Here is an open letter (below &
attached) from Dr. Vandana Shiva, December 2014. President Obama is going to India for
Republic day, which is the day in 1930 the Indian freedom movement
announced they would not tolerate colonial rule any longer. The Biotech
industry is not just patenting GMOs but they are also patenting climate
resilient seeds .And they are criminalizing seed saving.
Dr. Shiva has drafted an open letter to President Obama and Prime Minister Modi, because US is putting pressure on India to remove their protections in IPR laws to create corporate monopolies. She is trying to weave together citizen’s issues in US and India, and the corporate threat to seed freedom and food democracy, as well as our collective commitment to defend seed freedom and food democracy. Please circulate the letter in your networks and have people send it to President Obama in large numbers.
Dr. Shiva has drafted an open letter to President Obama and Prime Minister Modi, because US is putting pressure on India to remove their protections in IPR laws to create corporate monopolies. She is trying to weave together citizen’s issues in US and India, and the corporate threat to seed freedom and food democracy, as well as our collective commitment to defend seed freedom and food democracy. Please circulate the letter in your networks and have people send it to President Obama in large numbers.
Call the President
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
In solidarity!
An Open letter to
Prime Minister Modi and President Obama from democratic, concerned citizens of
India and the US
President Obama, you have been invited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to India’s Republic day celebrations on 26th Jan, 2015. In 1930, on 26th January, the people of India pledged to demand Purna Swaraj or complete self-rule independent of the British Empire. (Literally translated from Sanskrit, purna, “complete"; swa, “self"; raj, “rule".)
The people of India observed 26 January as Independence Day. The flag of India was hoisted publicly, across India, by Congress volunteers, patriots and the citizens of India. The declaration stated the following:
We
believe that it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other
people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the
necessities of life, so that they may have full opportunities of growth. We
believe also that if any government deprives a people of these rights and
oppresses them the people have a further right to alter it or to abolish it.
The British Government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of
their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has
ruined India economically, politically, culturally, and spiritually. We believe,
therefore, that India must sever the British connection and attain Purna
Swaraj, or complete independence.
We write this letter in the spirit of Swaraj-of Bija
Swaraj (Seed Freedom) and Anna
Swaraj
(Food Democracy), with the hope that your visit to
India will enhance and deepen the common freedoms of the people of India and
the US, not the freedoms of the Corporations undermining the freedoms of
citizens in both countries. Your visit coincides with pressure being put by the
US, on behalf of its corporations, to undermine seed freedom in India. Our
particular concern is Intellectual Property Rights in the area of biodiversity,
seeds , and living biological resources
On 30 September
2014, the US & India issued a Joint Statement on the occasion of Prime
Minister Modi’s meeting with President Obama,in the US.
(a)greeing on the need to foster innovation in a manner that promotes
economic growth and job creation...committed to establish an annual high-level
Intellectual Property (IP) Working Group with appropriate decision-making and
technical-level meetings as part of the Trade Policy Forum.
We hope that
fostering innovation refers to real innovation and not theft from nature or
other parts of the world.
LIFE IS NOT AN
INVENTION
IPRs expanded to
cover living systems and organisms is a distortion of “Innovation”
and “invention”. This distortion
was introduced by corporations such as Monsanto in the TRIPS(Trade Related
Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement of WTO. Corporate influence on Patent
Law began with the drafting of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPS) Agreement of the WTO by the Intellectual Property Committee (IPC) of
the multilateral corporations.
James Enyart of
Monsanto is on record illustrating just how deeply the TRIPs agreement is
aligned to corporate interest and against the interests of nations and their
citizens:
“Once created, the first task of the IPC
was to repeat the missionary work we did in the US in the early days, this time
with the industrial associations of Europe and Japan to convince them that a
code was possible….
Besides selling our
concepts at home, we went to Geneva where [we] presented [our] document to the
staff of the GATT Secretariat. We also took the opportunity to present it to
the Geneva based representatives of a large number of countries… What I have described to you is
absolutely unprecedented in GATT. Industry has identified a major problem for
international trade. It crafted a solution, reduced it to a concrete proposal
and sold it to our own and other governments… The industries and traders of world
commerce have played simultaneously the role of patients, the diagnosticians
and the prescribing physicians.”
The first case in
the WTO was initiated by the US against India,
to force India to change it’s patent laws. Methods of agriculture and plants were excluded from
patentability in the Indian patent act to ensure that seed, the first link in
the food chain, was held as a common property resource in the public domain and
farmers’ inalienable right
to save, exchange and improve seed was not violated.And only process patents
were allowed in medicine.The pharmaceutical corporations which are the same as
the biotechnology corporations are seeking absolute monopolies on seed and medicine
through patents.
When India amended
her patent acts, safeguards consistent with TRIPS were introduced. Article 3
defines what is not patentable subject matter.
Article 3(d) excludes as inventions “the mere discovery of any new property or
new use for a known substance”.
This was the
article under which Novartis’s patent claim to a
known cancer drug was rejected. This is the article that Novartis tried to
challenge in the Supreme court and lost.
