Post by bunkie on Feb 26, 2014 12:31:56 GMT -5
Biopiracy of Turkey’s purple carrot
seedfreedom.in/biopiracy-of-turkeys-purple-carrot/
.....How did Monsanto subsidiary Seminis, then, go back to a purple carrot if plant breeders haven’t paid much attention to them in 300 years? A program of intense plant breeding? No. Genetic engineering? No.
To bring a purple carrot to market, Seminis went to a part of the world where coloured carrots never stopped being cultivated – in this case, southern Turkey – and purchased some farmers’ seed.
After a simple process of selection, the company called this carrot its own, and has obtained plant variety rights (PVR) over it in both the United States (US PVPA Certificate 200400327) and Europe (European Union CPVO Certificate 20050779).
The US plant variety protection certificate shows how little innovation is necessary to appropriate somebody else’s seed under PVR laws.
The certificate reads: “During November 1999, a former Seminis representative, Mr. John Wester, purchased seeds of a landrace [farmer's variety], open-pollinated carrot variety at a farmers’ market in Adana, Turkey. He then sent this seed to the Seminis carrot breeder… The seed container … did not have a name on the package, so it was named ‘Turkey Black Carrot’…”
Then, as if embarrassed by its own claim, the company justified shopping for its intellectual property at farmers’ markets, describing the seed collection thus: “It is worth noting that this type of collection activity is similar to the ongoing activities of the USDA and any other seed collection conservatory where wild sources of germplasm are collected from remote isolated areas, as they can provide all kinds of new and exciting diversity.”
All kinds of new and exciting diversity, but in the Seminis case, it is not for conservation, but for intellectual property claims and profits.
(In the interest of accuracy, Seminis is not correct to suggest that Adana, a city with more than 1.5 million inhabitants at the centre of an agricultural heartland, is a “remote isolated area”.)....
seedfreedom.in/biopiracy-of-turkeys-purple-carrot/
.....How did Monsanto subsidiary Seminis, then, go back to a purple carrot if plant breeders haven’t paid much attention to them in 300 years? A program of intense plant breeding? No. Genetic engineering? No.
To bring a purple carrot to market, Seminis went to a part of the world where coloured carrots never stopped being cultivated – in this case, southern Turkey – and purchased some farmers’ seed.
After a simple process of selection, the company called this carrot its own, and has obtained plant variety rights (PVR) over it in both the United States (US PVPA Certificate 200400327) and Europe (European Union CPVO Certificate 20050779).
The US plant variety protection certificate shows how little innovation is necessary to appropriate somebody else’s seed under PVR laws.
The certificate reads: “During November 1999, a former Seminis representative, Mr. John Wester, purchased seeds of a landrace [farmer's variety], open-pollinated carrot variety at a farmers’ market in Adana, Turkey. He then sent this seed to the Seminis carrot breeder… The seed container … did not have a name on the package, so it was named ‘Turkey Black Carrot’…”
Then, as if embarrassed by its own claim, the company justified shopping for its intellectual property at farmers’ markets, describing the seed collection thus: “It is worth noting that this type of collection activity is similar to the ongoing activities of the USDA and any other seed collection conservatory where wild sources of germplasm are collected from remote isolated areas, as they can provide all kinds of new and exciting diversity.”
All kinds of new and exciting diversity, but in the Seminis case, it is not for conservation, but for intellectual property claims and profits.
(In the interest of accuracy, Seminis is not correct to suggest that Adana, a city with more than 1.5 million inhabitants at the centre of an agricultural heartland, is a “remote isolated area”.)....