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Even rubber plantations in thailand could be patented.
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“Certainly
the creation of the heavens and the earth is greater than the creation of men,
but most people do not know” (Surat Ghafir 40:57). The Qur’an
reminds us how the creation of the earth came from a power greater than man.
However, modern man would like to put his own designer label on some of
creation. While the ‘war-on-terrorism” has global attention and has given
license to violence in the world, a more subtle form of terrorism has been
undergoing some refinements behind the scenes. This quiet threat arose out of
the financial benefits of modern medicine’s return to plant-based cures. Led
by corporate industry under the heading of ‘life industries” scientific
research is contributed to slow but sure privatization of the plant kingdom.
Called, biopiracy, by many, large International companies have passed a number
of laws and regulations that literally put a patent on nature itself.
Part
and parcel of globalization, biopiracy has even gained legitimacy in many
circles. A top priority for U.S foreign policy, Intellectual Property Rights,
IPR, was crafted by agrochemical-pharmaceutical companies through the 1994
Uruguay Round of GATT trade negotiations, Through IPR, ‘inventors’ can
trade, in exchange for their “socially valuable innovations”, the
privatization of plants, animals and other life-forms. The Trade-Related Aspects
of Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS, facilitates the ability of multinational
markets to use resources and limits the capacity of developing countries to
develop their own resources for the benefit of their own communities.
Furthermore,
these multinational companies, calling themselves “life industries”, have
convinced many of the developed world that privatization is essential for
research and development (Dawkins p.1). The TRIPS agreement states: that all
World Trade Organization (W.T.O.) members “shall provide for the protection of
plant varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system
or by any combination thereof”. The U.S. legislators would like to delete the
phrase sui generis (of their own kind), but Thailand, India and much of Africa
have developed sui generis to recognize the rights of farmers to save seeds and
the rights of traditional peoples to regulate outsider access to their
knowledge. This is consistent with TRIPS, the Biological Convention, 169 of the
International Labor Organization, the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic
Resources of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, several UN covenants
and customs laws (Dawkins p.4).
Europe
has a similar natural patent law. In 1998 the European Parliament endorsed a
directive making it legal to patent life and genetic material under European
law. A member of the E.U Parliament’s Green group Magda Aelvoet responded by
saying, “Biopiracy, the unauthorized patenting of genetic resources taken from
developing countries, will not be stopped.”
“Europe
effectively has said it will not make firm commitments to help developing
countries protect their own resources,”added Steve Emmott, also of the Green
group (Sarno, p.1).
True
colors become revealed with the implementation of TRIPS with a self-appointed
committee of: Bristol Myers, DuPont, General Electric, General Motors, Hewlett
Packard, IBM, Johnson and Johnson, Merck, Monsanto, Pfizer, Rockwell and
Time-Warner (Dawkins p.1). The European Commissioner Frank Fischler declared
“If the biotechnology industry’s turnover growth follows present trends, it
will hit $160 billion in the year 2005, creating more than a million jobs” (Sarno,
p.2). However, he overlooks that a million jobs is less than a fraction of a
percent of the job market in Europe alone. Also, as a result of TRIPS, Western
scientists have become reluctant to publish discoveries or research in order to
increase the likelihood that their sponsor will be the first to patent a
commercial result (Dawkins, p.2).
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Most corn in USA today is from commercial seed. |
TRIPS
regulations are already restricting public access to some natural foods and
medicines. The Royal Thai Government wanted to allow their healers to register
traditional medicines, keeping these medicines within the public domain.
However, U.S. State Department letter to the Thai government in 1997 stated,
“Washington believes that such a registration system could constitute a
possible violation of TRIPS and hamper medical research into these compounds”
(Dawkins, p.3). The government of Canada ordered a farmer to pay Monsanto, a
biotechnology giant, thousands of dollars because Monsanto’s GM rapeseed
–canola – plants were found growing on his farm. Aged 70, Percy Schmeisser
was found guilty in violation of Monsanto’s patent. “I’ve been growing my
own seed for years, and now, farmers like me are being told we can’t do that
anymore if our neighbors are growing GM crops that blow in” said Schmeisser in
his affidavit. “Basically, the right to use our own seed has been taken away.
I have no interest or desire in growing GM canola. Over the years, I had
developed my own superior yielding canola seed which is now ruined because of
the infiltration by Monsanto’s GM canola” (Hawa, p.1).
Although
biopiracy seems to have few benefits for the public it continues. This could be
because biopiracy seems to be a tool to deal with the growing losses and
increased competition in the agricultural community. In the 1950s – the
developing world’s wheat imports accounted for 10% and became 57% by 1980.
This food dependency arose from U.S. food aid programs that encouraged Western
diets like the rations that were dropped on Afghanistan, undercutting local
habits and local prices. Between Europe and the U.S., the South became a
food-ball – a competition for food markets, which laid the ground for GATT in
the ‘80s (McMichael, p.4). As a result of this same policy, 2% of U.S farms
grow 50% of agricultural products when the average farm receives only 14% of the
income. Yet, 95% of U.S. food is manufactured and sold by corporations and 30mn
Americans do not get enough to eat when the food industry is the largest U.S.
industrial sector (McMichael, p.2).
A
deal was reached early this year allowing poor countries to make money from
drugs and other products synthesized from their indigenous plants assuming that
a tracking system can be placed that can ascertain what derivatives come from a
particular region. The agreement was signed in The Hague with signatories from
the Biodiversity Convention (160 signatories) that agreed to new guidelines for
national licenses to be issued in order to access the genetic resources. Hailed
as a breakthrough by British environmental minister Michael Meacher, the
“Borun Guidelines on Access and Benefit Sharing” is voluntary, therefore
disappointing African and other developing nations. They desired a legally bound
ruling.
Jeremy
Rifkin, an activist against GM foods, called the guidelines illegitimate.
“They allow countries to sell monopoly rights to the world’s genetic
commons. Nobody has a right to enter into exclusive deals with the products of
millions of years of evolution” (Pearce, p.1). Not only this, it actually
places the genetic resource – plants – on which we depend for food, medicine
and fuel under the stress of mass production. Already modern agriculture has
demonstrated the reduced quality and sustainability involved for both crops and
soil.
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Seeds are sterile so they can only be used once. |
To
ensure compliance, the “Terminator” of film and screen has come to life in
seed. The Terminator gene patented by USDA and Delta PineLand (world’s largest
cottonseed company) is designed to make plants sterile (McMichael, p.9).
Unknowingly,
U.S. taxpayers subsidize Terminator technology. Trials have been in place in
France, Belgium Sweden, Canada and the U.K. by AgrEvo, Aventis, since 1990.
Terminator was created to enforce corporate patents of GM seeds onto farmers so
that they are unable to re-sow harvested seeds. This way, farmers are forced to
purchase new seeds annually. In response, Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, director of the
Institute of Science in Society commented: “The technology is ineffective in
preventing gene flow, and it makes use of two very dangerous genes that should
never, never be released. One is encoded for “barnase” enzyme that breaks
RNA and kills all cells. The second is “recombinase” which breaks DNA and
rejoins DNA at specific sites not recognizable by the enzyme so this leaves a
potential to scramble the genomes.” Terminator technology has been used in GM
canola (TWN, p.1, 2).
Since
the Biodiversity Convention was agreed in 1992, countries like the Philippines
and Brazil criticized for virtually banning scientists from prospecting for
genes while others like Costa Rica have signed away humanity’s birth-right
allowing pharmaceutical companies to scour their forests for plants that might
provide cures for diseases (Pearce, p.1).
Sources:
