GM GIANT BIDS TO OWN THE WORLD'S FOOD

In the same week that researchers from the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project ( IRGSP completed a sequencing of the rice genome - the first crop plant to be sequenced - GM giant Syngenta filed 15 global patent applications to give the company control over them.

In essence the company is claiming it invented over 30,000 gene sequences of rice. If the corporation's application succeeds countries across the world will lose control over one of the grains that has been the basis for their diet for millennia.

Speaking in India, Dr Devinder Sharma, chairperson of the New Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, said that it would be: 'the beginning of a scientific apartheid, not only against India but for all third world countries', adding, 'in other words biological inheritance of the world's major food crop is now in the hands of a Swiss multinational'.

Furthermore, the company is also applying for patents on most of the other major crops in the world, ranging from wheat, corn, and rye to banana and soya beans. According to Syngenta, it has the right to do so because it claims the gene sequences are identical in these other crops as to those in rice.

The implications of these moves are that they would basically allow the company to set the price for anyone wishing to use seeds on any of the above crops (and many more).

According to Tina Goethe from environmental organisation Swissaid: With these patents Syngenta is claiming the work of breeders and farmers from the past centuries as the company's own invention.

The attempt to monopolise thousands of gene sequences from the most important crop plants in one rush is nothing less than a theft of common goods.' Ironically, 2005 has been the UN Year of Rice.

[The Ecologist October 2005 page 013]