Seed and chemical company Monsanto announced an agreement with soft white wheat growers to settle three class-action lawsuits that arose from the discovery that some of its experimental genetically engineered wheat was growing wild in eastern Oregon. The variety was not approved for release by the government. Lawsuits blamed Monsanto for a drop in wheat prices and the temporary refusal of major customers, such as Japan and South Korea, to buy U.S. soft white wheat. In the settlement, Monsanto did not admit liability.
The settlement calls for Monsanto to put $2.125 million into a settlement fund to compensate growers in Idaho, Oregon and Washington state who sold soft white wheat from May 30-Nov 30, 2013 and $250,000 to four wheat grower associations. In the Monsanto statement, one of its lawyers said, “Rather than paying the costs of protracted litigation, this agreement puts that money to work in research and development efforts for the wheat industry, while providing a negotiated level of compensation for farmers with documented soft white wheat sales from May 30 to November 30, 2013.”
USDA spent more than a year investigating the incident but did not find out how the wheat got into the Oregon field. It was a strain Monsanto mothballed years earlier.