American wheat farmers and a food safety advocacy group filed a lawsuit Thursday against biotech seed developer Monsanto Co, accusing the company of failing to protect the U.S. wheat market from contamination by its unauthorized wheat.
The petition, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, seeks class-action status to represent other farmers it says were harmed by lower wheat prices as some foreign buyers have shied away from U.S. wheat.
It names Clarmar Farms Inc., farmer Tom Stahl, and the Center for Food Safety as plaintiffs.
The suit follows a similar action filed Monday by a Kansas wheat farmer, alleging that he and other growers have been hurt financially by the discovery of an unapproved biotech wheat that Monsanto said it stopped testing and shelved nine years ago.
Two other farmers lodged a similar lawsuit in federal court in the western district of Washington state.
The lawsuits come after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced May 29 that a wheat farmer in Oregon had discovered Monsanto's experimental wheat growing on his farm.
Buyers in Asia and Europe shunned U.S. wheat purchases after the discovery of the rogue wheat in Oregon. South Korea and Japan have suspended some U.S. wheat purchases, while the European Union said it would step up testing.
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