RE: BT Corn Responsibility

Roberto Verzola (rverzola@phil.gn.apc.org)
26 Oct 99 12:17:14

>keep their seed fields pure. Pioneer, despite using standard (or better)
>isolation distances, routinely throws away hundreds of thousands of dollars
>worth of seed that somehow got contaminated with foreign pollen from
>God-knows-where.

I would love to know what that standard isolation distance is... You
say you still get contamination despite it. Would you care to give an
estimate in %?

>We don't think twice about this. The idea of suing
>someone for contaminating our seed is..., well, I have never heard it
>mentioned. Producing corn for seed is analogous to producing specialty
>"organic" corn grain. I think the legal precedents were set 100 years ago
>and are not in dispute.

Ok, I think I am beginning to understand. If you have corn variety x
and your neighbor corn variety y, you might cross-pollinate each
other's field and no one blames the other. I wonder though if this
still holds if variety x is now a considered a contaminant and farmer
y is consistently losing money due to contamination by x? Lawyers will
get rich over this...

Roberto

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