EU Patent Office Approves Terminator

cooperation of the US Department of Agriculture in Delta & Pine Land's Terminator research.s

EU Patent Office Approves Terminator In the intervening seven years since the first attempt by Monsanto to acquire Delta & Pine Land and its global Terminator patent rights, D&PL had not been idle. It had aggressively and successfully extended its patent rights on GURTs. In October 2005 Delta & Pine Land together with the US Department of Agriculture won a major new patent on its Terminator technology from the European Union's European Patent Office, Patent no. EP775212B. The patent would cover all 25 nations in the European Union from Germany to Poland and Italy to France, some of the world's most abundant food-producing regions.

Several days later D&PL and the US Government also secured patent protection for its Terminator technology in Canada under CA 2196410. The advance of Terminator technology to global commercialization had hardly ceased despite the de facto worldwide UN ban imposed years before.6

The advent of GMO patented seeds on a commercial scale in the early 1990's had allowed companies like Monsanto, DuPont and Dow AgroSciences to go from supplying agriculture chemical herbicides like Roundup, to patenting genetically altered seeds for basic farm crops like corn, rice, soybeans or wheat. For almost a quarter century, since 1983, the US Government had quietly been working to perfect a genetically engineered technique whereby farmers would be forced to turn to their seed supplier each harvest to get new seeds.

At the Fourth Meeting of the Working Group of the international Convention on Biological Diversity of the United Nations Environment Program in Granada in January 2006, a group of indigenous farmers from Peru filed a submission on their concerns over possible introduction of Terminator seed technology:

As traditional indigenous farmers we are united to defend our livelihoods which are dependant on seeds obtained from the harvest as

a principal source of seed to be used in subsequent agricultural cycles. This tradition of seed conservation underpins Andean and Amazonian biodiversity and livelihood strategies, the traditional knowledge and innovation systems customarily administered by indigenous women who have made such biodiversity and livelihood strategies possible and indigenous cultural and spiritual values that honor fertility and continuity of life.

Their petition to ban Terminator internationally argued several points cogently. Perhaps the most important was that on the danger to the biological diversity of hundreds of varieties of plants and crops. They argued:

Andean and Amazonian biodiversity, both domesticated and wild, is put at risk for contamination through gene flow from Terminator crops, and, as Terminator seeds would not be lOO% sterile in the second generation, this risk is great. Indigenous farmers who save the seeds of contaminated varieties for replanting may find that a percentage of their seeds do not germinate, potentially translating into significant yield losses. Such contamination could cause farmers to lose trust in their own seed stock, turn their backs on traditional varieties, and increasingly depend on the purchase of Terminator varieties for harvest security so that they can guarantee at least one germination period. Similarly, the introduction of foreign genes into uncultivated varieties through gene flow from Terminator could irreversibly alter the wild varieties on which indigenous peoples have traditionally depended for important medicines and food. As a center of origin for potatoes, Peru is home to over 2,000 varieties of potatoes and is considered one of twelve megadiverse countries where 70% of the world's biodiversity resides. Biodiversity forms the basis of global food security and sovereignty for peoples and communities around the world. The spread of Terminator to indigenous agricultural systems in Peru could force indigenous farmers to abandon their traditional role as stewards of biodiversity and in doing so threaten current and future global food security. Considering that Terminator patents on potatoes have recently been claimed (Syrgenta, US Patent 6,700,039, March, 2004), the introduction of GURTs to Peru presents a high risk for irreparable contamination of this center of origin of potato?

The Peruvian farmers also stressed that Terminator threatened traditional exchange of knowledge and invaluable experience among farmers:

Traditional knowledge and innovation systems of Andean and Amawnian indigenous peoples are built around seed saving and seed exchange between plant breeders, particularly as evidenced by the extensive crop and seed exchanges at the popular weekly barter markets in the communities of Qachin, Choquecancha, Lares and Wakawasi in the district of Lares. Terminator technology would have a concrete impact on these knowledge systems by jeopardizing the availability of fertile seeds for collective exchange and breeding. As a consequence of Terminator ,the very processes of adaptive interaction between man and the climatically complex Andean and Amawnian ecosystems which has allowed for the evolution and current vitality of a highly specialized body of indigenous knowledge would be paralyzed.s

In fact, GURTs, more popularly referred to as Terminator seeds, were also a threat to the food security of North America, Western Europe, Japan and anywhere Monsanto and its elite cartel of GMO agribusiness partners entered a market.9 What few were aware of, however, was that the proliferation of deadly Terminator seeds might have already inadvertently been released as a result of a natural disaster.

In August 2005, two of Delta & Pine Land's greenhouses were destroyed and eleven others were damaged by a tornado. Delta & Pine Land was testing Terminator seeds in greenhouses. The company declined to inform the public whether there were Terminator tests in the houses that were destroyed or what bio-safety risks, if any, might be posed. The event showed that even seemingly secure physical containment was vulnerable. It also may have unleashed a Terminator pollution plague on the world. That would take years to determine.1O

Selling Seeds of Destruction Everywhere The Terminator deal closed the circle for Monsanto to emerge as the overwhelming monopolist of agricultural seeds of nearly every