By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Rice farmers in Arkansas and a number of other states have claimed since 2006 that their crops were contaminated by a genetically modified strain of rice produced by Bayer Cropscience.

Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed across the country, including one in federal court in Little Rock involving nearly 1,500 rice farmers from Arkansas and 11 other states.

Because the lawsuits claim basically the same thing, most have been transferred to federal court in St. Louis for multi-district litigation and next month the first case, filed by about 1,000 Missouri farmers, goes to trial.

Don McKenna, an Alabama lawyer who represents the nearly 1,500 farmers in the Little Rock case, said last week the future of all the lawsuits hinges on what happens next month in a St. Louis federal courtroom.

“The judge is calling this a bellwether case,” McKenna said. “The judge said, ‘Let’s take the temperature on what a jury is going to do with these things and depending on the verdict you could always have settlement negotiations or you could try a few more.’”

The trial, before U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry, begins Nov. 2.

“I’m sure all the rice farmers are watching it,” said Jerry Hoskyn of Stuttgart, past chairman of the Arkansas Rice Research and Promotion Board. “There’s no doubt that it hurt our market and we’re still struggling trying to get through it.”

Greg Yielding, executive director of the Arkansas Rice Growers Association, estimated the economic loss to the rice industry nationally at more than $1 billion, half of that in Arkansas.

The crux of the lawsuit, and the others filed in recent years, is that Bayer Cropscience, a German conglomerate, found traces of a genetically engineered strain of rice in a shipment of Riceland Foods Inc. long-grain rice in 2006, but farmers were not informed of the discovery for several months.

After the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in August 2006 that trace amounts of the genetically modified rice had been discovered, Japan suspended imports of U.S. long grain rice, which caused prices to plummet. The European Union also began only accepting U.S. long grain rice that had been specially inspected to be free of genetically modified material.

“For three days the markets dropped,” Yielding said. “It was a huge loss.”

McKenna said Arkansas produces more long-grain rice than any other state and that more than 20 percent of the long-grain rice produced in the U.S. had been exported to Europe.

Since the scare, Europe has stopped importing U.S. long-grain rice and now gets all of its rice from Thailand.

“Thailand has filled that market and the U.S. has lost it,” McKenna said.
“We lost the European Union business and we still have not regained that business,” added Yielding.

“This did affect the farmers and it affected the seed dealers eventually,” he said. “People that grow rice for seed had to take that rice and sell it just for regular rice at a depressed price. There wasn’t anything wrong with the rice, it was just a market thing, the Europeans didn’t want it. That’s what caused us to lose the market and it’s also what caused (the price of rice) to get so cheap.”

McKenna also is attorney for 14 farmers who have filed a similar lawsuit against Bayer Cropscience in Lonoke County Circuit Court. The trial is set for March 15.

Greg Coffey, spokesman for Bayer Cropscience in Research Triangle Park, N.C., did not immediately return a call seeking comment Friday.