Statement by Robert L. Johnston, Jr.
Founder and Chairman
Johnny's Selected Seeds

The public has much concern about the topic of genetically engineered (GE) seeds. We share that concern. Johnny's Selected Seeds does not sell, and has never sold, GE seeds. Johnny's plant breeders utilize breeding methods that do not modify plant varieties with GE. We have issues with the environmental and food safety of GE plants. We question their fit with a healthy, sustainable agriculture.

While we are not fundamentally against GE technology, we intend to continue to scrutinize the science and the resulting plant varieties. We urge the scientific and regulatory communities to do the same. Critical to this scrutiny are mechanisms to assure that commercialization of new GE crops is preceded by sufficiently deliberate and thorough study of environmental and health impact.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Over the past year or so there has been increasing inquiry to Johnny's on the topic of genetically engineered (GE) seeds. I judged that the time had come when I should, as company owner, publish my position on the topic. I did so in the form of brief statements in both the Home Garden and Commercial editions of the 1999 Johnny's catalog. The distribution of the Commercial catalog began in November 1998, and the Home Garden edition in December. Through December and into January Johnny's received many dozens of communications on the GE topic.

I decided, rather than try to answer each letter personally, that I would answer collectively. I read each letter, and, in combined form, tried to answer every concern that had been communicated.

This collection of public inquiries to Johnny's followed by my responses serves as the company's position paper on genetically engineered seeds. I hope that you find it interesting and useful. I welcome your comments.

Truly yours,

Rob Johnston, Jr.

January 21, 1999 – Albion, Maine, USA

The subject appears in ALL CAPS.
The question or comment is in italic
Rob Johnston's remarks follow in plain type. 

NOTICE IN THE 1999 JOHNNY'S CATALOG
What did you publish in your catalog?

Here is the Home Garden catalog text:

"BIOTECHNOLOGY AND JOHNNY'S
Gene splicing – it's controversial!

At Johnny's, we are open minded about this new biotechnology, where a person moves DNA mechanically from one cell to another. We intend to consider the resulting new varieties one at a time.

Presently we offer no such varieties. In this catalog, every variety was developed using only traditional breeding methods: controlled mating and selection, and tissue and cell culture. In the future, we will inform you in a variety's description if it was bred with the assistance of gene splicing, so you will be able to decide for yourself. "

Here is the Commercial catalog text:
"BIOTECHNOLOGY AND JOHNNY'S

We will inform you in a variety's description if it was bred with the assistance of the controversial technique of gene splicing. At present, in this catalog, we offer no such varieties. Every variety in this catalog was developed using the traditional breeding methods of controlled mating and selection, as well as new methods of tissue and cell culture. We are open minded about the new gene splicing science, where a person moves DNA mechanically from one cell to another. We intend to consider the resulting new varieties one at a time, and to present them to you in a fashion that lets you decide for yourself."

REPRESENTATION
Whom do these catalog statements represent?
I wrote them. By virtue of my being owner and company Chairman, they are the official position of the company. However, they don't represent the views of every one of the employees at Johnny's Selected Seeds. There is a diversity of views on the topic amongst staff.

JOHNNY'S VARIETIES
Were any of the varieties in the Johnny's catalogs bred using genetic engineering technologies of any kind (GE)?
No.

FUTURE VARIETIES
Would you ever consider selling a GE variety?
Yes. But not without rigorous examination of its potential impact on the environment, health, and sustainable agriculture.

LABELING
At a minimum we would want to be able to choose between GE and non-GE varieties. If you ever sell a GE variety will you label it?
Yes. As stated in the Johnny's 1999 home garden and commercial catalogs, if in the future we decide to sell any GE variety we will clearly label it in the catalog and on the package.

NATURAL PLANT VARIETIES
Why don't you stick with plants that are natural, and not manipulated?
That would be an impractical position, because most cultivated varieties of plants have been manipulated. Wild plants that have not been affected by human intervention are the only ones that most people would call natural. Most plant varieties grown by people have been bred in some fashion, from ages ago to the present. The beginning of agriculture brought selection of plants (and animals) from mixed populations, and this was followed by controlled cross-breeding – manipulating the mating between selected plants in order to obtain desired traits. If you consider the manipulation unnatural, then the resulting varieties are unnatural. However, similar crosses occur in nature, devoid of a plant breeder. For example, bread wheat is the result of a natural cross between two different species.

