Another member of the corn farming industry is joining the litigation against Syngenta by bringing her own Viptera corn lawsuit.

Plaintiff Willetta M. runs a corn farming business in Iowa. Her allegations are familiar to anyone who has followed farming news over the past few years.

She claims she has been harmed by Syngenta’s allegedly premature release of its Viptera variety of corn, which supposedly led to massive rejection of U.S. corn imports by Chinese officials. She also claims harm due to Syngenta’s supposedly misleading statements about Viptera corn.

According to Willetta, Syngenta announced in April 2010 that it had received regulatory approval from the USDA for a new variety of corn called Viptera. This corn contained a genetically engineered trait called MIR162, which gives Viptera particular resistance to certain corn-eating pests.

The trait was designed to make Viptera resistant to the corn earworm, fall armyworm, black cutworm, and western bean cutworm. Syngenta claimed that Viptera corn’s insecticidal properties could kill “more insects than any other trait stack on the market,” according to Willetta’s Syngenta corn lawsuit.

Syngenta put Viptera on the market in time for the 2011 growing season. But at that time, Viptera still had not been approved for importation by the regulatory authorities of several foreign corn markets, including China.

Willetta notes that at the time of Viptera’s release, China maintained a zero-tolerance policy regarding corn imports contaminated with MIR162. She says that Syngenta knew about this policy when it started selling Viptera corn. She also believes Syngenta knew that, due to the nature of corn farming and the corn commodity market, there was no way to prevent Viptera corn from spreading throughout the entire U.S. corn supply once it was released.

In November 2013, Willetta says, Chinese officials discovered traces of Viptera in corn imported from the U.S. The Chinese government responded by starting to test all imported corn at Chinese ports for traces of MIR162, and to return or destroy any shipments of corn that tested positive.

Willetta says that after the Chinese rejection went into effect, imports of U.S. corn to China dropped by 85 percent. That caused domestic corn prices to sink dramatically, she says. Farming news reports projected losses in the billions; the National Grain and Feed Association projected a $1.14 billion hit to the corn farming market in just the nine months ending August 2014.

Despite the trouble in China with Viptera corn, Willetta cites farming news sources that show Syngenta has continued to release other unapproved strains of corn onto the market.

Allegations of Misinformation by Syngenta

Prior to November 2013, Syngenta had tried to head off any fears of Chinese rejection with an informational campaign directed at members of the corn farming industry. Willetta says this campaign constituted misrepresentation intended to keep farmers buying and planting Syngenta corn.

She cites a Syngenta-published fact sheet entitled “Plant With Confidence” that allegedly downplayed the significance of the Chinese market for U.S. corn farming. Willetta cites other information from the USDA that apparently contradicts Syngenta’s fact sheet.

Willetta’s Syngenta Corn Lawsuit is Case No: 14:16-CV-15 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. She is bringing this claim on her own behalf and on behalf of her own revocable living trust.