By IPS Correspondents
PENANG, Malaysia, Oct 30 1995 (IPS)

Farmers and indigenous people in developing countries are now wide awake to the huge profits being reaped by transnational companies involved in ‘biopiracy’, and with the help of NGO activists, are finally fighting back.

The rearguard action could not have come a moment too soon.

Not only are these companies being granted patents for products and technologies that make use of the genetic materials of plants and other biological resources that have long been identified, developed and used by farmers and indigenous peoples, mainly in countries of the South.

But while the corporations stand to make huge revenues from this process, the local communities are unrewarded and in fact face the threat in future of having to buy the products of these companies at high prices.

Transnational corporations are racing one another to manufacture pharmaceutical and agricultural products, the main ingredients of which are the genetic materials of the medicinal plants and food crops of these local communities.

The firms are also collecting other living things, ranging from soil micro-organisms to animals and the genes of indigenous people, which they use for research and making new products.

There is much at stake in this great race of companies to patent ahead of their rivals, for the coming century is already being termed “the age of biology”, when products derived from biological materials are expected to increasingly replace those made from metals and chemicals.

The genes of living organisms are the basic “raw materials” of the new biotechnologies. The “Gene Rush” has thus become a new version of the old “Gold Rush”, in the scramble for future profits.

But while farmers and indigenous communities have in the past had their rights trampled on with no apparent avenue for recourse, they are today making their voices heard in the field and in the law courts.

In Washington in September, more than 200 organisations from 35 countries filed a petition at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office calling for the revocation of a patent given to a U.S. company to use a pesticide extract from the neem tree.

They argue that the company has wrongfully usurped an age-old biological process used by millions of farmers in India and other countries for generations.

In Brussels, a petition was filed in June at the European Patent Office against a patent it had granted for a method that extracts neem oil for use in controlling fungi on plants.

The opponents — the Indian scientists Vandana Shiva, an organic farmers’ group, and a member of the European Parliament — say that the patent was wrongly given as the claims for the technique lacked novelty and inventiveness.

They argue that the patented invention is not new as the patented method for extracting neem oil is a standard method used for many decades, whilst the anti-fungi effects of neem oil have been known in India for centuries and thus cannot be considered a “discovery” as claimed by the company.

Also, in March this year, the Swiss Supreme Court ruled that the manzana variety of the camomile plant may not be patented. It revoked the patent that the Swiss patent office had granted in 1988 to a German company. The case had been brought to court by a Swiss farmer Peter Lendi.

One month before, a petition filed by environmental group Greenpeace resulted in the European Patent Office withdrawing key parts of a patent granted to two companies for genetically engineered herbicide resistant plants.

In the field, campaigns have been launched by farmers, indigenous groups, religious leaders and NGOs against the patenting of life.

Farmers and NGOs from South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific who earlier this month attended a Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)-sponsored sub-regional meeting in preparation for next year’s U.N.-sponsored international conference on plant genetic resources, also expressed concern about patenting.

Such concerns were reflected in a package of recommendations to be presented for consideration in an overall global plan of action at the Fourth International Technical Conference on Plant Genetic Resources in Leipzig, Germany in June 1996.

The stakes are high. Last year, an Indian seeds company paid two million dollars to a U.S. agribusiness firm for two grammes of seed of a U.S. cotton variety patented by the seller who was initially demanding 10 million dollars.

A Thai activist present at the FAO meeting told of a Japanese pharmaceutical company making a highly successful anti-ulcer drug from an indigenous medicinal formula from his country.

“While the Japanese company makes a fortune, the Thai farmers who helped conserve and pass on that knowledge down the centuries, get nothing,” said Day-Cha Siripatra of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Technology for Rural and Ecological Enrichment (TREE).

Also, at the U.N. Women’s Conference in Beijing in September, 118 indigenous groups from 27 countries signed a declaration demanding “a stop to the patenting of all life forms” which is “the ultimate commodification of life which we hold sacred.”

In May 1995, leaders of 80 religious faiths and denominations (including the Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish faiths) held a joint press conference in Washington announcing their opposition to the patenting of genetically engineered animals and human genes, cells and organs.

“We believe that humans and animals are creations of God, not humans, and as such should not be patented as human inventions,” they said in a signed statement.

National and regional parliaments too have joined in the fight by opposing proposed laws that would legalise patents on life.

In March 1995, India’s Upper House forced the government to defer indefinitely a patent amendment bill to bring the Indian Patent Act in line with the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) treaty on intellectual property rights. The bill would have allowed for the patenting of life forms.

The WTO and the Biodiversity Convention are two critical fora that will set the principles and legal frameworks on the patenting of biological materials and life forms. The WTO’s trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) agreement will have the most decisive influence over national laws.

The thing is that TRIPS has ambiguous language in its clause on living organisms: patenting of micro-organisms is compulsory, plants and animals can be excluded, but protection of one kind or another is required for plant varieties.

This clause is up for review after four years, and is already on the agenda of the WTO’s trade and environment committee. The outcome of the review process will be of crucial importance.