Article 3(j) excludes from patentability “plants and animals in whole or in any
part thereof other than microorganisms; but including seeds, varieties, and
species, and essentially biological processes for production or propagation of
plants and animals”.
This was the article used by the Indian patent office to reject a
Monsanto patent on climate resilient seeds.
While the Indian patent office rejected a Monsanto patent, the US
Supreme Court ruled on behalf of Monsanto against a farmer called Bowman who
had not bought seeds from Monsanto but purchased soybeans from an Indiana grain
elevator.The US Supreme court ruling creates intellectual property in future
generations of a grain or seed. This is biologically and intellectually
incorrect because all that Monsanto has done is add a gene for resistance to
its proprietary herbicide Round up, to (i) claim ownership of any plant/animal
that gene finds it’s way into and (ii) to enforce a RoundUp monopoly. Adding a gene of
RoundUp resistance does not amount to “inventing”
or “creating” a soya bean seed,
its future generations and the species the gene pollutes.
In addition to sueing farmers like Bowman, Monsanto has sued farmers
like Percy Schmeiser of Canada whose fields were contaminated with Monsanto’s Roundup ready canola. Instead of the principle of polluter pays,
patents allow Monsanto to work on the principle of polluter gets paid. This has
recently happened in the Australia in the case of Steve Marsh. While Monsanto does not have a patent on Bt cotton in India, it goes
outside the law to collect royalties as “technology fees”. Most of the
291000 farmers suicides in India since 1995 when WTO came into force are
concentrated in the cotton belt. And 95% cotton is now controlled by Monsanto.
Intellectual
Property Rights are defined as property in the “products of the
mind”, including patents. Patents are granted for inventions, and give the
patent holder the right to exclude everyone from the use or marketing of a
patented product or process. Over the last 2 decades, patent laws have taken a
different direction, under the influence of corporations, from protecting the
interests of genuine inventions and ideas to ownership of life and control over
survival essentials like seed and medicine. Such monopolies are violative of
article 21 of the Indian constitution which guarantees all citizens the right
to life.
This is why 3(j) in India’s patent law
excludes essentially biological processes from being counted as an invention.
The TRIPS article
on Patents of Life was to be reviewed within four years of the coming into force
of the WTO agreement i.e. in 1999. India in its submission had stated “Clearly, there is a
case for re-examining the need to grant patents on lifeforms anywhere in the
world. Until such systems are in place, it may be advisable to (a) exclude
patents on all lifeforms
The mandatory
review of TRIPS has been blocked by the US since 1999. This review must be
completed to remove the current IPR distortions.
Biopiracy
is not “Innovation”
Biopiracy is
another example of false claims to “inventions”. Over the past decade, through new property rights, corporations have
gained control over the diversity of life on earth, and people’s indigenous knowledge. There is no innovation involved in these
cases; they are instruments of monopoly control over life itself. Patents on
living resources and indigenous knowledge are an enclosure of the biological
and intellectual commons. Life forms have been redefined as “manufacture”, and “machines”, robbing life of
its integrity and self-organisation. Traditional knowledge is being pirated and
patented unleashing a new epidemic of “bio piracy”.
•
Patenting of Neem The patenting of the fungicidal properties of Neem was a blatant
example of biopiracy and indigenous knowledge. But on 10th May, the European
Patent Office (EPO) revoked the patent (0436257 B1) granted to the United
States Department of Agriculture and the multinational corporation W. R. Grace
for a method of controlling fungi on plants by the aid of an extract of seeds
from the Neem tree. The challenge to the patent of Neem was made at the Munich
Office of the EPO by 3 groups : The European Parliament’s Green Party, Dr. Vandana Shiva of RFSTE, and the International
Federation of Organic Agriculture and challenged it on the grounds of “lack of novelty and
inventive step”. They demanded the invalidation of the patent among others on the
ground that the fungicide qualities of the Neem and its use has been known in
India for over 2000 years, and for use to make insect repellents, soaps,
cosmetics and contraceptives and the neem patent was finally revoked.
•
Biopiracy of
Basmati On 8th July 1994,
Rice Tec Inc, a Texas based company, filed a generic patent(Patent No. 5663484)
on basmati rice lines and grains in the United States Patent and Trademark
Office (USPTO) with 20 broad claims designed to create a complete rice monopoly
patent which included planting, harvesting collecting and even cooking. Though Rice
Tec claimed to have “invented” the Basmati rice, yet they accepted the fact that it has been derived
from several rice accessions from India. Rice Tec had claimed a patent for
inventing novel Basmati lines and grains. After protests, and the case in the
Supreme Court of India, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office struck down most
sections of the Basmati patent.
•
Syngenta’s Attempt at Biopiracy of India’s rice diversity Syngenta, the
biotech giant, tried to grab the precious collections of 22,972 varieties of
paddy, India’s rice diversity,
from Chattisgarh in India. It had signed a MoU with the Indira Gandhi
Agricultural University (IGAU) for access to Dr. Richharia’s priceless collection of rice diversity which he had looked after as
if the rice varieties were his own children. The mass agitation by the peoples’ organisation, farmers’ unions and civil
liberty groups, women’s groups, students’ groups and biodiversity conservation movements against Syngenta and
IGAU bore result and Syngenta called off the deal.