CONVENTIONAL BREEDING VS. GENE SPLICING
Regular breeding is okay with me, but gene splicing is a dangerous practice.
I don't think that danger is inherent in the technology. But the changes made to a plant with the splicing of a single gene can be substantial, and the risks must be studied carefully before commercialization.

Most people think of plant breeding as manipulation of mating – controlled cross pollination followed by selection. And that's what people usually mean when they refer to traditional plant breeding. But to augment that, traditional breeders commonly call on other techniques. For example, if the breeder has difficulty mating two somewhat dissimilar plants, like two broccoli relatives, he/she may help the fertilized embryo to grow (and not die) by carefully removing it from the plant and placing it in special nutrients. This technique is called "embryo rescue" and is, I believe, about 40 years old now. Other conventional, non-gene-splicing techniques include cell fusion and chemical or radiation induced mutation or chromosome doubling.

Techniques like these are certainly beyond manipulation of mating, and people might not entirely support them. But most learned GE critics, including the Europeans that have prohibited GE crops, are not against them. It is "gene splicing" that is more generally contentious, where a person mechanically moves a gene – a piece of a chromosome, a length of DNA – into the cell nucleus of a plant, animal, or microorganism. DNA is a big, complex molecule in which the genetic code for an organism resides in the form of templates. By the DNA molecule having different forms, i.e. different sequencing of only four chemicals called base pairs (but many of them!), a section of DNA forms a template for, and thus codes for, something specific to its organism. Since the same DNA, albeit with varying base pair sequences, is common to all living things, it can be moved from one organism to another even if the organisms are very dissimilar. In that way GE is more powerful than conventional breeding. For example, the virus disease resistance in a recently commercialized summer squash variety was created by incorporating into the squash a gene (a piece of DNA large enough to code for a trait or a metabolic process) responsible, in part, for the virus's protein coat. Transferring this gene from the virus microorganism into a cell of the squash plant could only be accomplished with GE, i.e. mechanical gene (DNA) transfer.

Mechanical gene transfer is unsavory to many people because of its ability, in theory, to transfer traits between two dissimilar organisms – any two organisms. Moving a trait from an animal to a plant tends to be particularly creepy to people. Moving a trait from a microorganism to a plant, which is the case with so called Bt corn or Bt potatoes, makes for less squeamishness, but still some remains. Moving a trait between two plants doesn't conjure up the squeamy feeling, but many still voice objections. Some objections are technical, like "if I'm allergic to the food plant donor of the gene I might also be allergic to the entirely different food plant that was modified by it." Some are more cultural or moral, such as "GE crosses the line into bad science, and opens a Pandora's box."

GE OVERRIDES THE SPECIES BARRIER
GE allows combinations of genetic traits that are unlikely to exist in nature to be combined in a particular plant.
I do not have a fundamental problem with that, though I do not support presently commercialized combinations. I don't support the present GE varieties because I do not believe that the benefit for any of them has been sufficiently shown to outweigh the risk.

GE TECHNOLOGY IS DANGEROUS
GE technology and the resulting plant varieties represent, like nuclear weapons, a technological threshold that sane people must not cross.
I do not support the use of present GE varieties because I don't believe that they are compatible with a sustainable agriculture.

However, on the general issue of GE and its potential, I agree with the position as presented in the paper, "Biotechnology – UCS's Position" published by the Union of Concerned Scientists (2 Brattle Square, Cambridge, MA 02238; www.ucsusa.org/agriculture/gen.ucsposition.html ), to quote:

"In general, UCS supports the use of genetic engineering in basic research and for the production of pharmaceuticals. But we have serious reservations about many of the applications of genetic engineering in agriculture…"

Actually, I have reservations about the use of GE for the production of pharmaceuticals as well. And biotechnology in human medicine raises ethical and moral questions that I do not believe our culture is evolved enough to answer.

