India Sues Monsanto for . . . Biopiracy?

http://www.skepticblog.org/2011/12/29/india-sues-monsanto-for-biopiracy/

by tokenadult • 15 years ago

67 42 15 years ago

lucisferre4• 15 years ago

Wow the bias inherent in the authors support of GMO (and Monsanto) is dripping. I mean, at least he's honest about it, but it's hard to keep reading after the first paragraph or so.

Here is a different bias.

GMO is like a magic word processor that outputs instantly DRM'd books which then can go out and make all the other books on the same shelf the property of the author too, which you now have to pay him for.

tokenadult• 15 years ago

I'm curious to hear what other biological scientists in India and government officials and NGO officials in India who deal with food policy have to say about the issue.

cturner• 15 years ago

    > GMO is like a magic word processor that outputs
    > instantly DRM'd books [..]

It doesn't need to be like that though. GMO exists without IP law. The two concepts are not inherently tied.

lucisferre4• 15 years ago

Yeah I was being somewhat intentionally hyperbolic. There isn't (or shouldn't) be any difference between the challenges currently inherent in software IP and "bio IP". However right now all the players in bio IP are huge and fairly clumsy (though that's changing I hear, with bootstrapper generic engineering labs starting to appear) it is kind of remenisicent of the SCO lawsuit days in some ways.

However on the subject of litigious entities Monsanto certainly dishes out far more than they get. Just do a google search for "Monsanto sues" to see what I mean.

Edit: Err down voted for admitting hyperbole, really?

fleitz• 15 years ago

If you read the details of that particular case it's a lot more complex. GMO isn't like that because there are lots of genetically modified organisms that come with out licensing agreements.

One farmer in particular decided to see if he could use normal plants to reproduce Monsanto seed which he succeded in and then got sued because its a violation of the agreement he agreed to. The neighboring farmer bs is just a smokescreen.

All the food we eat is GMO because the genome of a plant naturally changes, now we just do GMO efficiently. Yes, there are risks, but natural GMO could produce a terminator gene as well. As much as I don't mind GMO I'm fully in support of labeling, especially the idea that those that don't use GMO can label as such.

ajays• 15 years ago

The neighboring farmer bs is just a smokescreen.

Says who? Why don't you do some research before calling something BS? Read this account: http://www.percyschmeiser.com/

Monsanto is trying to control nature. Bees don't care if they're picking up pollen from a "Monsanto Licensee" ! Why should the recipient of the pollen be held liable?

loceng• 15 years ago

The true issue which is ignored is that diversity in crops must be maintained. Monsanto wouldn't want this to be a topic though because that would be contrary to their goals; Diversity means hundreads if not thousands of variations in neighbouring crops, not just one or a few. If society supports the smaller farmers, in case their crop is hit that year, then they can survive financially / pay bills. This is in fact the safest way to do it.

JosephHatfield• 15 years ago

Monsanto has been suing farmers for years over alleged theft of GMO--it's nice to see them sued in return. I get the impression Monsanto's legal team is as over-reaching as that of the RIAA.

ahelwer• 15 years ago

I am involved in the agricultural community, and this sort of crowdsourced assertion has been bouncing around in the internet echo chamber for years. It started with Percy Schmeiser:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeis...

You can read that yourself and draw your own conclusions (hint: you can't seed upwards of 90% of your field by driving past it with a truck). This has since then snowballed into the story of Monsanto employing a vast legal team to oppress the poor 'simple farmers'. This is patronizing - farmers (outside of communities that explicitly shun technology) are generally a very well-informed and technologically adept crowd, well used to hacking together electronics packages to make their lives easier (a cool example http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1254445743). The whole motherhood and apple pie callback to the days of yore definitely doesn't hurt the message though, so it stays around.

Anyway, take a look at the material on both sides of this topic.

gerggerg• 15 years ago

"Compared to old-school, trial-and-error cross pollination, GMO is like using a word processor instead of a manual typewriter."

I think that one shitty analogy holds everything the author is trying to convey. And it's the same lack of reason and actual argument with a blind approval of technology that any biochem company would love to fill your ears with.

cmdrreiki3• 15 years ago

Article seems very confident that farmers will be more able to afford bt brinjal more than they can currently afford pesticides. Where is the evidence this skeptic has presented that argues that Monsanto is interested in reducing its profit streams from Indian farming? Once granted a monopoly on bt brinjal, no corporation would voluntarily reduce its revenues rather than increase the price of bt brinjal. Farmer debt incurred from Monsanto-style agriculture is causing incredible rates of suicide across India, and Monsanto has a legal obligation to its shareholders to keep it that way.

harrisreynolds• 15 years ago

Monsanto as a company makes me sick. Their treatment of farmers that choose not to use their seeds is an abomination. It's like me getting sued for software piracy b/c the guy sitting next to me is using pirated software and the wind is blowing in my direction. #reform-patent-laws-please

masklinn• 15 years ago

> Their treatment of farmers that choose not to use their seeds is an abomination.

