Nearly a decade ago, Annabel Soutar, a documentary playwright and theatre director based in Montreal, took her first deep dive into the life of a Saskatchewan grain farmer named Percy Schmeiser who had found himself in trouble with the law. Monsanto, the multinational seed and agricultural products company, had accused Mr. Schmeiser of growing its genetically modified Canola seeds without paying the necessary royalties – of violating the company’s patent rights. But rather than settling the case quietly, Mr. Schmeiser fought the company, claiming that the seeds had blown onto his field unwanted, and that in any case, Monsanto had no right to claim a patent on life.
After nearly three years of travelling the country, poring through court documents and sitting through arguments before Canada’s Supreme Court, Ms. Soutar wrote a play about the conflict, called Seeds, and she’s been reworking it ever since. The play is composed entirely of the words of real players in the case. A new production of Seeds opened in Toronto this past weekend, where it is showing at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. (An earlier iteration was produced in 2005 in Montreal.) We caught up with Ms. Soutar to ask about her take on the conflict’s enduring legacy, and whether she feeds GMO-based foods to her kids.
You spent a lot of time as you were researching talking with scientists. How often did you find scientists who would raise questions about the safety of genetically modified organisms?
It’s very difficult. Most of the scientists you talk to who have funding and have some sort of legitimacy in the debate are pro-genetic modification. They’ve got money from companies like Monsanto, often to help them develop new products. How are decisions being made in science about truth versus the carrot of funding for research? In order to really test this stuff and really look into it, it requires a lot of money and a lot of time, and it’s very hard right now to get funding to look at possible adverse side effects. The other side has been totally underfunded. That said, I didn’t travel to Europe, where the debate is very different.
The story came to the public’s attention at a time when most Canadians didn’t know much about genetically modified foods. What impact did this case have on Canadians’ perception of GMOs?
Even when this case went to the Supreme Court and it was on TV and in all the newspapers, I don’t think the Canadian public was saying, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to be careful of GM foods.’ The case had a much larger impact in Europe and in India, but ironically, North America was completely ambivalent about it. For whatever reason we just weren’t politicized around it. We’ve certainly learned much more about genetically modified foods since then and I think it’s come more to the public consciousness. The question is, are we doing anything about it? How do we animate what is a very, very dense issue so that people can face it? It’s important for the public to engage on this.
Throughout your play, the characters often refer to this case as a story of David and Goliath. How likely are we to see more cases like this in the future?
