if you are ever curious if a seed company is Non-GMO look for the 'Safe Seed Pledge' on their website. many have fought hard to be able to put that label on their sites and stick to it! some companies will even try to test their seeds for purity but i would imagine that could cost them a pretty penny to do that to so many types of seeds each year!
Monsanto does not directly own these seed companies, these companies have an agreement to sell the seeds and not keep any of the seeds produced from the resulting parent plants for the following year's plantings.
eta: when it comes to Johnny's Seeds i think they have been using seeds they stashed years ago, planted, saved the seeds and have been growing them in their own fields since. many older varieties probably don't have patent rights on them anymore so keeping the resulting seeds isn't patent infringement anymore. many varieties they carry used to be Burpee or other old seed companies created years ago that have since been 'gobbled up' by Monsanto, Dow, and/or Syngenta. if you know a company that is claiming to not get their seeds from one of the GMO/chemical companies, ask who they are supplied from and how far back they may have acquired their original seed stock from if they say they are growing their own seed stck. that may tell you if they may have recently acquired it from a GMO/chemical company supplier or if it could be clean stock!
