Jeremy Rifkin and Farmers To Launch
Anti-Monopoly Biotech Lawsuit in 30 Nations

Genetically Modified FOODS GROUP FACE HUGE LAWSUIT 13/9/99
By Jean Eaglesham, Legal Correspondent Financial Times

The world's biggest life science companies and grain processors will face a
multi-billion dollar antitrust action to be launched in up to 30 countries
later this year.
The unprecedented lawsuits will claim that companies such as Monsanto, DuPont
and Novartis are exploiting bioengineering techniques to gain a
stranglehold on
agricultural markets.
The action is being brought jointly by the Foundation on Economic Trends, run
by Washington-based biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin, and the US-based National
Family Farm Coalition, together with individual farmers across Latin America,
Asia, Europe and North America.
It will be the biggest antitrust suit ever brought, with the possible
exception
of that against Microsoft.
"It has literally global implications," said Michael Hausfeld of Cohen
Milstein
Hausfeld and Toll, one of the 20 US law firms that have agreed to take the
cases on a "no-win no-fee" basis.
The move represents the first global challenge to controversial techniques for
exploiting genetically modified crops commercially.
Companies take out patents on GM seeds and then lease, rather than sell, them
to farmers to be used for one season only. In the US, where GM crops are
rapidly becoming the norm, farmers have been sued for replanting GM seeds.
Companies have also developed "terminator" genes that cause GM crops to
produce
sterile seeds.
Concerns about the potential control this gives life science companies over
food, particularly in the developing world, have been exacerbated by a bout of
takeovers and mergers within the sector.
Ten companies now own 30 per cent of the $23bn annual commercial seed trade,
according to recent estimates, and five of those - Monsanto, Novartis,
AstraZeneca, Aventis and DuPont - control virtually all GM crops.
"By the early part of the next century, less than a handful of corporations
will possess control over the entire agricultural foundation for every
society.
You can see the potential for market abuse and manipulation," said Mr
Hausfeld.
The legal action comes at a sensitive time for the biotech industry, which is
facing growing consumer and political resistance to GM crops in Europe and in
developing countries such as India.
The issue seems likely to be raised at November's World Trade Organisation
talks in Seattle.
The companies can be expected to fight the lawsuit tooth and nail. They reject
any charge of market control.
"There is fierce competition around the world. We have a 42 per cent market
share [of the $20bn corn crop] in the US and we've had to work hard for it,"
said Pioneer Hibred International, the US seed company which is about to be
bought by DuPont.
"We've had to prove to farmers that our hybrid is better than any other."
Pioneer added that farmers retained the choice of whether to buy GM or
conventional seeds.