Source: Global Research and Corbett Report
TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:
TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:
The oft-neglected legal minefield of intellectual property rights has
seen a surge in public interest in recent months due to the storm of
protest over proposed legislation and treaties related to online censorship.
One of the effects of such legislation as SOPA and PIPA and such
international treaties as ACTA is to have drawn attention to the grave
implications that intellectual property arguments can have on the
everyday lives of the average citizen.
As important as the protection of online freedoms is, however, an
even more fundamental part of our lives has come under the purview of
the multinational corporations that are seeking to patent the world
around us for their own gain. Unknown to a large section of the public, a
single US Supreme Court ruling in 1980 made it possible for the first
time to patent life itself for the profit of the patent holder.
The decision, known as Diamond v. Chakrabarty,
centered on a genetic engineer working for General Electric who created
a bacterium that could break down crude oil, which could be used in the
clean-up of oil spills. In its decision, Supreme Court Chief Justice
Warren Burger ruled that:
“A live, human-made micro-organism is patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101”
With this ruling, the ability to patent living organisms, so long as
they had been genetically altered in some novel way, was established in
legal precedent.
The implications of such a monumental ruling are understandably
wide-reaching, touching on all sorts of issues that have the potential
to change the world around us. But it did not take long at all for this
decision’s effects to make itself felt in one of the most basic parts of
the biosphere: our food supply.
In the years following the Diamond v. Chakrabarty decision, an entire
industry rose up around the idea that these new patent protections
could foster the economic incentive for major corporations to develop a
new class of genetically engineered foods to help increase crop yields
and reduce world hunger.
The first commercially available genetically modified food, Calgene’s
“Flavr Savr” tomato, was approved for human consumption by the Food and
Drug Administration in the US in 1992
and was on the market in 1994. Since then, adoption of GM foods has
proceeded swiftly, especially in the US where the vast majority of
soybeans, corn and cotton have been genetically altered.
By 1997, the problems inherent in the patenting of these GM crops had
already begun to surface in Saskatchewan, Canada. It was in the sleepy
town of Bruno that a canola farmer, Percy Schmeiser,
found that a variety of GM canola known as “Roundup Ready” had infected
his fields, mixing with his non-GM crop. Amazingly, Monsanto, the
agrichemical company that owned the Roundup Ready patent, sued Schmeiser
for infringing their patent. After a years-long legal battle against
the multinational that threatened to bankrupt his small farming
operation, Schmeiser finally won an out-of-court settlement with
Monsanto that saw the company agree to pay for the clean-up costs
associated with the contamination of his field.
In India, tens of thousands of farmers per year commited suicide in an epidemic labeled the GM genocide.
Sold a story of “magic seeds” that would produce immense yields,
farmers around the country were driven into ruinous debt by a
combination of high-priced seeds, high-priced pesticides, and crop
failure. Worst of all, the GM seeds had been engineered with so-called
“terminator technology,” meaning that seeds from one harvest could not
be re-planted the following year. Instead, farmers were forced to buy
seeds at the same exorbitant prices from the biotech giants every year,
insuring a debt spiral that was impossible to escape. As a result,
hundreds of thousands of farmers have committed suicide in the Indian
countryside since the introduction of GM crops in 1997.
As philosopher, quantum physicist and activist Vandana Shiva has detailed at great length,
the effect of the invocation of intellectual property in enabling the
monopolization of the world’s most fundamental resources was not
accidental or contingent. On the contrary, this is something that has
been self-consciously designed by the heads of the very corporations who
now seek to reap the benefit of this monopolization, and the monumental
nature of their achievement has been obscured behind bureaucratic
institutions like the WTO and innocuous sounding agreements like the
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.
Although the deck appears to be stacked in favour of the giant
multinationals and their practically inexhaustible access to lobbying
and legal funds, the people are by no means incapable of fighting back
against this patenting of the biosphere.
In India itself, where so much devestation has been wrought by the
introduction of genetically engineered crops, the people are fighting
back against the world’s most well-known purveyor of GMO foods,
Monsanto. The country’s National Biodiversity Diversity Authority has
enabled the government to proceed with legal action
against the company for so-called biopiracy, or attempting to develop a
GM crop derived from local varieties of eggplant, without the
appropriate licences.
Although resistance to the patenting of the world’s food supply
should be applauded in all its forms, what is needed is a fundamental
transformation in our understanding of life itself from a patentable
organism to the common property of all of the peoples who have developed
the seeds from which these novel GM crops are derived.
This concept, known as open seeds, is being promoted by organizations around the globe, including Dr. Vandana Shiva’s Navdanya organization.
To be sure, it will be a long and arduous uphill battle to bring this
issue to the attention of a public that seems to be but dimly aware of
what genetically modified foods are, let alone the legal ramifications
of the ability to patent life, but as the work of such organizations as
Navdanya continues to educate people about the issues involved, the
numbers of those opposed to the patenting of the biosphere likewise
increases.
From seed-saving and preservation projects to an increased awareness
of and interest in organic foods, people around the globe are beginning
to take the issue of the food supply as seriously as the companies that
are quite literally attempting to ram their products down the consumers’
throats.
As always, the power lies with the consumers, who can win the battle
simply by asserting their right to choose where and how they purchase
the food, a lesson that was demonstrated once again earlier this month in Germany.