GENE SPLICING MOCKS PLANT BREEDING
Conventional plant breeding works with the plants' own evolved system of reproduction. The act of mechanically bypassing natural systems speaks of an ignorant glorification of the intellect, as if by pasting together two works of art one deserves the credit for creating a new masterpiece. It makes a mockery of traditional plant breeding.
This comment is attractive to me because it gets to the heart of the aesthetic difference between the two approaches to plant improvement. An analogy would be the motor vehicle vs. the horse for transportation and power, and the profound implications for society and the environment. Did the internal combustion engine make a mockery of horsepower? Maybe not, but it did make horsepower obsolete in many places in the world and it certainly is not sustainable the way horsepower was. But I remain open-minded that a yet undeveloped use of GE technology could be attractive – could satisfy the aesthetic – in addition to resulting in varieties that promote sustainability. GE cannot displace plant breeding, but it might someday enhance it.

CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
No amount of future retrospect can erase what might happen because of our dabbling in systems too complex to completely understand.
I agree. The life sciences, like plant science and medicine, have a problem nowadays: they are progressing faster than culture in our society. So we have ability to do things with science that raises questions that we don't have the wisdom to answer. The human genetics field is the clearest example, but today's plant science also challenges our grasp of ethics and cultural foundations.

We must not dabble with the earth. We need mechanisms to assure that commercialization of new GE crops is preceded by sufficiently deliberate and thorough study of environmental and health impact. I don't believe that this is always happening, for example Bt-engineered corn and potatoes.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
Companies that develop GE seeds patent them, and patenting life forms is wrong.
Intellectual property rights (IPR) mechanisms exist for sexually and asexually propagated plant varieties. I am not against IPR. These mechanisms have existed for many years and many breeders, myself included, have used them to protect traditionally developed (non-GE) varieties from being stolen by unscrupulous people in the seed industry. IPRs are now also being used to protect GE varieties.

In this respect, the IPR issue seems independent of the GE issue. However, the atmosphere around GE-IPR is substantially more intense than with traditional breeding. GE moves genes – precise DNA base sequences – and there is legal mechanism to patent those genes. Also patentable are the mechanisms of GE, for example the promoter, which is an activator of another gene, as well as the transfer system, which is the mechanism you need to move the DNA to the host cell. The private sector is at a fevered pace to patent genes, to control the GE modification of crops with what they hope to be valuable and, thus, profitable traits. The public sector, for example the administrators of GE at the land grant universities, are also into this patent-mania. The situation seems dysfunctional to me, and I think our society is obligated to fix it.

MONOPOLIZING INDIGENOUS VARIETIES
The theft and patenting of seed strains originating with indigenous people must not be allowed.
I agree that the patenting of such varieties amounts to theft, and our international community should prohibit it. On the other hand, I support the collecting of seeds throughout the world and utilizing them as parents to improve a particular crop. I have used varieties collected in other countries in my own breeding work. In the United States, most of these seeds are maintained in USDA-managed, tax-supported seed banks for the free use of plant breeders internationally. There is a long history of this, and I believe that it is admirable and entirely positive.

In the last decade a number of nations have closed their doors to plant exploration, treating their plant genetic resources as proprietary, no longer freely available to the international plant researchers' community. I don't understand the political issues well enough to take a position on that.

This indigenous plants topic is concurrent with the increase in commercial GE of plants. Though they are related, I think that the topics are independent, because the indigenous plants matter is a political problem and GE is a agricultural and environmental problem.

ELIMINATION OF SMALL FARMS
Small farms will be eliminated, unable to afford the cost of the more expensive seeds.
I only know enough to comment on the farm problem in the United States. In my view it is the medium size farms that are going away, not the small ones. And that is not connected to the seed cost.

The successful farms seem to be the very large ones and the very small ones. It's a phenomenon of the "disappearing middle." The medium size farms used to be the standard of viability – they're what used to be the model family farm – but they aren't big enough nowadays to have power in the consolidated marketplace. In addition, they have too much overhead to satisfy with lower volume specialty markets. The result is that they are forced to compete in conventional markets with the big farms which have more power with the buyers. The smaller farms – I think we need to redefine the successful family farm to this smaller model – can fit to specialty and direct marketing where the return is higher.

Farmers of all sizes pretty much have the same seeds available to them. Each chooses seed varieties based on the perceived cost-benefit. Although companies that own GE crop varieties are, in most cases that I know, restricting them to only the large farms where these companies can more easily monitor the crops, I suspect that some day small farmers will be allowed to plant them, too. But there will always be sources of non-engineered seeds as long as farmers – small, medium, or big – want them.

