Corporate Biopiracy and the Terminator Seed

Corporate power has long influenced the direction of basic biological research.  Rather than seeking better understandings of the relations of parts to each other in the earth’s incredibly complex and interdependent ecosystems, scientists for more than 50 years have focused on dividing, defining and parsing the genetic code of organisms as a prelude to claiming property rights to what they might some day invent, or merely describe.

More than 20 years ago, agribusiness, pharmaceutical and “life science” companies, Monsanto first among them, set their sights on what they called “commercialization and value capture” of global agriculture.

“In many cases it has become illegal for American farmers to save and plant their own seeds.”

Through campaign and other donations corporate lobbyists purchased regulations, laws and court decisions which mandated the registration of each and every crop variety, prescribed heavy fines for the planting and distribution of unlicensed seed, and required licensing and extensive record keeping on the part of anybody selling or giving seeds away.  In many cases, it has become illegal for American farmers to save and plant their own seeds.  At the same time, US patent laws were expanded to allow corporations to claim genetic material as their private “intellectual property.”

“The granting of life patents,” environmental activist Dr. Vandana Shiva says, “was seen as an imperative both by the industry as well as the government.  The U.S. government actually encouraged life patenting. The decision-making was set by the courts, rather than by Congress, never with a public debate, never with a public policy decision on the ethical implications, ecological implications, economic implications of what life patents mean.”

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