An organic farmer in southwest France and the only non-American namedplaintiff in the lawsuit, Patrick de Kochko said the lawyers who filed thelandmark anti-trust suit against Monsanto on Tuesday asked him to join as aplaintiff because of legal problems over his 1996 soybean crop.

De Kochko said he believes a unit of Monsanto sold him soybean seedscontaining GM material, which then contaminated his crop and made itdifficult for him to market his soybeans.

``The lawyers were looking for someone who had experienced damages becauseof GM seeds, and that's what happened to me,'' de Kochko said in a telephoneinterview with Reuters.

``I'm just a modest peasant...(but) the principle that disturbs me is thatpeople create these things which then escape into the environment and thenthey don't care what happens with them,'' he said.

De Kochko, who farms some 45 hectares, said he bought seeds for his 1996organic soybean crop from Asgrow, a seed company that now belongs toMonsanto.

He said he had no reason to think the seeds used to produce the soybean cropwere contaminated with GM substances.

Organic crops are grown without the use of chemicals and are not supposed tocontain any GM products.

Demand for organic soybeans has soared as consumers in Europe and Japan lookfor alternatives to GM crops amid consumer concerns about their possibleeffects on human health.

Indeed, organic farmers believe bio-engineered food poses a threat to theirlifestyle, partly amid fears it could weaken the natural techniques organicfarmers use to produce their crops.

De Kochko said he was surprised when a tofu manufacturer in Germany who hadbought some of his crop from a cooperative contacted him in 1997 to say thatconsumer fraud officials had found traces of GM material in the beans.

De Kochko said the German authorities traced the contaminated soybeans backto his crop, although he believes the contamination could have come fromimported soybeans used by the German manufacturer which were mixed with hisown.

``The problem is it's difficult to know the origin of the contamination.It's not definitive that the pollution came from France,'' de Kochko said.But he also said he has since learned that Asgrow only guaranteed the purityof its seeds to 99 per cent, meaning there was a possibility some of theseeds he bought may have been contaminated.

De Kochko said he has filed a separate lawsuit in France against as yetunnamed parties to find out why his soybeans may have contained GM material.He said that while he is currently the only named non-US plaintiff in thelawsuit against Monsanto, more could emerge.

``There are other international producers who have suffered similardamages,'' de Kochko said.

The lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Washington accuses Monsanto of trying tomonopolise GM crops and failing to thoroughly test the products for safety.Also named in the court case as alleged co-conspirators were Novartis AG,DuPont Co, Dow Chemical Co, and AstraZeneca Plc. Lawyers for the farmerssaid the companies were not formally charged as defendants in the case, butcould be added to the lawsuit in the future.