Bayer is suing four farmers in Missouri for illegally spraying older versions of dicamba on its genetically engineered soybeans, as well as doing so after the state’s cutoff date for spraying the herbicide. The lawsuits allege that the farmers are in violation of their user agreements with Bayer and have harmed the company’s reputation with the EPA. Bayer alleges the farmers also saved seeds from Bayer’s dicamba-tolerant crops and replanted them – a violation of their user agreement. During the course of the investigation into saving seeds, Bayer said it found evidence of the farmers illegally spraying older versions of dicamba – which are legal to buy but can’t be used on the crops. The lawsuit charges the farmers with patent infringement, breach of contract, tortious interference with business expectancies, and negligence. Critics say the lawsuits are an attempt by Bayer to blame the older version of the weedkiller for damage caused by the widespread legal use of dicamba on crops. Investigate Midwest

 

 

Widespread violence against traditional rural communities in Maranhão State, in Northeastern Brazil, has been condemned by more than 50 human rights organisations, many of them affiliated with the Catholic Church. [GMO] soy producers have been destroying large areas of forest, often inhabited by Indigenous people, to expand their farms. Most cases involve big landowners – usually soy producers – who claim ownership of land lived on by such groups over decades, or even centuries, and move to evict them. Such landowners have been systematically threatening the communities’ leaders, invading and destroying cultivated areas, deliberately spilling oil in rivers to contaminate the water supply, and spraying pesticides on their lands. Between 2015-2022, 79 people were killed in such areas, most of them members of Indigenous and quilombola [descendants of Afro-Brazilian slaves] communities. Crux

 

 

Last week, former New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade appeared before the US House Oversight Committee to testify on the origin of the COVID virus. “Some say it doesn’t matter where the virus came from because the pandemic is what it is,” Wade told the Committee. “To the contrary, it matters a great deal because the two conjectured origins [natural spillover or lab leak] require widely different responses.” He said, “If the SARS-2 virus... leaked from a laboratory... Enhancing a virus’s properties – so-called gain of function research – should probably be halted immediately until a functioning regulatory system has been devised." Wade said the US National Institutes of Health was funding the Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute to genetically manipulate coronaviruses. He added, “We know that they were actually planning to insert the very characteristic feature of SARS-2 – it’s a genetic element called a furin cleavage site. That makes the SARS-2 different from all of the other viruses in its family. And the Wuhan Institute applied to the Defense Department for a grant, in which they say – we will insert the furin cleavage site into coronaviruses. Lo and behold, a year later, SARS-2 appears on the scene. It’s got the furin cleavage site. And it’s at the exact position on its genome where the Wuhan scientists say in their grant they plan to put it. That’s pretty strong evidence pointing to lab leak, it seems to me.” Corporate Crime Reporter

 

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