Thank you, Mr. Bellavance, for your question. You loaded it up quite a bit; you addressed quite a few issues there.
First of all, I would say that Monsanto's policy, globally, is that we are transparent with what we're bringing to the market. We've always said that we work very closely with our stakeholders, both industry and consumers. If I take an example in Canada, we have a grower advisory council, which includes growers across Canada--western and eastern Canada stakeholders. We have the wheat growers association, the Canadian Canola Growers Association, the Canola Council of Canada, the Ontario farm grains association, which are all part of that. We work with them and we listen to the issues and concerns, because it is the farmers who are the centre of attention.
On addressing the monopoly issue, I think it's one of those things you think about back when biotechnology was first introduced in 1996. Yes, I would argue that Monsanto was an innovator and brought technologies to the market, but we sit here 15 years later and there are numerous competitors out there with competitive traits. Farmers not only have choice in technology and biotechnology, but they also have a choice in genetics they can purchase.
With regard to the Percy Schmeiser case, quite honestly I wasn't expecting that particular question to come up. I would say that Monsanto's position.... I don't know whether Mike has any further comments on this, but he did not develop his own traits. It was clear in the ruling and the evidence that was presented to them.
If I look across Canada and around the world, we have 60,000 growers in Canada alone. We don't go out and specifically target people to go after them. In the case of Percy Schmeiser, it was someone, a grower, who appreciated the patented technology we brought forth and the benefits the farmer received from that technology, and who alluded to us that he was actively stealing our technology.
So we take that case seriously. We need to protect our investment. We spend $1 billion a year, and the 59,999 farmers across this country also respect that.