When China rejected shiploads of U.S. corn in 2013, it shook the commodity market and spawned hundreds of lawsuits against Syngenta. The company sold a GMO corn variety that was approved by U.S. regulators but not by China. The lawsuits say Syngenta should compensate farmers for the lowered value of their crop because China found the Syngenta strain in cargoes of U.S. corn. Harvest Public Media says lawyers involved in the lawsuits “are preparing to ask for the cases to be certified as a class-action lawsuit. A class-action could include ‘virtually every corn farmer in America,’ the court documents say.”
A class-action case could cost Syngenta “significantly more” in damages, if the company were to lose the case, than if farmers have to file suit separately, says Harvest Public Media. Syngenta says the lawsuits “lack any merit …. Once a genetically engineered trait is approved for sale by federal authorities in the United States, it is entirely lawful to sell that GE seed in the United States.”