ENVIRONMENTAL THREAT
I consider GE crops to pose an as yet undetermined threat to the environment.
Actually there are mechanisms in place at the regulatory level to determine the threat. The potential environmental impact must be reviewed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for each new GE crop before the agency allows it into commercialization. The federal agencies of USDA and FDA also play roles in review of proposed new GE products. Some GE crops have thus been prohibited, and some permitted. It's the old story of risk vs. benefit, and there is usually some disagreement. I don't think that our government agencies have a very good track record when it comes to risk-benefit assessment, for example their approval of DDT insecticide (prohibited in the U.S. for about 30 years now.)

As with the DDT example, ecological risks are not monopolized by GE crops. And many ordinary farm practices like cutting down a forest or plowing a prairie to plant crops are surely ecological threats, but ones which most people would consider worth the risk.

I intend to rate risk vs. benefit for any new GE crop, just as I do for a new conventionally bred crop, or for any other agricultural practice.

Of course, for the most popular engineered crops we will learn a lot about their ecological impact before long. For example, according to a survey, in 1998 farmers planted 21.4 million acres of soybeans engineered to resist Roundup herbicide. This is over 30% of the total U.S. soybean acreage. And Bt-engineered field corn was planted on more than 10 million acres, over double the 1997 land area. We can anticipate that these acreages will increase again in 1999, because a majority of the farmers that grew these transgenic crops were satisfied.

GE PROMOTES BAD FARMING
On the surface, genetically altered varieties create more options for survival. Beneath the surface, they remove options by cultivating an unfounded faith in technological fixes for the exploitation of soil by agribusiness as usual.
I look with suspicion at any "improvement" that supports the continuation of farm practices that are, in the long run, dysfunctional. For example, making a crop resistant to an herbicide supports use of herbicides which, in my opinion, is damaging to soil health. I don't support that.

This is, however, another complicated issue. For example, powdery mildew is a common disease of squash and pumpkin crops. Even crops that are well-grown are affected, and the result is reduced yield, taste, and storage of the harvest. One of my own breeding objectives is to develop squash and pumpkin varieties that resist this disease. I don't know of a grower, organic or non-organic, that wouldn't welcome bred-in resistance to mildew. You could argue that, with a superior application of organic farming practices, mildew-free crops could be grown without help from disease resistant varieties. But that position is a radical one and most farmers, good ones included, will try to convince you that you're being unrealistic, and that along with their best farming practices they'll choose the disease resistant varieties, thank you. So, mildew resistant squash varieties support bad farming practices only at a level which is impracticable for most earnest farmers to embrace. By the way, I use traditional breeding techniques, though technique isn't relevant to the point I'm trying to illustrate.

CONTAMINATION OF WILD PLANTS
GE plants can cross with wild plants, polluting the wild plants with unnatural traits.
Yes, this is possible, and I think that the matter for each crop must be satisfactorily settled before the crop should be allowed widespread use.

This is also possible with conventionally bred varieties. For example, presently there are summer squash varieties on the market with virus (disease affecting the squash plants) resistance derived from GE, and other varieties with resistance derived from conventional breeding. It is technically possible for pollinating insects to transfer pollen to wild squash relatives from flowers of either the GE or conventionally bred squash plants, and thus introduce virus resistance to the wild population.

Some of you referred me to the study published in Nature that was purported to show that a GE variety may be more likely to out-cross with non-crop plants than its non-GE counterparts. But the study compared a GE-herbicide resistant variety with a variety that was herbicide resistant due to mutation. I don't believe that one should draw any conclusion from this work about an increased propensity in GE crops for outcrossing. There is no scientific reason why pollen from a GE variety would be in greater quantity, or more fertile, or more readily carried by pollinating insects or the wind than non-GE plants.

INSECT RESISTANCE
Varieties GE'ed to kill insects, like corn with genes from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), will speed the evolution of insects that are resistant to the engineered and natural forms of the bacterial toxin thus creating uncontrollable insect pests.
I lean towards agreement with this. Bt bacteria produce a protein that is toxic to a specific species of insect. There are many forms of Bt, with each one toxic to one insect or another. Most people consider Bt insecticides safe and organic farmers like them because they do not harm beneficial insects. While at least one Lepidoptera, the diamond back moth, has developed resistance to Bt insecticide sprays, I think most scientists agree that insects will develop a resistance faster from GE-Bt crops than from insecticide sprays. Thus, there is concern among organic farmers that their Bt sprays will become more quickly obsolete as a control mechanism for the pests.

