Monsanto has yet another case pending in the court system, this
time before the U.S. Supreme Court on the exclusivity of its genetically
modified seed patents. Narrowly at issue is whether Monsanto retains
patent rights on soybeans that have been replanted after showing up in
generic stocks rather than being sold specifically as seeds, or whether
those patent rights are “exhausted” after the initial planting. But more
broadly the case also raises implications regarding control of the food
supply and the patenting of life – questions that current patent laws are ill-equipped to meaningfully address.
On the specific legal issues, Monsanto is likely to win the case
(they almost always do). The extant facts make this a relatively poor
platform to serve as a test case of Monsanto's right to exert such
expansive powers. The farmer in this situation had previously purchased
Monsanto soybeans for planting (back in 1999), and in this instance
bought previously harvested soybeans with the intention of planting them
– even spraying Monsanto's Roundup herbicide on them in the hopes that
at least some of the generic stock would be of the so-called "Roundup
Ready" variety.
Despite this unfortunate posture, the case does provide another
opportunity for critical inquiry regarding the unprecedented and
perverse level of control Monsanto is asserting over the food supply. It
is estimated that 90 percent of the soybeans in the U.S. are
genetically modified and thus subject to potential patents. A random
handful of soybeans procured anywhere is likely to contain at least some
Monsanto-altered beans. Such a near-monopoly effectively gives Monsanto
the right to control access to a staple food item that is found in a
wide range of consumer products.
Other variations on this theme include pollen from Monsanto corn
(similarly dominant in the U.S. market) pollinating a farmer's crop, or
seeds from Monsanto-engineered grains being distributed by animals,
winds, or waterways and commingling with non-GMO plantings. In each
case, Monsanto could have a cause of action against an unwitting farmer
by claiming patent infringement.
More broadly, and unlikely to be addressed in the instant case, is
whether Monsanto (or any other company) should be able to patent seeds –
the core of global food supplies, and thus of sustenance for billions
of people – in the first place. Activists will decry the fact that
Monsanto is patenting life, and this is indeed an Orwellian (or perhaps a
Huxleyan) prospect, to be sure. Yet I would submit that Monsanto is
actually patenting death, which is potentially even more disconcerting.
Consider that by exerting this level of control over the food supply,
Monsanto is rapidly creating a world in which people have to pay fealty
to the corporation in order to grow food and/or consume it. In this
sense, Monsanto gains enormous power to determine who is allowed to eat –
and thus who lives or dies. Consider further that Monsanto's patents
also include technologies in which seeds are sold that cannot propagate
themselves, resulting in plants terminating rather than perpetuating,
requiring farmers to have to go back to the “company store” in order to
replant their fields.
In the case currently before the Court, shades of the latter issue
are present, with the question being whether the seeds of the seeds of
Monsanto creations retain their exclusive patent rights – possibly in
perpetuity. This sort of argument might give us cause to wonder whether
an animal (or even a human being, someday?) who consumes these
proprietary foods could be implicated in such assertions if they are
somehow genetically altered in the process. Perverse slippery slopes
aside, the permeation of patentable materials throughout the food chain
is by now a clear and present danger.
These are troubling trends indeed. Monsanto wants the right to exert
perpetual control, and with it the power to make decisions about
who/what lives or dies. In addition to seed patents, their corporate
creations include herbicides, pesticides, and biocides that toxify soils
and poison waters. Genetically modified foods increasingly dominate the
U.S. food supply (and supplies elsewhere, at least where they haven't
been explicitly banned) despite insufficient testing and concerns about
their health impacts. The ability of corporations like Monsanto to
continue plying such products with little oversight constitutes a de facto consumer beta test on a mass level, the full effects of which may not be known for decades, if ever.
Taking all of this together, it increasingly appears that Monsanto is
patenting death, perhaps even more so than life. Their patent rights
should not trump the rights of people to procure safe, healthy, living
foods. Whatever the result in the Supreme Court case, we should roundly
deem Monsanto a loser in the court of public opinion, and strive to
loosen their death grip on our food supply.
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