News 15 June 2016

Farmers taking on seed company

As far as Elizabeth Lally is concerned, it all comes down to a failure in “product stewardship.”
And it’s why the Des Moines lawyer was in New Hampton on Friday afternoon as she tried to drum up support for the mass tort Midwest Corn Lawsuit her firm has filed against Syngenta.
The suit claims that Syngenta had a large role in destabilizing the global corn market when its CEO announced April 2012 that China was going to accept “in a matter of a few days” the genetically modified seed corn it was manufacturing.
Instead, China didn’t accept the particular corn until December 2014 and millions of bushels of American corn was rejected by the Chinese.
“When you lose your largest importer, it literally flooded the world market with corn,” Lally said, “and prices, as we all know, took a dive.”
So her job with Mauro, Archer, Associates,” a Washington, D.C.-based firm, is to hit the road and ask farmers to be a part of the mass tort suit.
She held a meeting in New Hampton on Friday afternoon and will be back in the city on Friday, July 15, when she will meet with more farmers at Big Ed’s Firehouse Restaurant.
Lally emphasized  that the lawsuit has nothing to do with GMOs, which have created some controversy in recent years.
“This comes down to product stewardship,” she said, “and Syngenta failed.”
For the complete story see the 6/14/2016 New Hampton Tribune.

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