There is speculation as to how long it will take the insects to adapt to GE-Bt, but most estimates seem to be within the 5 to 20 years range. Bt insecticides were first formulated in, I believe, the 1950's, and since about 1970 many organic growers have been spraying Bt based insecticides to kill worm pests. Insect resistance to some of these specific Bt insecticides has been an issue for years, and the strategy has been to develop new strains of Bt to control these new races of insects. The GE-Bt people plan a similar strategy to overcome insect resistance, i.e. developing new forms of engineered Bt to kill new forms of insects.

The big acreage crop for GE-Bt right now is field corn. American farmers have enthusiastically planted millions of acres of the new Bt corns because these corns lower their insect control costs by eliminating the need for either chemical and biological insecticides. No spraying and no worms!

While insect resistance is not a new topic, I believe that we do not know enough yet to evaluate the benefit of GE-Bt versus the risks associated with the predicted accelerated insect resistance. Thus Johnny's will not sell Bt corn seeds presently, nor will we in the future unless I become confident in a strategy to overcome insect resistance. I have this position as well on any other GE-induced insect toxins.

HARM TO BENEFICIAL INSECTS
A Scottish study has shown that beneficial insects are harmed by GE-insecticide producing crops.
I know the study referenced. It involved potato plants genetically engineered to produce a protein toxic to aphids, an insect pest. When ladybugs, a beneficial insect, fed on the aphids which were feeding on the GE potatoes they developed health problems. Of course these aphids were sick and I wouldn't expect that they would be as health-promoting to the ladybugs as would healthy aphids. I'd like to see a health comparison of those ladybugs with ones fed aphids that were sick from some illness common to aphids feeding on non-GE plants. That would make this kind of study more objectively useful.

Everyone needs to know how beneficial insects might be affected by GE crops, and I think that we need research that is more carefully designed.

TERMINATOR GENE
What do you think about the Terminator gene?
"Terminator" is a new technology that is remarkably clever and very complicated. I oppose it. Terminator-modified varieties will produce only sterile seeds, the objective being to prevent the farmer from being able to save viable seeds from the crop, necessitating the farmer's return to the seed supplier. The technology is aimed at major agricultural crops for which it is easy for farmers to save seeds, mainly wheat, rice, cotton, and soybeans.

I understand how breeders of these crops are frustrated in trying to justify research costs when farmers only buy seeds once and thereafter save their own seeds. But I am against Terminator technology. Supporters of Terminator say that farmers who don't want it don't have to buy it. I agree. But there are bound to be common instances where farmers don't realize what they are buying, leading to subsequent crop failures. In addition, a major grain crop like wheat is typically stored in bulk with contribution from numerous farmers in a region, allowing mixing of fertile and sterile seeds, which I don't believe is in the security interests of society.

Presently traditional plant breeding techniques are not useful in incorporating Terminator genes into a variety – GE is necessary. However, though Terminator is possible because of GE, that fact doesn't condemn GE. We do not condemn the paint brush because ugliness might result.

DIVERSITY
Biotech reduces genetic diversity.
Gene splicing is a tool that a breeder may employ to introduce a trait into a variety. It does not affect genetic diversity. But some traits might threaten wild plant populations if they outcrossed into the wild population from a cultivated crop. Before an engineered trait is approved we need to assess the likelihood of cross pollination to wild plants, and the potential impact of the introduced trait to the wild population.

MISTRUST OF BIG COMPANIES
We cannot trust the motives of big practitioners of biotech like Monsanto and Novartis. Technology that makes all the world's farmers pay one or two very large companies for the privilege of growing something has awesome social repercussions.
I agree. Monsanto is the same company that now owns, through acquisition, the "terminator" technology. I am opposed to terminator technology. But that's an easy position to take, because the terminator trait offers nothing useful to the farmer. It's solely intended to support the owner's monopoly on the seed supply.

Companies like Monsanto and Novartis have a big investment in each product. There is tremendous incentive to get a product quickly to market, both to begin earliest possible payback, and to extend payback through as many years of the life of the patent as possible. This rush to market would tend to compromise study of the risks.

