for is to make sure that these crops won't accidentally sort of grow wild and overtake non gmo crops. So they're looking for, uh, you know, essentially whether these crops would
would become in essence a weed. Uh. And you know, at this point they've been doing these approvals for around thirty years and basically since the mid to late eighties, and most crops do receive approval, but there are some situations where GMO crops that were grown in experimental field trials and were never approved somehow make their way into fields and start growing wild. And that's where you give big problems. And for example, the the wheat case that
you mentioned, that's what happened there. There was an experimental field trial of GMO wheat and it ended and then ten years later, Uh, that wheat was sound growing just spontaneously. Feel that no one really I thought that could happen, and it caused a lot of problems for Monsanto, which was the developer of the wheat. So David tell us, who's liable here when this kind of that you have different ways that it can get into non gmo crops,
who's liable? Yeah, Well that's a big unanswered question. Uh, it could be you know, is that the farmer, is that the person who sold the seed, that this the company that developed the seed, And frankly, we don't really know because all of the lawsuits that have resulted from this have ended in settlements. So we've never had a court of law into a ruling saying, uh, you know, Monsanto your fault or the farmer your fault because you didn't you know, plant the crops in the right way.
We just don't know. And and U. S. D A has not issued really any regulations on this, and and certainly Congresses is nowhere near ready to pass a law that would it would make this clearer. So right now it's really unclear. It's just you know, when when these biotech companies like Monsanto and c Genta and Bear and the like gets sued um, they pretty much just uh tend to go towards a settlement and avoid a judgment. David, what's the best hope for providing some of that certainty?
Is it the regulatory process? Is it? Is it? Uh, you know, eventually getting a court ruling instead of a settlement. How are we going to get out of this box? Well? I think that the there's a current big class action lawsuit that's ongoing right now against the Swiss company's Centa, which is a maker of a lot of GMO products,
And in that instan what drove. That instance was an incidence where centers GMO corn accidentally got into shipments from the US to China, and Chinese authorities discovered that they cut off all U S shipments some corn. So in essence that for a couple of years after this happened, US farmers could not export their product to China. That caused the price collapse. It hurt a lot of businesses, and those farmers whose businesses were heard then suits in Genta.
And this is a really unique case because in this instance, Sintenda had received all the USDA approvals that it needed and so that there were no problems with them growing the crop in the US. Just what happens when it gets exported to China. So depending on how that lawsuit plays out, it could really influence um, you know, even if you get all the approvals you need, if you mess up, you know, export markets, you might still be
liable depending on how the case goes. Although it goes to a settlement, then I guess we still won't really know. And David, just to be clear, it was Monsanto that paid the billion dollars, so that's right in the weak case. Okay, Well, thank you to David Chultz, environment reporter for Bloomberg. V NA