Countryside Organics

Countryside Organics is pleased to announce our newest reseller, HOLE IN THE WALL FEED, of DELRAY, FLORIDA. HOLE IN THE WALL is at 9200 West Atlantic Avenue, Delray Beach, FL 22446.

Give Dave Mizer and Hole in the Wall Feed a call at 561-499-0250.

Check out all of our quality feed resellers, here.
Check out a list of producers using quality Countryside Organics products, here.

To be included in either directory email info@countrysideorganics.com

Countryside Organics is pleased to announce our newest reseller, ANIMAL NATURE, of PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA. Animal Nature is at 7610 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15221.

Give Animal Nature a call at 412-723-2194.

Welcome Animal Nature!!

Check out all of our quality feed resellers, here.
Check out a list of producers using quality Countryside Organics products, here.

To be included in either directory email info@countrysideorganics.com

Shenandoah Valley Biotechnology Symposium this Friday, March 16.

9:00 a.m. speaker: Donn Cummings, Monsanto Company.

10:00 a.m. speaker: Jeffrey Smith, author of “Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Modified Foods You’re Eating.”

10:20 – 10:50 – Q&A from Audience

More info here.

A happy customer came to visit us in Waynesboro, last week. She needed some more layer feed and she was traveling out our way so she stopped in.

“This feed saved the lives of our cows,” said Lisa Robertson, a Countryside Organics’ customer who resides north of Richmond, Va., “a gate was left open and the cows got into the chicken feed. By the time we found them they had eaten more than half the feed.”

“I called the vet and explained what happened. She said they were most likely going to die.”

“But what if its ORGANIC feed?”

The vet told her the larger chunks of grain might save them from a terminal case of gaseous bloat.

And that is what happened. The cows were fine. Lisa and her husband are happy and so are we. Another certified organic success story!

“Great disappointment on behalf of the health and safety of everyone who eats” met Judge Naomi Buchwald’s February 24 decision dismissing the case filed last March 2011 in the Southern District of NY by 60 plaintiffs and amended in June 2011 adding 23 more. The case is known as Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association v. Monsanto. “Now we will need to spend two or three years just to try to establish the standing needed to bring our complaint before the court,” stated plaintiff Don Patterson in Virginia; “After the Appeals Court rules in about a year, whoever loses will appeal again to the Supreme Court, and all this takes more years.”

Patterson is one of three Virginia plaintiffs in the case. The others are the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange of Mineral and Countryside Organics of Waynesboro. The other plaintiffs are organizations, seed companies, and individual farms or farmers from throughout the United States and Canada. The

If the right to bring the case is established as a result of the appeal, the plaintiffs will start again in the same New York Federal District Court. Meanwhile, Patterson charges, “The health of the public is at risk, as multiple studies in other nations have now shown, but in this nation, the needed research is prevented by through patent ownership of something that should have never been patentable.” The plaintiffs seek both protection against Monsanto’s patent infringement claims and invalidation of the Monsanto patents on transgenic seeds because they represent a public danger and harmful products should not be patentable.

“While I have great respect for Judge Buchwald, her decision to deny farmers the right to seek legal protection from one of the world’s foremost patent bullies is gravely disappointing,” said Daniel Ravicher of the Public Patent Foundation, the plaintiffs’ attorney, who also teaches patent law at the Benjamin Cordozo School of Law in New York; “Her belief that farmers are acting unreasonably when they stop growing certain crops to avoid being sued by Monsanto for patent infringement, should their crops become contaminated, maligns the intelligence and integrity of those farmers.” The judge failed to address the purpose of the Declaratory Judgment Act and mischaracterized the Supreme Court precedent that supports the farmers’ standing, Ravicher said; “In sum, her opinion is flawed on both the facts and the law, but thankfully, the plaintiffs have the right to proceed to the Court of Appeals, which will review the matter without deference to her findings.”

Monsanto’s history of aggressive investigations, much-feared farmer harassment, and intimidating lawsuits brought against farmers suffering from inevitable cross-pollination has been a source of concern for organic and non-transgenic agricultural producers since Monsanto’s first lawsuit was brought against a farmer in the mid-90s. Since then, 144 farmers have had lawsuits filed against them by Monsanto for alleged violations of their patented seed technology.