And so's their treatment of farmers who do choose to use their seeds, and their treatment of populations close to farming communities, as well as their treatment of... well pretty much everybody once you get down to it[0].

[0] example: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto...

randomdata• 15 years ago

"And so's their treatment of farmers who do choose to use their seeds"

I grow some RR crops and am not sure what you are referring to here. For the most part, farmers weren't reusing their seeds to begin with. The people in the business of genetics do a much better job, which helps keep the farm profitable.

On my farm, in the last couple of years, we have moved to growing entirely RR-free soybeans because a market has opened for soybeans free of the gene, but it limited to few Asian markets that our local distribution network has been able to capture.

With all the complaints about Monsanto in America, I find it interesting that the North American market by and large still demands RR-present commodities. Farmers are left to fill that demand, whether they like Monsanto or not.

trotsky• 15 years ago

I don't disagree with Dunning per se, but he misses or intentionally steps around some significant issues.

The big rise of GM corn in the US was due a gene that made feed corn resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, which they are the primary world producer of. This has actually increased herbicide use significantly in both corn and soya crop where round-up ready is being planted, because now you can over spray without worry. The gene is patented and requires an IP license for each plant grown that comes bundled with the official seed.

This changes the farm dynamic considerably, as farmers who traditionally saved seeds for next years crop are now increasingly dependent on a single company and their IP portfolio. While the production gains and reduced labor costs are substantial, this has been tempered by seed license costs that have risen much faster than inflation.

At some point having too much of your food supply under the control of one corporation is a national security issue. If trends continue to the point that little other seed is being produced Monsanto could exert extreme pricing pressure or worse as production needs to be planned in advance.

This is probably not too big an issue in the US where they could simply be nationalized if things got out of hand, but what about India? What leverage would they have if one or two foreign companies controlled a large majority of their seed stock? Once farming evolves it's very difficult to go back, you aren't planting as many hectares and you have fewer trained workers and you're no longer producing the pesticides you need. But if they ignored the patent they'd definitely face WTO sanctions and be unable to find buyers for exports.

This is where the current fight comes in and gets rather misrepresented. The case isn't that they stole an Indian eggplant but that they imported the patented gene without approval from the recently created regulatory body. Obviously some amount of regulation is required there, as a sovereign state can't just have anybody walking in and splicing anything they feel like into sustenance crops. What if some huge chinese pharmaceutical company imported a drug into the US without any FDA approval and announced their intention to start human trials. Is there any doubt the government would quickly get an injunction against them?

He paints it as greedy bureaucrats wanting a handout and that certainly could be the case. But where the fight got started was over GM cotton that at the time was unregulated. It's such a good crop that farmers were switching very quickly and the government became concerned they wouldn't have any bargaining power left soon. So there were price controls a new regulatory body a sales ban and more price controls and yet they did lose control of the cotton crop without gaining any significant concessions.

That's all this probably comes down to - using any legal strategy to delay things until Monsanto is willing to agree to some concessions. Traditional price controls or progressive tariffs can have some pretty nasty consequences, so Monsanto has good reason to not like them. I'm not sure anyone knows the best way structure some protections, but it's clearly in their national interest to make sure they're covered. Monsanto could probably end this right now without any money changing hands by offering India a royalty free license they could use as a stick to keep the pricing at sustainable levels. As usual it turns out everyone's greedy.

akozak• 15 years ago

I'm no expert, but from the post:

"But Indian scientists are less thrilled. Govindarajan Padmanabhan from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore:

Our national labs have all the genes for rice improvement, we do not need Monsanto. The moratorium will actually affect the indigenous effort [to create GM crops that could feed India's rapidly growing population]."

EDIT: Eggplant, rice, what's the difference anyway?

jcampbell1• 15 years ago

> What leverage would they have if one or two foreign companies controlled a large majority of their seed stock?

India has in the past allowed infringement of patented HIV drugs. Why wouldn't India allow infringement of seed company patents in a crisis? The whole thing falls down as soon as farmers are told it is okay to break the "pledge".

Roboprog2• 15 years ago

Monsanto is large. They (like many other Fortune 500) can use the US Government to exert much pressure on India to pay the IP tribute for using forbidden seeds as well as accidentally cross-pollenated varieties (assuming they are viable). (why maintain a crypto-fascist empire if you're not going to use it?)

OTOH, India isn't Iraq (et al): they might respond with a big, nuclear-backed, "F* YOU!", and get away by infringing like you said.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Owing your seeds to a company is a bad thing, though.

India Sues Monsanto for . . . Biopiracy?

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