Wheat Biopiracy The Real Issues the Government is Avoiding

Vandana Shiva is spot on again.
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original-zmag

November 16, 2007

Wheat Biopiracy The Real Issues the Government is Avoiding

By Vandana Shiva

The epidemic of biopiracy is an assault on our living heritage of biodiversity and cumulative innovation embodied in the traditional knowledge of agriculture and medicine. In the long run, it determines livelihoods and economic sovereignty because what is commonly available becomes an ?intellectual property? of a company for which royalty must be paid.

It is the governments duty to protect the resources and heritage of the country and prevent its usurpation by foreign interests and commercial corporations. The governments affidavit is in effect arguing that the government will allow the theft of our heritage and the public good that belongs to the Indian people.

The moment a patent is taken on plants and seeds derived from Indian biological resources, biopiracy have occurred. Challenging and stopping such biopiracy is the duty of government. The governments repeated failure to legally challenge biopiracy has forced the petitioner to take up such challenges on behalf of the Indian people, and to protect the public interest and the national interest.

Biopiracy refers to the use of intellectual property systems to legitimize the exclusive ownership and control over biological resource and biological products and processes that have been used over centuries in non-industrialized cultures. Patent claims over biodiversity and indigenous knowledge that are based on the innovation, creativity and genius of the people of the Third World are acts of ?biopiracy?. Since a ?patent? is given for invention, a biopiracy patent denies the innovation embodied in indigenous knowledge. The rush to grant patents and reward invention has led corporations and governments in the industrialized world to ignore the centuries of cumulative, collective innovation of generations of rural communities.

A patent is an exclusive right to make, sell and distribute the patented product. Patents on biodiversity imply that corporations who own patents get exclusive rights to the production and distribution of seeds, livestock and medicine. This establishes monopolies on food and health, makes it illegal for farmers to save and exchange seed, and prevents decentralized, pluralistic economies for the production of food and medicine. It also encourages ?Biopiracy? or theft of our indigenous knowledge.

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complete article here

This equates to we (Bechtel and a French firm) taking the water of the people of Bolivia?

This is ownership of the people - serfdom with corporate kings doling out when they feel like it?

Who said they could?

What do these corporations call this?

Besides theft of God's gift to man? The creator's gift to man? Mother earth's gift to women?

Cuz' while they might not trade oil for dollars, they bloody well will for food and drink...

And in the meantime trade in some drugs with profits for a few - using CIA aircraft? or the aircraft of some CIA friends/fronts? And trade in the secrets, technology, and parts and pieces of our wmd type inventions and weapons (to leaders who are our friends today and possibly enemies tomorrow)?