Please Sue Me, Please

I've been reading two books simultaneously: Naomi Klein's Fences and Windows, and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. Eric Schlosser writes that food has changed more in the last 40 years than it has in the previous 40,000, which is not a good thing. If you want proof of this, his book offers 364 pages of it.

Fences and Windows also deals (in part) with corporate bullies in the food industry, and contains one gut-wrenchingly dispicable event after another. Here's one, just for the fun of it:

"Some organic food companies are considering suing the biotech industry for contamination, but the law is going in the opposite direction. Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser was sued by Monsanto after its patented genetically altered canola seeds blew into the farmer's field from passing trucks and neighbouring fields. Monsanto says that when the airborne seeds took root, Schmeiser was stealing its property. The court agreed and, two months ago, ordered the farmer to pay the company $20,000 plus legal costs."

More here.

This type of thing has got me thinking about all these people who are suing McDonald's for their health problems. A comedian on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show did a hatchet job a few weeks back, asking something to the nature of 'how could you not know that fat fried in fat is fattening?', and saying of a particular plaintiff "he's over-weight, under-informed, and litigious... an American hat trick."

This was good for a laugh, but I gotta say I absolutely support these law suits, and think there should be more like them. I get the shaft from some corporation almost weekly, and almost inevitably end up feeling helpless and infuriated listening to some incompetent robot attempt to take my complaint. Frankly, it seems a good sign that citizens are wising up. It's high time someone gave them a taste of their own MSG infested cow anus.

Posted by ÿ at January 15, 2003 01:49 AM