Statement of Andrew Rowell for the Summary Hearing at the High Court on 19th April 
1999, between GenetiX Snowball and Monsanto.

Full Name: Andrew William Rowell

Address: Stockbridge Cottage, South Brent, Devon, TQ10 9AA

1. I am the Author of  Green Backlash - Global Subversion of the Environment 
Movement, which was published by Routledge in 1996. The book, which took over two 
and a half years to write and research. Since 1996, I have continued to study corporate 
strategies against environmental activists and have written and spoken about this 
internationally.  One of the central themes of the book was that it examined the tactics 
that companies are using against environmental activists, such as PR tactics, and violence 
and legal aggression. 

2. One of the tactics that companies are using to silence their critics are SLAPPs - 
Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation - this is the use of the law primarily as a 
tool to intimidate and silence people, not to see justice done. According to one of the 
American Professors who has studied the SLAPP phenomenon, Professor Pring from the 
University of Denver in Colorado, says that "SLAPPs send a clear message: that there is 
a 'price' for speaking out politically". 

3. There are two primary indicators by which one can judge whether legal action by a 
company is justified or whether it is a SLAPP and therefore an abuse of the legal system 
and should be challenged. · The first is the amount of damages that is being sought is 
normally totally disproportionate to the alleged 'offence' that has been carried out, or 
might be carried out at some time tin the future.  Secondly SLAPPs are vary really meant 
to go to court for a full trial. Companies or governments use injunctions as a way of 
stopping legitimate protest from being undertaken. 

4. The Writ of Summons that Monsanto fist sought last year on the 15th July fitted the 
first criteria - namely that the damages sought were totally disproportionate. In 
Monsanto's Statement of Claim it stated that due to GenetiX Snowball's action that the 
company sought Special Damages which was the actual cost of the plants destroyed  - 
estimated at £150 and the cost of physical care incurred, estimated at £5,000.  However, 
in addition the claim alleged that "the Plaintiff has thereby suffered loss and damage 
which cannot be quantified by way of special damages". These 'unquantified' damages 
were for 'unlawful interference with business and commercial interests' and for 
'conspiracy'.  

Therefore one of the activists, who pulled up one plant, faces potential damages that 
could be interpreted as thousands, tens of thousands or even millions of pounds. This is a 
SLAPP.

5. Monsanto are now trying to make the injunction permanent and increase the number of 
people injuncted as to include anyone who has received a copy of GenetiX Snowball's  
hand-book. This is an unprecedented abuse of British law to try and suppress legitimate 
dissent against genetic
engineering. In my judgement it is a "SUPER SLAPP" and cannot be allowed to happen, 
and would be one of the most serious corporate abuses of the British legal system this 
century. If the injunction is made permanent then this avoids the need for a full trial in 
which the defendants can actually properly defend their actions. This is the second 
character of a SLAPP, that they are not designed to go to full trial.

The handbook is readily available on the Internet to download. If someone has received a 
handbook from a campaigning organisation, it does not mean that they are going to 
undertake direct action. These people cannot be included in a injunction. If this becomes 
law then does it mean that readers of newspapers are bound by the injunctions of those 
newspapers or have to pay their costs. 

5. This legal action should not be seen in isolation. Last summer, at the time of the 
GenetiX Snowball action, Monsanto was running a multi-media PR campaign inviting 
critical discussion about genetic engineering. It is a classic two-pronged campaign -  PR 
on the one hand and legal aggression on the other. 

6. Monsanto and the other biotech companies also have a history of legal intimidation 
against their critics, those who do not sanction their products and also journalists. There 
are also examples where Monsanto has suppressed the health effects of its products. For 
example:

· Immediately after the US Food and Drug Administration approval in the USA of it s 
genetically modified bovine growth hormone, or rBGH, as it is commonly known in the 
US, onto the market, Monsanto threatened to sue dairy companies who advertised their 
milk as being rBGH-free. Letters sent by Monsanto's Vice-President in 1994 to over 2000 
dairies and natural food stores warned that "Monsanto has taken action against one milk 
co-operative/ processor for advertising and promotional activities and  about bovine 
somatotrophin [rBGH] that we believe are misleading

· In America Monsanto also threatened school boards with lawsuits if they banned rBGH 
from school cafeterias and threatened states with lawsuits if they passed rBGH labelling 
laws.

· Also in the United States, two award-winning reporters, Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, 
were fired in December last year from the Florida TV Station WTVT after making a film 
on Monsanto and rBGH. The reporters had uncovered how rBGH had not properly been 
tested by the US FDA, how dairy herds in Florida had become sick after injection with 
the drug and how rBGH milk was not tested for excessive antibiotics. Two reporters 
allege that "we were repeatedly ordered to go forward and broadcast demonstrably 
inaccurate and dishonest versions of the story. We were given those instructions after 
some very high-level corporate lobbying by Monsanto and also, we believe, by members 
of Florida's dairy and grocery industries." Monsanto hired one of America's top lawyers 
to kill the programme.

· Also in North America, Monsanto works closely with the milk industry's PR campaign 
called the Dairy Coalition, that was formed to promote rBGH. Internal documents from 
the Coalition show that reporters from the Boston Globe and USA Today and New York 
Times were all pressurised not to run articles containing the findings of Dr. Sam Epstein, 
Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the School of Public Health, 
University of Illinois. Epstein, along with other scientists, had found links between rBGH 
milk, containing high levels of the potent human cell growth promoter called IGF-1, and 
increased risks for breast and colon cancer. Epstein was dismissed as a "scaremonger" 
with "no standing among his peers" and "no credibility". Other reporters who were 
"educated" came from the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Associated Press. 
One internal memo even brags about knocking a New York Times food editor, Marian 
Burros, off rBGH stories altogether.

· Three British scientists, Erik Millstone, Eric Brunner and Ian White, who analysed 
rBGH data, have accused Monsanto of blocking publication of their research. Writing in 
Nature they concluded that analysis of Monsanto's data showed a 19 per cent increase in 
the somatic cell count (linked to mastitis) in milk from rBGH-treated cows relative to 
controls. However, Monsanto, which has always maintained that dairy or meat products 
from rBGH cattle "does not pose any increased safety or health risks", prevented them 
from publishing the research. "I have the distinct impression that they didn't want our 
analysis published," says Eric Millstone "because it raises questions about the safety and 
desirability of their product, which they seem not to want raised".

In Summary, I believe that this legal action by Monsanto is an unprecedented abuse of 
the law, and is an intimidatory SLAPP and it should be rejected by the judge.

Signed


Andrew Rowell

18th April 1999