International lessons

In his haste to back the patent system, Deputy Agricultural Minister Newin may not realise what have happened in other developing countries. Worldwide, critics have charged some companies and governments of exploiting legal mechanisms to lay claims on indigenous plants and animals.

According to Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN), a Barcelona-based international organisation, the terms 'biopiracy' or 'bio-prospecting' refer to "the application of monopolistic control over a natural resource, which robs others of their rights to the natural resource." Following are excerpts from the GRAIN documents:

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) is a high-protein cereal which is an important part of the diet of millions of people in the Andean countries of Latin America.

Since pre-Inca times, indigenous people have cultivated and developed varieties of quinoa suitable for the harsh conditions in the Andes.

In 1994, two researchers from the University of Colorado received US patent number 5,304,718, which gave them exclusive control of male sterile plants of the Bolivian "Apelawa" quinoa.

The researchers admitted that they did nothing to create the male sterile variety.

One researcher said it was "just part of the native population of plants; we just picked it up."

This patent is being challenged by Bolivian and US civil society groups.

There are other examples of bio-piracy which undermine the food security of various societies in the world.

For instance, the soybean (Gly cine max L) is a multibillion dollar commodity crop. It was domesticated by the Chinese as a food crop and is now an important industrial oil crop and animal feed.

Today, the top soybean producers are the USA, Brazil, China and Argentina, with the USA cornering well over half of the global export market.

In 1994, the biotechnology company Agracetus was awarded European patent number 301,749 which, among other demands, claims "a soybean seed which will yield upon cultivation a soybean plant comprising in its genome a foreign gene effective to cause the expression of a foreign gene product in the cells of the soybean plant."

This means that the Agracetus' patent covers all transgenic soybeans. The biotechnology industry was stunned by the patent.

The giant chemical company Monsanto opposed the patent in November 1994 on the grounds that "the alleged invention lacks an inventive step" and was "not novel."

Later, Monsanto simply bought up the whole of the Agracetus company - including the patent - and stopped complaining.

Another example refers to turmeric. To many people from India, turmeric (Cucuma longa) is a magic cure-all.

The orange root is native to the subcontinent and, for thousands of years, has been used for sprains, inflammatory conditions, and healing of tropical wounds.

Turmeric is an ancient component of ayurdevic medicine but in 1995, two US scientists from the University of Mississippi were granted a US patent (No. 5,401,504) on the use of turmeric for healing wounds, claiming this to be novel.

The Indian government filed a challenge to the patent, which it considered to be blatant theft.

For the appeal to be upheld, India had to provide proof that turmeric had been used in India specifically to heal wounds, in the form of an academic paper which predated the patent application.

This patent is now withdrawn.