Consequences of the EU patent directive

Information by the GAIA foundation

By allowing patents on living material, the EU Life Patent Directive will in fact stimulate the following:

1. Commercialisation of Life: a commodity to profit from at all costs

Commercial monopoly rights, through patents, on living material (genes, cells, animals, plants, human and animal body parts etc.), is fundamentally immoral, undemocratic and unnecessary. It blocks society's access to the essential elements of its food and medicine and makes people beholden to corporations for their basic needs. It turns life into a commodity from which profits can be made.

2. Legalisation of Biopiracy

The EU Life Patent Directive will legalise Biopiracy: the appropriation of biological materials and knowledge developed over millennia by local communities, especially in developing countries, where most of this "green gold" remains. This is done by distorting the definition of "invention" to become "discovery", so that industry can claim patents on living material. This is how patents such as the umbilical cord blood cell and traditional Indian spices like cumin and turmeric have been claimed.

This opens up a whole new area of resources over which corporations wish to gain control and profit, a new frontier of colonisation: the genetic structure of biological diversity and associated traditional knowledge inherited by local and indigenous communities.

3. Promotion of Genetic Engineering

Patents on Life gives a direct incentive to genetic engineering, which would not be developed so aggressively if the "raw materials" (genes, cells, body parts), which engineers wish to mix and match, could not be monopolised. Private rights over this material blocks the development of other products which would compete in the market, thereby enables the biotech industry to obtain a market monopoly for their products. It undermines one of its own sacred tenets - that the free market economy promotes choice and fair price through competition.

Those who wish to stop genetically engineered food being dumped on us should be alerted: If we allow the EU Life Patent Directive through, it will make it impossible to stop genetically engineered foods from flooding the market and squeezing organic and other options out.

4. Holding Life to Ransom: Destroying the Biological Diversity Base of food security, diverse livelihood systems and healthy food and medicine

The EU Life Patent Directive is being used to secure market monopolies in Europe, so that the biotech industry is assured of an expanding market for its new genetically engineered experiments. Hence the bitter struggle to force the rebellious European consumers to accept engineered foods. This in turn means extending the area of monocultural production of engineered crops, especially in the South, with all the unknown dangers of genetic pollution, genetic erosion and food insecurity. Southern Farmers will be even more rapidly turned from producers of food for people into corporate contractors, producing crops for commodity markets. This will mean less food in local markets, so that even if people have cash there will be no food to buy. Similarly, diverse medical systems are already being pirated by the privatisation of medicines and cures, like neem and turmeric. As with farmers, these are manipulated and then sold back at exorbitant, uncompetitive prices to the providers of the source material and knowledge.

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Declaration for the Dignity of Life and the Public Good: Stop the EU Life Patent Directive.

To: European Parliamentarians April 1998

... We reject patents (private monopoly rights) on living material (genes, cells, plants, animals, human body parts), because they are unethical, undemocratic and unnecessary.

... We witness how corporations are distorting the original idea of patents by using them to pirate and take possession of society's collective biological and cultural heritage. Recent examples demonstrate how patents stimulate biopiracy, not innovation, as corporations claim patents on: the blood cells of the umbilical cord, Basmati rice, quinoa (a nutritious grain from the Andes developed by indigenous people), ayahuasca (indigenous sacred plant from Amazonia) .... and much more.

... We witness how corporations are using patents on life to gain private rights over the ingredients of society's food and medicine. Patents on life block democratic access and control of society's basic needs; they block the development of other products; and they create market monopolies which squeeze out other development options. Patents therefore make society dependent on corporations for their food and medicine.

... We witness how patents on life are driven by the biotech industry's desire to claim private rights on the living materials it wishes to manipulate. Patents on Life therefore stimulate genetic engineering, which is an untested, unpredictable and potentially dangerous new technology. The public are having this experiment imposed on them, and are forced to take all the risks of a technology which they are already resisting.

... We witness the shameless intentions of the corporations to increase profit at all costs, illustrated by one of the latest patents on the genetically engineered "Terminator Technology", which stops plants from reproducing themselves. By sterilising the seeds of our food and medicine, the corporations violate the essence of life - its capacity to reproduce. This is a blatant abuse of the new technology.

... We witness how life forms and their parts are being degraded into commodities, to be manipulated into products, out of which profit can be maximised, no matter how much suffering is caused. This is the ultimate violation of life, dignity and our own humanity.

... We call on our European Parliamentarians and Governments to reclaim their mandate to protect the larger public good against these abuses of power, increasingly evident in this era of Corporate Globilisation.

We, as your electorate, call on you to:

1. Reject the European Life Patent Directive, as Holland, Italy, parts of Belgium and Austria and the European public are already doing.

2. Support a Moratorium on Life Patents, as the Agricultural Research Centres (CGIAR) have already done.

3. Facilitate the establishment of an Independent Commission of Inquiry into Life Patents, with full public participation, to assess the implication of life patents fro society and nature, and to prepare for the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Review in 1999.

4. Assist in Developing a Public Consultative Process to Redraft a European Biotech Directive, with all the stakeholders in society fully informed and involved.

5. Affirm that the Human Rights Convention, the Convention on Biological Diversity and other agreements, to protect the integrity of life, should always take precedence over trade related interests.

Signed by:

April 1998

The Gaia Foundation Tel: 44 171 435 5000 Fax: 44 171 431 0551