However, some of the resulting issues are complicated. To illustrate my attempt to apply objectivity and sensibility, I offer the following example. Monsanto has a proprietary gene that, when incorporated into a soybean variety, makes the soybean plant resistant to Monsanto's herbicide called Roundup. Roundup is a relatively safe (for the person applying it and for the soil) herbicide, and some in the sustainable ag community think that use of "Roundup-Ready" soybeans is good for the environment because more toxic herbicides are being avoided on the GE crop. Some also point out that the weed population is significantly reduced in the following, rotational crop which would reduce the amount of herbicide necessary on that. These things may be so, but I don't support the use of Roundup-Ready soybeans because I don't believe that herbicide-dependent farm strategies are in society's best interests in the long term because the resulting practices tend to damage the soil and are not sustainable.

At Johnny's we have a good record of filtering out the hype accompanying commercial introductions of new varieties so we can objectively evaluate them. I intend to apply this procedure to GE varieties as well.

MONOPOLIZING THE SEED SUPPLY
The big biotech companies are buying up smaller seed companies, and before long they will monopolize seeds, and thus control the food supply.
The seed industry has been subject to consolidation like so many other industries. But I don't think that there is danger of all small companies disappearing. There will remain a significant percentage of farmers and gardeners that want to buy from smaller companies. This consolidation trend preceded the commercialization of GE by many years. GE is still a new science and technology which is labor intensive – scientists, lawyers, and their support staffs – and thus expensive. Although GE research partnering of smaller companies is happening, independent companies active in GE research tend to be highly leveraged and unprofitable. That can make their stockholders nervous, and then they become susceptible to takeover, thus consolidation.

In the 26 years since I started Johnny's in 1973 I have seen a lot of seed companies come and go. And many are consolidated past the point of recognition (like every one of our local and regional banks.) Johnny's remains independent. We trade with many dozens of seed sources large and small. I prefer the independent companies because I like to know just whom I am doing business with. With the independents, I can talk with a person who is an owner, and I can get to understand the motives that are behind their program. I work with the bigs, too, but it's more challenging with them to understand motive, and personnel in big companies is more likely to be unstable, making building relationships more difficult. This qualitative difference is important because it affects product quality and product knowledge, both of which are, of course, critical to farmers and gardeners.

GE COMPANIES IGNORE SMALL FARMERS
The companies that are developing GE seeds are only interested in big farmers.
That's presently true. Evidently companies doing GE are interested in big acreages of the big acreage crops. Our mission at Johnny's is to serve "critical home gardeners and specialty and small commercial growers." I wouldn't be interested in varieties only suited to or restricted to large acreages.

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
GE seeds are not compatible with sustainable agriculture.
I agree, based on present knowledge of environmental risks associated with current GE crops on the market. However, I could support something new where I judge a favorable benefit/risk ratio. I might also change my mind about a current GE application if I develop a sufficient confidence that good science demonstrates favorable benefit-to-risk. For example, I cannot presently support Bt-engineered crops; I don't believe that the solutions to insect resistance have been sufficiently worked out. If these are worked out to my satisfaction, I could support it.

MONEY MOTIVE
You are selling out to big corporations … Is profit so important to you?
We are not selling out, and profit is not the motive. Johnny's is independent, not beholden to any of our suppliers. In addition, my motives in owning and running Johnny's have little to do with monetary security. Our product choices are based solely on our judgement of what is in our customers' best interests, as we define them, which include long-term environmental and health affects.

BOYCOTT OF JOHNNY'S
I can't justify supporting a company whose agricultural goals are counter to mine. If you do not make a statement that you will never sell GE varieties I will never buy from you again and I will encourage my friends not to buy from you.

I hope that you will reconsider. I am being true to myself – to my sensibilities as a scientist, horticulturist, and environmentalist, and to my conscience – by keeping an open mind about GE and other new technologies that will, no doubt, be conceived in the future.

If being true to yourself means boycotting Johnny's because of my position, then I would support you in doing so, under two conditions: first, that you first scrutinize the positions of other seed companies with the same energy that you have done with Johnny's; second, that for a seed supplier to be acceptable to you, that they impose the same requirement for GE product exclusion throughout their own supply chain. In other words, if you boycott Johnny's because Johnny's might – or does – sell a GE variety, then you should require a candidate seed company to impose the same requirement on its suppliers. Otherwise I think that your position is inconsistent.

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