cowgirl, I realize the seed blew (or otherwise fell) onto Mr. Schmeiser’s land. That’s not in dispute. The court knew that, yet found his actions egregious enough to make him pay damages.
About GMOs and reuse of seeds, GMOs are not the first crops to require that new seeds be bought every year. The hybrid varieties of many crops produce a strong, healthy crop, but because they’re hybrids, make seeds that are not viable. But the crops are so good that the benefits outweigh the costs; at least if any farmer doesn’t think they do, he’s free not to purchase those seeds.
I read the Ms. Shiva’s speech that you linked to. It’s interesting to me to imagine how her mind must work. Weeds are good. Patents are equivalent to slavery. They somehow are theft from women (?). Free trade is “forced trade.” Reminds me of that Garrison line in the movie JFK: “We’re through the looking glass here, folks.” In fact, Jim Garrison and Ms. Shiva are a lot alike.
spanna, the argument against labels is not that they’re too expensive. The argument is that require lables only where there are valid health concerns. You’re free to put labels on your food if you want the consumer to know something about your product, but we don’t require it (like we don’t require “organic” labels but companies put them on). If you went down the path of requiring lables for things that some consumers want to know, what things do you label? Besides gene-spliced, I imagine that someone would want to know whether their plum was picked by unionized labor, or what exact brand of fertilizer was used, or what date the crop was planted on, what brand of tractor the farmer drove, etc. There’s no justification for that - every piece of fruit would have to be sold with a binder of labelling documents.