BIOTECHNOLOGY-EUROPE: Parliament Clears ‘Biopiracy’ Directive

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Niccolo Sarno

BRUSSELS, May 13 1998 (IPS) - The European Parliament has controversially endorsed a directive that makes it legally possible to patent life forms and their genetic material under European law.

The approval, given Thursday, could clear the way for European multinationals to patent varieties of indigenous plants and seeds for private profit — but endangering livelihoods in developing countries, especially those of its farmers.

“The European parliament clearly placed commercial interests over ethical values,” said Magda Aelvoet, co-president of the parliament’s Green group.

“‘Biopiracy’, the unauthorised patenting of genetic resources taken from developing countries by mighty Western multinationals and institutions will not be stopped,” she said.

“Europe effectively has said it will not make firm commitments to help developing countries protect their own resources,” said Steve Emmott, who covers genetic engineering issues for the Green group.

The parliaments of the 15 member states of the European Union must now be called on to similarly approve the directive, drafted by the EU executive Commission to harmonise the bloc’s different national rules on ‘life patenting’. It will also bring the EU in line with the U.S. and Japan, who already have such legal rights.

Under the directive, bioengineers could carry out minor genetic alterations to plants used in traditional medicine in the South, claim it as a original ‘invention’, and patent the plant itself for profitable exploitation in the North.

The NGO Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN) says that farmers now freely using seeds could be expected to seek permission and pay royalties in the future if the genetic makeup of the seed they use is later patented.

“Many examples already exist where companies take local varieties from these farmers and patent them and their genetic contents without innovation. The directive negates the rights of the ‘original breeders’ from the South,” claims GRAIN.

The definition of invention has been further stretched to cover the patenting of ‘discoveries’. Representatives of the country from which the source plant originally came from will have to challenge these claims in courts of law.

Such ‘patents on life’ are already legal in the United States and in Japan, where the gene or sequence of genes patented become the ‘intellectual property’ of the researcher, institution or a private company which ‘discovered’ it.

An European parliamentarian said the efforts of the biotech companies to see EU law brought up to U.S. and Japanese standards was “the largest industrial lobbying campaign in the Parliament’s history”.

The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), which represents large pharmaceutical companies such as Rhone-Poulenc, Pfizer and Glaxo Wellcome, says that their members suffer “systematic disadvantage” as a result of the U.S. and Japanese edge.

EFPIA also says the directive is balanced and does not conflict with the 1992 Rio Biodiversity Convention, signed by all the EU member states. The convention explicitly requires signatories to ensure that patent systems protect the historic rights of use of traditional farmers.

But the Green group sees it in a different way: “We believe the directive is in conflict with the (Rio) Convention on Biological Diversity and existing patent treaties, and we are considering which legal action can be taken,” Emmott told IPS.

A group of patient self-support groups and charities, united under the umbrella of the European Campaign on Biotechnology Patents (ECOBP), have publicly expressed concern or opposition in one way or another about the intention to make human genes patenta ble.

ECOBP says that an amendment which had been deleted from the directive by the EU’s ruling Council of Ministers before Thursday’s vote could have minimised the negative effects of the directive.

Amendment 76, which contained ‘anti-biopiracy provisions’, called for evidence of compliance with legal access and export provisions where animals and plants are used, giving some practical effect to the legal obligations of the Convention on Biological

Diversity.

But the EU’s executive Commission has been pressing on with the directive without the amendment, in order to harmonise policy with Japan and the U.S. and secure the bloc’s own biotech industry. The Commission also says that the existing laws have to be h armonised at the pan-European level to guarantee a single market in biotechnological products.

If the biotechnology industry’s turnover growth follows present trends, it will hit 160 billion dollars in the year 2005, creating more a million jobs, European commissioner for agriculture Franz Fischler said recently.

“After 10 years of so-called debate, you would expect us to have produced a near-perfect piece of legislation,” said Aelvoet.

“The fact that so many sectors of civil society are still angrily protesting about this directive is evidence of just how far the system has failed.”