8. Indigenous knowledge and germplasm from the developing countries is exploited by the biotechnology industry and fuels its growth.
- In 1990, Sally Fox received plant patents (under the U.S. Plant Variety Protection Act) for two varieties of natural coloured cotton, "Coyote" (brown coloured) and "Green." As the legal "owner" of two coloured cotton varieties, Fox's patent-like protection gives her the legal right to exclude others from selling her varieties, or reproducing, importing or exporting them without permission until the year 2008. But Sally Fox did not invent coloured cotton. She got her seeds from a collection held by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in California. The coloured cotton germplasm was originally collected by a USDA plant collector, Dr. Gus Hyer, in Mexico or some other part of Central America; the exact origin is unknown (Bio-Piracy: The Story of Natural Coloured Cottons of the Americas, RAFI).
- BC Cotton obtained seed samples from germplasm collections held by university and government gene bank collections, including Texas A&M University, University of California at Berkeley, and USDA's Shafter Research Station. Free samples of 25 seeds are made available to breeders who request them. These seed samples originated in Central and South America. Coloured cotton has been available in all the gene banks for years. Ancient Andean societies domesticated and improved two of the world's finest textile fibres, and also developed "one of the greatest textile traditions in universal history" (Bio-Piracy: The Story of Natural Coloured Cottons of the Americas, RAFI).
- Patents on coloured cottons is a striking example of the inequities of a plant intellectual property system that rewards the contribution of the modern plant breeder, with no corresponding recognition of the original innovators--anonymous farmers of the past and present, who selected, nurtured and developed coloured cottons over millennia. (Bio-Piracy: The Story of Natural Coloured Cottons of the Americas, RAFI).
- The Australian seed industry has applied for plant breeder's rights (PBR) on two chickpea varieties taken from ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) - an internationally-funded public research centre based in Hyderabad, India. If granted, the Australians will have a 20-year monopoly on the Asian chickpeas, which they want to market in South Asia and the Middle East. Neither variety is new to farmers. In fact, both are ICRISAT accessions originating in farmer's fields in Iran and India. "It's blatant biopiracy," explains Farhad Mazhar of Bangladeshi organization UBINIG and the South Asian Network on Food, Ecology, and Culture, "Australia is privatizing seeds that belong to our farmers, and they plan to sell them back to us with their own self-authorized plant monopoly" (Recent Australian Claims to Indian and Iranian Chickpeas Countered by NGOs and ICRISAT, RAFI).