The need to end privatisation of genetic resources

Patents provide commercial monopoly that enables companies to control markets for profit. Without patents there would be considerably less GM in food and farming. Appling patents to life forms, including for GMOs, is helping to deliver the basic components of nature and agriculture into the control of unaccountable private corporations.

Patenting genetic resources makes farmers increasingly dependent on those private corporations. Once a company has a patent it can charge a fee to anyone who uses it, or charge high prices for the seed, or issue and enforce very strict contracts. Monsanto rigorously polices and enforces such contractual obligations, such as a prohibition on seed saving.

The Life Patents Directive

  • The EU Life Patents Directive provides a legal framework for granting patents (intellectual property rights) to plants, animals and their genes. This was done without proper public consultation.
  •  In October 2005 the European Patents Office approved a patent on the Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURTs, also called Terminator), which provides the ultimate form of patent protection by preventing seeds from germinating. Terminator is particularly disturbing because it guarantees farmers are bound to buy the seed they need from biotech companies every year, preventing them from saving them on-farm as has been done for thousands of years.

Biopiracy

  • Patents promote 'biopiracy', the appropriation of genetic resources from the wild for private exploitation and profit without the permission of, or any benefits flowing to, people who may have been using those resources for generations and depend on them. For example Monsanto took out a patent on wax and oil from the Indian Neem tree for its fungicidal and insecticidal properties. Neem has been used in this way in by Indian farmers for centuries. The patent was challenged and overturned by a judge in India, as was also the case with a patent granted to a US company on basmati rice, but the cost and complexity of bringing such cases means often patens go unchallened.
  • The Convention on Biodiversity agreed that home countries of valuable genetic resources should share in the benefits of any successful products derived from them, but there is little evidence that benefits sharing is being applied or that biopiracy has halted - patent applicants are not required to state the country of origin of the genetic material used.
  • Bioprospecting could be taking place in the UK. English Nature has received an informal approach to bioprospect on National Nature Reserves. The UK has no legal framework in place to deal with bioprospecting, so ownership of genetic resources and access and benefits sharing are not clear.

Summary

GM Freeze is opposed to patents on genetic resources and life forms. We are calling for:

  • An end to patents on genetic resources for food and farm crops - genetic resources should not be patented and should be available to all.
  • Suspension of any such existing patents.