Dive Brief:

• An Australian court has ruled against an organic farmer who sued a neighbor for allowing genetically modified canola seeds to spread.
• Steve Marsh sued his neighbor after the Marsh farm lost its organic certification on 70% of his land when GMO seeds blew onto his land. 
• The court ruled that the neighbor, Michael Baxter, could not be held liable for engaging in a legal activity such as growing GMO crops. 

Dive Insight:

This case has generated a lot of attention among the farming community in Australia and elsewhere.

While the Australian court ruling has no direct impact upon U.S. law, it's worth noting that the GMO/organic contamination problem is a legal issue in the States as well. In the U.S., there have only been cases of farmers suing seed manufacturers. But it seems almost inevitable that sooner or later the U.S. farming community will see neighbors sue neighbors over the genetics of the crop.

As we've seen before, other nation's legal and regulatory standards regarding GMO crops do have a way of spreading to the U.S.