Biotech giants seek genes patents
Biotech giants seek genes patents
2008-05-14Newsfeed
Three of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies have applied for hundreds of patents to control new "climate ready" genes which will help crops survive damage from environmental causes such as drought, flooding and high temperatures.
Three of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies have applied for hundreds of patents to control new "climate ready" genes which will help crops survive damage from environmental causes such as drought, flooding and high temperatures.
BASF of Germany, Syngenta of Switzerland and Monsanto of St. Louis have filed applications to control nearly two-thirds of these gene families to patent offices worldwide, according to a new report.
But campaigners are criticising the companies for seizing economic opportunities at a time of growing food insecurity, particularly among farmers.
Many of the world's poorest countries, destined to be hit hardest by climate change, have rejected biotech crops, according to the report by the ETC Group, an activist organisation based in Ottawa, Canada. And the traditional farming practice of saving seeds from one harvest for replanting ahead of the next has all but died out, with farmers instead required to buy the high-tech seeds each year.
The ETC report concludes that biotech giants are hoping to leverage climate change as a way to get into resistant markets, and warns that the move could undermine public-sector plant-breeding institutions such as those co-ordinated by the United Nations and the World Bank, which have long made their improved varieties freely available.
Copyright © The Press Association 2008
