On December 5, 2009, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Bayer CropScience AG, the company that is applying for the importation of a genetically modified (GM) rice strain into the Philippines, has been slapped a US$2 million verdict by a federal jury for financial losses suffered by Missouri rice farmers as a result of contamination of their crop by Bayer's GM rice.

The case against Bayer was brought by two Missouri farmers, Kenneth Bell and Johnny Hunter. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the jury awarded Bell about $1.96 million and Hunter $53,336. Following the verdict, Hunter gave a statement, which the St. Louis Post quoted thus: "This is a huge victory, not only for Kenny and me, but for every farmer in America who was harmed by Bayer's LibertyLink rice contamination." The verdict, Hunter’s statement further read, is “a wake-up call that Bayer deserves."

The Missouri verdict was celebrated not just by farmers in Missouri but also by farmers in four other U.S. states, whose rice crops were contaminated by Bayer’s LibertyLink rice.

Bayer and a Louisiana-based university had been testing the LibertyLink rice for resistance to a herbicide, which Bayer also developed, when the GM rice was “accidentally” released and cross-bred with the U.S. rice crop. Thirty percent of America’s ricelands were reportedly contaminated.

The Missouri lawsuit is the first of over 1,200 cases that have been filed by farmers from five U.S. states since 2006, when a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sent U.S. rice futures plummetting by at least 14 percent in a matter of days. The USDA had found trace amounts of Bayer’s GM rice in U.S. long grain stocks.

If the Missouri case is any indication, Bayer may be facing “hundreds of millions of dollars in liability for rice crop contamination,” the St. Louis Dispatch reported, quoting the plaintiffs’ lawyer.