[asia-apec 526] pnf38-3

[Roberto Verzola]

I would like to share with others the story below by the Philippine
News and Features (pnf at phil.gn.apc.org). This hopefully also serves as
a reminder that genetic information -- its manipulation and
commercialization -- is also part of ICT (Bill Gates has biotech
investments, by the way).

Genetic engineering is an important aspect of the fundamental change
the U.S. economy is undergoing, from an industrial to an information
economy. Intellectual property rights (IPR) are the dominant form of
control/ownership in such an economy under capitalism.

Obet Verzola
---------------------------
             FARMERS, STUDENTS PROTEST LIFE FORM PATENTING

    KABANKALAN CITY (PNF) --  Still reeling from the year-long devastation 
by El Nin~o's dry spell, about 10,000 farmers, students, religious and others 
marched through the streets  of this new city south of Negros Occidental.  
They reject a disaster-in-the-making for Filipino farmers - the patenting of 
life forms.

    The patent system, proposed in 1995 through the World Trade Organization 
(WTO) agreement on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights 
(TRIPS), gives global corporations the right to claim monopoly ownership 
over plant and animal lives, says a statement of the farmers' organizations 
read at the rally.  The statement, titled "No to life patents!," is being 
circulated for signing throughout Asia.

    The statement says local farmer-breeders will be obliged to pay 
royalties on every generation of plants and livestock they buy and 
reproduce. They will cease to have free access to seeds for developing new 
varieties of plants and animals.  

    Consumers, the statement adds,  will likely end up paying higher prices 
for food, medicines, seeds and other products of modern biotechnology.
   
    The rally was to be the start of what organizers said will be a 
nationwide campaign.  The goal is to inform the people of the ill-effects of 
patenting life forms, particularly of plant varieties as stipulated in 
Article 27.3 of the TRIPS.  One of the most contested provisions in the 
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), TRIPS will be reviewed by WTO 
members in 1999. 

    "We are doing this to send a strong signal to our government that the 
people do not want patents on all life forms, to oppose biopiracy and to 
urge the government negotiators to take a strong stand in the coming TRIPS 
re-negotiations," said Max Oyos, local rally coordinator.

    Representatives of farmer, scientist and consumer groups and federations 
from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao joined the rally, organized by MAPISAN, an 
alliance of 12 farmers' federations in Negros Occidental and the 
nongovernment Paghidaet sa Kauswagan Development Group (PDG).  Support came 
from the Magsasaka at Siyentipiko Para sa Kaunlaran (MASIPAG - Farmers-
Scientists Partnership for Development), an organization based in Laguna.

    Delegations from Italy, Brazil, Costa Rica, Switzerland, the Netherlands 
and Spain, all belonging to the Genetic Resources Action International 
(GRAIN), also joined the rally.  They shared experiences in promoting and 
protecting community and farmers' rights over their countries' biodiversity.

    The Diocese of Kabankalan, which considered the rally as a diocesan 
activity, mobilized about 4,000 student leaders and teachers from its 
various parish schools in central and southern Negros.

    "No one has the right to own life forms in the world," declared Luzon 
farmers' groups in a statement read at the rally by Eleanor Dayag, board 
chair of the Congress of Small Organized Groups in Camarines Sur.

    "We should not allow foreigners to own plant varieties," said a farmer 
from the Visayas groups. Mindanao-based farmers added that they  oppose 
intellectual property rights (IPR) because it will destroy their future.

     Kabankalan was chosen as rally site because here the farmers have firm 
control of the rice cultivars that they have adopted and been using, 
according to Manny Yap, rally organizer and chair of PDG.  The patenting of 
life forms will alter or wipe out this situation, he added. 

    Many of the farmers who joined the rally have adopted the MASIPAG 
farming technique which uses traditional varieties selected, bred and 
produced by them through organic farming.  

    There are now crops conceded to be "owned" by their developers and 
farmers could not plant them unless they paid a fee, said Roberto Verzola, 
secretary-general of the newly-organized Philippine Greens.

    Some 160 biotech patents on rice are held by transnational companies, 
most of them based in the United States and Japan, according to Suhay, a 
MASIPAG newsletter. The top 13 rice patent holders hold over half of the 
patents covering Asia's staple food. The top biotechnology patent holders on 
rice are: Pioneer Hi-bred International, USA (17 patents), Mitsui-Toatsu 
Chemicals, Japan (13), Monsanto, USA (7), Japan Tobacco, Japan (8) and 
Novartis, Switzerland (5).

    Other plants which have been processed and patented by foreign companies 
are banaba for curing diabetes, sambong for tumor, and lagundi for hair 
growing.

    University of the Philippines at Los Ban~os agronomy professor Dr. Oscar 
Zamora sid the Philippines and India are the first two WTO member countries 
to come up with a bill protecting plant varieties.  But the bill is still 
pending in Congress.

    Zamora said the majority of the member-countries must unite to  scrap 
the clause which legalizes patenting of life forms, or limit its scope such 
that less life forms like plant varieties will be patentable. Under the WTO-
TRIPS agreement, "inventors" of microorganisms, microbiological processes 
and products and plant and animal varieties can patent their work. The first 
option is difficult as the US, Japan and the European Union have legalized 
patenting of life forms in their countries, Zamora said.  

    Roger Samson, a Canadian farmer, said patenting will only strengthen 
multinational control over life forms.  One way to fight it is to develop 
rice varieties that will make the farmers self-reliant and quit buying 
foreign products. "We must develop farms that will be independent from these 
companies," he urged.#

                       (Leti Z. Boniol) Philippine News and Features