The D’Onofrio Firm is currently representing U.S. corn farmers in litigation against Syngenta to recover lost income as a result market devaluation of their corn crops caused by Syngenta’s release of its GMO Agrisure Viptera and Agrisure Duracade corn seed before it obtained import approval from China.
It is alleged: that beginning with the 2011 growing season, Syngenta began marketing, distributing, and selling a variety of new hybrid corn seeds sold under the tradename Agrisure® Viptera™ (“Viptera”), which contains a new genetically modified trait known as “MIR 162”;
As Syngenta should have known would happen, the European Union, China, and most other countries needed time to determine whether to approve it for human and/or animal consumption. Between 2011 and 2013, certain countries approved Viptera for food and feed use; however, other countries, including China, did not;
In November of 2013, China discovered Viptera corn in shipments of what was supposed to be non-Viptera corn from the United States. After testing conducted over the next several weeks and months revealed that numerous shipments of U.S. corn from U.S. exporters were contaminated with Viptera, China banned the import of U.S. corn. In November and December 2013 alone, China rejected more than 665,000 metric tons of U.S. corn shipments due to the presence of Viptera. To date, China has canceled or rejected orders for hundreds of millions of bushels of U.S. corn;
In 2014, despite knowing from its experience with Viptera that China and other countries not only had not approved its genetically modified corn but were not likely to do so in the immediate future, Syngenta began marketing yet another genetically modified corn seed under the tradename Agrisure® Duracade™ (“Duracade”), which in addition to MIR 162, contains a new genetically modified trait known as “Event 5307.” China, all 28 states of the European Union, Brazil, Switzerland (Syngenta’s home country), Colombia, Egypt, India, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Turkey have refused to approve Duracade for human or animal consumption. It is alleged that by improperly and prematurely commercializing its Duracade corn, Syngenta knowingly and intentionally exacerbated and prolonged the disruption to, and loss of, the Chinese market to U.S. corn.
While Syngenta has made billions of dollars from Viptera, and Duracade seeds, American corn farmers have suffered a devastating loss of income because of it. The loss of a large purchaser of U.S. corn like China as a result of Syngenta’s Viptera and Duracade contamination has had a sudden and calamitous impact on the U.S. corn market, causing U.S. corn prices to drop dramatically.
The D’Onofrio Firm is proud to help American farmers recover their lost income. Please contact The D’Onofrio Firm at 215.923.1056, or info@donofriofirm.com to discuss how we can help you recover lost income.