Protests grow on global assault on seed sovereignty
From Asia to South
America, the EU to the Caribbean, the seed industry is using
international trade agreements to criminalise farmers for saving seeds.
by Dr Eva Sirinathsinghji
The multinational seed industry is continuing its multipronged attack
on the most basic of human rights, the access to seed. Lobbyists of the
seed industry are using trade agreements to pressure nations into
adopting strict measures such as UPOV agreements that ensure the
protection and ownership of new plant varieties for plant breeders. On
top of this, corporate seed industry lobbyists are proposing revisions
to the UPOV convention that promote further monopolisation of the seed
industry through 'harmonisation' of procedures for registering and
testing new plant varieties.
Protests in many regions around the world are putting up much needed
resistance against this corporate takeover of the food system,
successfully forcing governments to delay and even repeal the
agreements. These movements are an inspiration for our continual global
struggle against the relentless onslaught of agribusiness whose current
biggest targets are the 'untapped' markets of the global South, with the
spotlight on Africa and other regions where seeds have not yet been
commercialized, and are still used in traditional systems that allow
seed saving and exchange.
UPOV
The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants
or UPOV is a Geneva-based intergovernmental union so far of around 70
countries that accept common rules for recognizing and protecting the
ownership of new plant varieties by plant breeders. First established in
1961, the convention entered into force in 1968 and was revised in 1972,
1978 and 1991. The latest version, UPOV-91 significantly increases the
protection of plant breeders, handing over monopoly of seed rights, and
even making it illegal for the farmer to save and exchange seeds for
replanting.
Harmonisation
UPOV builds on the World Trade Organisation's agreement on
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) that was
adopted in 1994 as the first international treaty to establish global
standards for intellectual property rights over seeds. This has allowed
corporations to force the "harmonisation" of patent laws across
countries, ostensibly to create a unified global intellectual property
regime with minimum standards and establish a dispute settle system to
ensure its application and compliance.
Today all member countries are part of the 1978 or 1991 Act.
Back in 1998, there were only 37 countries in UPOV, the majority
industrialised. With recent international trade agreements however, the
global South have been pressured to join, being told that intellectual
property protection benefits the biotechnology industry and hence the
national economy as well as food security. These claims are unfounded,
and in fact untrue; UPOV works to increase the profit of multinational
corporations in the North, and is proving to be a threat to food
security especially for people in the South.
In the 88th meeting of the Consultative Committee (CC) of UPOV on 15
October 2014 in Geneva, lobby organisations representing the corporate
seed industry pushed for further 'harmonisation' of the UPOV plant
breeders system. Their proposals include an international filing system,
a UPOV quality assurance program and a central examination system for
variety denominations, disguised as an "international system of
cooperation" that would actually provide further protection to breeders
with regards to filing and examination of new varieties in destination
countries. In reality, these changes would increase patenting and
biopiracy by commercial plant breeders, while placing the costs of the
new system on individual nations and not the corporations
commercialising the seed variety.
The International Seed Federation, the International Community of
Breeders of Asexually Ornamental Fruit Plants (CIOPORA) and CropLife
International, represent corporations that include Monsanto,
DowAgroSciences, Syngenta, Bayer, and DuPont Pioneer, which together
already control 75 percent of private sector plant breeding research and
60 percent of the commercial seed market. The new proposals would
further increase the monopoly. T
hese pro-industry organisations proposed an international filing
system of cooperation (IFC) for registering a plant variety that would
use a single application form in the language of choice of the breeder
and submitted to the destination country for planting the seeds. The IFC
would then be involved in distributing processed applications to target
countries. This, they suggested would result in more applications by
breeders for more crops, in more regions and countries. One of the most
dangerous aspects of the proposals is that such applications would be
confidential with regards to the pedigree and parental lines of hybrids,
thereby greatly facilitating biopiracy.
Examination
A preliminary review of the IFC would be sent to the destination
country for DUS (Distinct, Uniform and Stable) testing, all at the
expense of the destination country, which the lobbyists proposed, should
take place in centralised "centres of excellence" that would need to be
developed.
Breeders would send plant materials and fees for DUS testing to the
centres of their choice, likely leaving governments without access to
the plant material.
The industry lobbyists further propose that the IFC should force UPOV
member countries to implement these procedures themselves.
These changes will compromise the right of UPOV member states to
control the processing and examination of plant variety protection
applications, and hence their national right to control their own food
system in accordance with local climactic and ecological conditions that
can decide the success or failure of a crop.
The proposed changes, such as the potential to increase the number of
crop varieties, do not necessarily translate to lower food prices or
higher food production. It does however impact small-scale farmers who
rely on informal seed saving and swapping systems, a common practice in
most developing nations, pushing up the price of seed and affecting
livelihoods and food access in the process.
- Third World Network Features
|