Speaker 1: Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are controversial in the farming
Speaker 1: and food industries, with proponents touting their durability and yield
Speaker 1: and skeptics worrying about their effect on the environment, their safety,
Speaker 1: and the mixing of GMO and non GMO crops on
Speaker 1: farms and in the food supply. Since the year two thousand,
Speaker 1: there have been at least four class action lawsuits against
Speaker 1: biotech companies involving GMO crops that became improperly intermingled with
Speaker 1: other crop shipments, with three of the cases settled so far,
Speaker 1: including one about wheat in which event is paid about
Speaker 1: a billion dollars. Here did they talk about the impact
Speaker 1: of this kind of litigation over GMO contamination? Is David Schultz,
Speaker 1: environment reporter for Bloomberg b NA. David, how exactly is
Speaker 1: it that the GMO crops end up mixed together with
Speaker 1: non GMO crops and shipments? What's going on here? Look,
Speaker 1: can happen a number of different ways. One of the
Speaker 1: most basic ways is that you have to different fields
Speaker 1: um neighboring each other, and there's some cross pollinations. So
Speaker 1: let's say you have GMO corn, the corn releases, it's
Speaker 1: it's pollen and it goes across to a neighbor's field
Speaker 1: and then that uh, non gmo corn pollinates with the
Speaker 1: GMO corn and it creates some some problems. But another,
Speaker 1: um more common way is that, you know, the when
Speaker 1: farmers send their their grain to grain silos for storage,
Speaker 1: they're supposed to sort of keep the GMO and non
Speaker 1: GMO crops separate for export reasons, because there are a
Speaker 1: lot of countries that have different rules about GMOs and
Speaker 1: the US do does I should say, and um, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't always happen the way it's supposed to do,
Speaker 1: and so sometimes there's traces of GMO crops that get
Speaker 1: into these exports silos and get sent to other countries,
Speaker 1: which creates a big problems. Very basic question, Do all
Speaker 1: GMO strains have to be approved by the Department of
Speaker 1: Agriculture and what's the process? Yes, they do. All um
Speaker 1: GMO crops do needed U s d A approval, And
Speaker 1: essentially what the U. S d A is looking for
Speaker 1: is to make sure that these crops won't accidentally sort
Speaker 1: of grow wild and overtake non gmo crops. So they're
Speaker 1: looking for, uh, you know, essentially whether these crops would
Speaker 1: would become in essence a weed. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: at this point they've been doing these approvals for around
Speaker 1: thirty years and basically since the mid to late eighties,
Speaker 1: and most crops do receive approval, but there are some
Speaker 1: situations where GMO crops that were grown in experimental field
Speaker 1: trials and were never approved somehow make their way into
Speaker 1: fields and start growing wild. And that's where you give
Speaker 1: big problems. And for example, the the wheat case that
Speaker 1: you mentioned, that's what happened there. There was an experimental
Speaker 1: field trial of GMO wheat and it ended and then
Speaker 1: ten years later, Uh, that wheat was sound growing just spontaneously.
Speaker 1: Feel that no one really I thought that could happen,
Speaker 1: and it caused a lot of problems for Monsanto, which
Speaker 1: was the developer of the wheat. So David tell us,
Speaker 1: who's liable here when this kind of that you have
Speaker 1: different ways that it can get into non gmo crops,
Speaker 1: who's liable? Yeah, Well that's a big unanswered question. Uh,
Speaker 1: it could be you know, is that the farmer, is
Speaker 1: that the person who sold the seed, that this the
Speaker 1: company that developed the seed, And frankly, we don't really
Speaker 1: know because all of the lawsuits that have resulted from
Speaker 1: this have ended in settlements. So we've never had a
Speaker 1: court of law into a ruling saying, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Monsanto your fault or the farmer your fault because you
Speaker 1: didn't you know, plant the crops in the right way.
Speaker 1: We just don't know. And and U. S. D A
Speaker 1: has not issued really any regulations on this, and and
Speaker 1: certainly Congresses is nowhere near ready to pass a law
Speaker 1: that would it would make this clearer. So right now
Speaker 1: it's really unclear. It's just you know, when when these
Speaker 1: biotech companies like Monsanto and c Genta and Bear and
Speaker 1: the like gets sued um, they pretty much just uh
Speaker 1: tend to go towards a settlement and avoid a judgment. David,
Speaker 1: what's the best hope for providing some of that certainty?
Speaker 1: Is it the regulatory process? Is it? Is it? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, eventually getting a court ruling instead of a settlement.
Speaker 1: How are we going to get out of this box? Well?
Speaker 1: I think that the there's a current big class action
Speaker 1: lawsuit that's ongoing right now against the Swiss company's Centa,
Speaker 1: which is a maker of a lot of GMO products,
Speaker 1: And in that instan what drove. That instance was an
Speaker 1: incidence where centers GMO corn accidentally got into shipments from
Speaker 1: the US to China, and Chinese authorities discovered that they
Speaker 1: cut off all U S shipments some corn. So in
Speaker 1: essence that for a couple of years after this happened,
Speaker 1: US farmers could not export their product to China. That
Speaker 1: caused the price collapse. It hurt a lot of businesses,
Speaker 1: and those farmers whose businesses were heard then suits in Genta.
Speaker 1: And this is a really unique case because in this instance,
Speaker 1: Sintenda had received all the USDA approvals that it needed
Speaker 1: and so that there were no problems with them growing
Speaker 1: the crop in the US. Just what happens when it
Speaker 1: gets exported to China. So depending on how that lawsuit
Speaker 1: plays out, it could really influence um, you know, even
Speaker 1: if you get all the approvals you need, if you
Speaker 1: mess up, you know, export markets, you might still be
Speaker 1: liable depending on how the case goes. Although it goes
Speaker 1: to a settlement, then I guess we still won't really know.
Speaker 1: And David, just to be clear, it was Monsanto that
Speaker 1: paid the billion dollars, so that's right in the weak case. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you to David Chultz, environment reporter for Bloomberg. V
Speaker 1: NA