Monsanto has sued more than 700 additional farmers who have settled out-of-court rather than “face Monsanto’s pugnacious, and well-financed, litigious business practices; they run this program as a profit center and have put farmers out of business,” Patterson charges. Most capitulate because they cannot afford to fight, he continues; “Reportedly 75 full-time employees in St. Louis are dedicated to investigating farmers in addition to their “security consultants” in the field.” In some states, Monsanto has won legislation allowing them to come onto farmers’ land without notice to test for the presence of their patented genes. “If they do that, they could also sow contamination, and that has been a fear causing many farmers to want to keep a low profile,” Patterson establishes; “They have watched as Monsanto has gained a virtual monopoly over some crops, including field corn, soy, canola, and sugar beets.”

Many contaminated farmers have not had the intention to grow or save seeds that contain Monsanto’s patented genes and sometimes they have not known they were contaminated. Even a seed cleaner was sued for helping the seed savers. Seed contamination and pollen drift from genetically engineered crops often migrate to neighboring fields. If Monsanto’s seed technology is found on a farmer’s land without a contract, the farmer can be found liable for patent infringement. This is the result of the “strict liability standard” existing under patent law but unreasonable in the case of contaminated farmers, the plaintiffs contend. “Strict liability” means mere possession of the patented item without regard for intention, permits a charge of patent infringement.

“Family farmers need the protection of the court,” said Maine organic seed farmer Jim Gerritsen, President of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association; “We reject as naive and indefensible the judge’s assertion that Monsanto’s vague public relations ‘commitment’ [not to sue farmers for 'trace amounts' of their transgenic seeds], should be ‘a source of comfort’ to plaintiffs. The truth is we are under threat and we do not believe Monsanto.” Unless, the Monsanto promise is put into legally binding language, the plaintiffs feel there is no basis to trust a vague, ill-defined promise with no reliable meaning.

The suit was brought against Monsanto to seek protection from patent infringement claims and lawsuits such as the suit brought prominently against canola farmer Percy Schmeiser in Canada. Schmeiser lost 50 years of his own traditional seed breeding as a result of the contamination. “Monsanto is the big biotechnology bully and has used the courts, for years, to intimidate farmers,” said Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute, another plaintiff; “The purpose of our lawsuit is to preemptively challenge its reign of intimidation over organic farmers, and others, who have chosen not to jump on their genetically-engineered bandwagon.”

“As a citizen and property owner, I find the order by the Federal Court to be obsequious to Monsanto,” stated plaintiff and organic farmer Bryce Stephens of Kansas; “The careless, inattentive, thoughtless, and negligent advertisement Monsanto has published on their website (claiming no intention) to exercise its patent rights for inadvertent trace contamination belies the fact that their policy is in reality a presumptuous admission of contamination by their vaunted product on my property, plants, seeds and animals.”

“Seeds are the memory of life,” said Isaura Anduluz of plaintiff Cuatro Puertas in New Mexico; “If planted and saved annually, cross pollination ensures the seeds continue to adapt. In the Southwest, selection over many, many generations has resulted in native drought tolerant corn. Now that (Monsanto’s) patented drought-tolerant corn has been released how do we protect our seeds from contamination and our right to farm?”

The plaintiffs will be meeting this week to plan and affirm their response to the judge’s decision, but Patterson believes an appeal is essential “because too much is at stake for the future of life on the planet.” This is not a case just about the convenience and livelihood of organic and other farmers who do not want their crops contaminated, he concludes; “This about public health and the right of people to know their food is safe for themselves and their grandchildren.”

As it stands now, because of their patent ownership, Monsanto is lawfully allowed to control all the safety testing that gets done. As a result, Patterson affirms, “No independent, objective, multi-generations tests have occurred in the United States; the Monsanto company has only advanced 90-day tests, and they claim nothing more is needed—but evidence to the contrary has emerged from more than a dozen studies in other nations.” The plaintiffs have been seeking to present that evidence in court as part of their effort to invalidate the Monsanto patents.

A copy of Judge Buchwalds ruling is located here.