The challenge for those campaigning against life patents is to ensure that the WTO does not make it compulsory for member countries to patent living organisms, and to develop within the Biodiversity Convention the case against bio-piracy and concrete measures to counter it.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
PENANG, Malaysia, Oct 30 1995 (IPS)

Farmers and indigenous people in developing countries are now wide awake to the huge profits being reaped by transnational companies involved in ‘biopiracy’, and with the help of NGO activists, are finally fighting back.

The rearguard action could not have come a moment too soon.

Not only are these companies being granted patents for products and technologies that make use of the genetic materials of plants and other biological resources that have long been identified, developed and used by farmers and indigenous peoples, mainly in countries of the South.

But while the corporations stand to make huge revenues from this process, the local communities are unrewarded and in fact face the threat in future of having to buy the products of these companies at high prices.

Transnational corporations are racing one another to manufacture pharmaceutical and agricultural products, the main ingredients of which are the genetic materials of the medicinal plants and food crops of these local communities.

The firms are also collecting other living things, ranging from soil micro-organisms to animals and the genes of indigenous people, which they use for research and making new products.

There is much at stake in this great race of companies to patent ahead of their rivals, for the coming century is already being termed “the age of biology”, when products derived from biological materials are expected to increasingly replace those made from metals and chemicals.

The genes of living organisms are the basic “raw materials” of the new biotechnologies. The “Gene Rush” has thus become a new version of the old “Gold Rush”, in the scramble for future profits.

But while farmers and indigenous communities have in the past had their rights trampled on with no apparent avenue for recourse, they are today making their voices heard in the field and in the law courts.

In Washington in September, more than 200 organisations from 35 countries filed a petition at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office calling for the revocation of a patent given to a U.S. company to use a pesticide extract from the neem tree.

They argue that the company has wrongfully usurped an age-old biological process used by millions of farmers in India and other countries for generations.

In Brussels, a petition was filed in June at the European Patent Office against a patent it had granted for a method that extracts neem oil for use in controlling fungi on plants.

The opponents — the Indian scientists Vandana Shiva, an organic farmers’ group, and a member of the European Parliament — say that the patent was wrongly given as the claims for the technique lacked novelty and inventiveness.

They argue that the patented invention is not new as the patented method for extracting neem oil is a standard method used for many decades, whilst the anti-fungi effects of neem oil have been known in India for centuries and thus cannot be considered a “discovery” as claimed by the company.

Also, in March this year, the Swiss Supreme Court ruled that the manzana variety of the camomile plant may not be patented. It revoked the patent that the Swiss patent office had granted in 1988 to a German company. The case had been brought to court by a Swiss farmer Peter Lendi.

One month before, a petition filed by environmental group Greenpeace resulted in the European Patent Office withdrawing key parts of a patent granted to two companies for genetically engineered herbicide resistant plants.

In the field, campaigns have been launched by farmers, indigenous groups, religious leaders and NGOs against the patenting of life.

Farmers and NGOs from South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific who earlier this month attended a Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)-sponsored sub-regional meeting in preparation for next year’s U.N.-sponsored international conference on plant genetic resources, also expressed concern about patenting.

Such concerns were reflected in a package of recommendations to be presented for consideration in an overall global plan of action at the Fourth International Technical Conference on Plant Genetic Resources in Leipzig, Germany in June 1996.

The stakes are high. Last year, an Indian seeds company paid two million dollars to a U.S. agribusiness firm for two grammes of seed of a U.S. cotton variety patented by the seller who was initially demanding 10 million dollars.

A Thai activist present at the FAO meeting told of a Japanese pharmaceutical company making a highly successful anti-ulcer drug from an indigenous medicinal formula from his country.

“While the Japanese company makes a fortune, the Thai farmers who helped conserve and pass on that knowledge down the centuries, get nothing,” said Day-Cha Siripatra of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Technology for Rural and Ecological Enrichment (TREE).

Also, at the U.N. Women’s Conference in Beijing in September, 118 indigenous groups from 27 countries signed a declaration demanding “a stop to the patenting of all life forms” which is “the ultimate commodification of life which we hold sacred.”

In May 1995, leaders of 80 religious faiths and denominations (including the Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish faiths) held a joint press conference in Washington announcing their opposition to the patenting of genetically engineered animals and human genes, cells and organs.

“We believe that humans and animals are creations of God, not humans, and as such should not be patented as human inventions,” they said in a signed statement.

National and regional parliaments too have joined in the fight by opposing proposed laws that would legalise patents on life.

In March 1995, India’s Upper House forced the government to defer indefinitely a patent amendment bill to bring the Indian Patent Act in line with the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) treaty on intellectual property rights. The bill would have allowed for the patenting of life forms.

The WTO and the Biodiversity Convention are two critical fora that will set the principles and legal frameworks on the patenting of biological materials and life forms. The WTO’s trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) agreement will have the most decisive influence over national laws.

The thing is that TRIPS has ambiguous language in its clause on living organisms: patenting of micro-organisms is compulsory, plants and animals can be excluded, but protection of one kind or another is required for plant varieties.

This clause is up for review after four years, and is already on the agenda of the WTO’s trade and environment committee. The outcome of the review process will be of crucial importance.

The challenge for those campaigning against life patents is to ensure that the WTO does not make it compulsory for member countries to patent living organisms, and to develop within the Biodiversity Convention the case against bio-piracy and concrete measures to counter it.

Excerpt: