Our local Salt spring seeds is giving up growing and selling heirloom beets, sugar beets, and swiss chard. . A new gmo sugar beet has just been approved so if one grain of pollen gets into their growing area, their plants can be tested and then they can be sued by the patent owners and they would lose the company. There is no way of knowing simply from looking at the plants if they contain patented genes or not. Beet pollen is windborn and because all the beet varieties interbreed and the windborn pollen can travel really long distances, it is simply not worth the commercial risk. Next to go will probably be brassicae (cabbage, kale, sprouts, kohlrabi, brocolli, mustard, chineese cabbage etc because of gmo canola which breeds with them. After that, linseed (golden flax) is likely to be too much of a risk because much of our canadian flax is contaminated with gmo genes.
Isn't it time to go to the UN and get a birthright as agrarian people inserted in our human rights? I see that as the only way now to prevent thieft by genetic contamination. What do you think? Brian