Do any of you know that it is possible to patent living organisms?
Do you know about terminator genes which make seeds infertile after harvest?
I believe that if everyone knew about these things we could stop the devastation that is taking place right now, and that is gaining momentum.
Remember hungry people are desperate. Helping people have access to food is one element that is absolutally nessary for a peacefull world.
Please pass this along to anyone and everyone, and erg our representatives in power to make living organisms a shared wealth for all people once again.
Much Love
Ross
Below are some links to pages about the issues. Check em out.
DNA Patents Create Monopolies
on Living Organisms
From the Council for Responsible Genetics
Reprint of a CRG position paper
Gandhi's tree: a case of biopiracy
The neem tree, a native of the Indian subcontinent, has a myriad of applications in traditional Indian Ayurvedic and Tibetan medicine, agriculture, and household use, as well as being symbolic as "Gandhi's favorite tree." Its usefulness is known throughout India. The Latin name, Azadirachta indica, is derived from the Persian for "free tree," as even the poorest families have access to its beneficial properties.
However, it is possible that Indian citizens will soon be required to pay royalties on the products produced from the neem, since a patent has been granted to the U.S. company W.R. Grace on a compound in the tree (azadirachtin) for the production of a biopesticide. In 1993, over five hundred thousand South Indian farmers rallied to protest foreign patents on plants such as the neem, and launched a nation-wide resistance movement. Under free trade agreements such as GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), countries of the developing world will feel strong pressures to implement U.S.-style patent systems. Multi-national corporations can make large profits on their "discoveries," while depriving the communities which have fostered this knowledge for centuries of the choice of how they would like to use their own knowledge and native species.
www.actionbioscience.org/genom...g.html
More on the neem tree
The Neem Tree, Environment, Culture and Intellectual Property
TED Case Studies Number 665, 2002 by Sara Hasan
www.american.edu/TED/neemtree.htm
A worldwide fight against biopiracy and patents on life
By Martin Khor
There is growing worldwide opposition to the granting of patents on biological materials such as genes, plants, animals and humans. Farmers and indigenous peoples are outraged that plants that they developed are being 'hijacked' by companies. Groups as diverse as religious leaders, parliamentarians and environment NGOs are intensifying their campaign against corporate patenting of living things.
www.twnside.org.sg/title/pat-ch.htm
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Slams Life Patents and GMOs '
In the article below it talks about "terminator technology" another devastating development in the fertility of our planet.
"This genetically engineered technology ensures that seed injected with the 'suicide gene'
does not germinate after harvesting. This means the farmers will have to buy
seed each season, and cannot develop their own seed."
www.organicconsumers.org/corp/...04.cfm
Google search On Life Patents
www.google.com/search
International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
www.ukabc.org/ITPGRe.pdf
www.ukabc.org/iu2.htm
UK AGRICULTURAL BIODIVERSITY COALITION
www.ukabc.org/
Primal Seeds
Primal Seeds exists as a network
to actively engage in protecting biodiversity
and creating local food security
It is a response to industrial biopiracy,
control of the global seed supply
and of our food
This evolving tool
is designed to empower individuals
to participate in the creation of tomorrow
www.primalseeds.org/
Top 10 Reasons to Shutter the WTO
News: Commercialism trumps human rights, democracy, the environment, and labor, while communities and developing nations get the shaft.
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
November 24, 1999
www.motherjones.com/news/fea...tc12.html
Some Hope
Terminator rejection - a victory for the people
Women of Via Campesina Protest Terminator at UN COP8 Terminator Moratorium Upheld!
CURITIBA, BRAZIL, March 24th - A broad coalition of peasant farmers, indigenous peoples and civil society today celebrate the firm rejection of efforts to undermine the global moratorium on Terminator technologies - genetically engineered sterile seeds - at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
www.banterminator.org/
If you are having trouble with any of the links, have suggestions for further recorces or would like to discuss any of these issues with me please drop me a line.
Much Love
Ross