•
Monsanto’s Biopiracy of Indian Wheat European Patent Office in Munich revoked Monsanto’s patent on the Indian wheat variety, Nap Hal. Monsanto, the biggest
seed corporation was assigned the patent (No. EP 0445929 B1) on wheat on May
21st, 2003 by the EPO under the simple title, “plants”. On January 27th, 2004 The Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and Ecology along with Greenpeace and Bharat Krishak Samaha filed a
petition at the EPO challenging the patent rights given to Monsanto, leading to
the patent being revoked.
•
ConAgra’s Biopiracy claim on Atta (Wheat flour) Atta, a staple food and ingredient within India, is currently under
threat from the corporation ConAgra who filed a “novel”
patent (patent no
6,098,905) claiming the rights to an atta processing method, and was granted
the patent on August 8th, 2000. The method that ConAgra is claiming to be novel
has been used throughout South Asia by thousands of atta chakkis, and so cannot
justly be claimed as a novel patent.
•
Monsanto’s Biopiracy of Indian Melons In May 2011, the US company Monsanto was awarded a European patent on
conventionally bred melons (EP 1 962 578). These melons which originally stem
from India have a natural resistance to certain plant viruses. Using
conventional breeding methods, this type of resistance was introduced to other
melons and is now patented as a Monsanto “invention”. The actual plant
disease, Cucurbit yellow stunting disorder virus (CYSDV), has been spreading
through North America, Europe and North Africa for several years. The Indian
melon, which confers resistance to this virus, is registered in international
seed banks as PI 313970. With the new patent, Monsanto can now block access to
all breeding material inheriting the resistance derived from the Indian melon.
The patent might discourage future breeding efforts and the development of new
melon varieties. Melon breeders and farmers could be severely restricted by the
patent. At the same time, it is already known that further breeding will be
necessary to produce melons that are actually protected against the plant
virus. DeRuiter, a well known seed company in the Netherlands, originally
developed the melons. DeRuiter used plants designated PI 313970 –
a non-sweet melon
from India. Monsanto acquired DeRuiter in 2008, and now owns the patent. The
patent was opposed by several organisations in 2012.
•
Monsanto’s Biopiracy of
Climate Resilience Monsanto applied for blanket patents for “Methods of Enhancing Stress Tolerance in plants and methods thereof” (The title of the patent was later amended to
“A method of producing a transgenic plant , with increasing heat
tolerance, salt tolerance or drought tolerance”). These traits
have been evolved by our farmers over millennia, through applying their
knowledge of breeding. On 5th July, 2013, Hon Justice Prabha Sridevi, Chair of the
Intellectual Property Appellate Board of India, and Hon Shri DPS Parmar,
technical member, dismissed Monsanto’s appeal against the rejection of these patents that claim Monsanto
has invented all resilience
Corporations like Monsanto have taken 1500 patents on Climate
Resilient crops. The climate resilient traits will become increasingly
important in times of climate instability. Along coastal areas, farmers have
evolved flood tolerant and salt tolerant varieties of rice such as “Bhundi”, “Kalambank”, “Lunabakada”, “Sankarchin”, “Nalidhulia”, “Ravana”,”Seulapuni”,”Dhosarak
To end this new epidemic and to save the sovereignty rights of our
farmers and citizens, it is required that our legal systems recognise the
rights of communities, their collective and cumulative innovation in breeding
diversity, and not merely the rights of corporations. It is the need of the
hour to evolve categories of community intellectual rights (CIRs) related to
biodiversity to balance and set limits along with boundary conditions for
protection. The Intellectual Property Rights as evolved are in effect, a denial
of the collective innovation of our people and the seed sovereignty or seed
rights of our farmers.
FREEDOM TO SAVE SEEDS IS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT
In 2004, both India and the US introduced new seed laws that
criminalised the saving of traditional/heirloom varieties of all seeds. By
outlawing the availability of renewable, open-pollinated seeds, corporations
selling non-renewable patented seeds would be able to force everyone, from a
large scale farmer to a balcony gardner, to buy only the seeds they sold,
ensuring an absolute monopoly.
In India, hundreds of thousands of citizens petitioned the government
and worked with the Parliament to roll back the Seed Law of 2004.
India’s law titled Plant Variety Protection and Farmers Rights Act 2001 has
a clause on Farmers Rights.
“a farmer shall be deemed to be entitled to save,
use, sow, resow, exchange, share or sell his farm produce including seed of a
variety protected under this Act in the same manner as he was entitled before
the coming into force of this Act”
There is no such protection for citizens and farmers of the US. Not
only are citizens in the US being denied their right to know what they are
eating, they are now being denied their right and duty to save and exchange
seed. The Seed Laws of 2004 have been used in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and now,
Minnesota, to shut down seed libraries.
Seed saving is the foundation of Swaraj in our times. Seed
saving is vital to our ability to address hunger and malnutrition. Seed Saving
is vital to bring back taste, nutrition and quality in our food. And without
conservation and evolution of the biodiversity of our seeds ,we will not be
able to adapt to climate change.
Seed Freedom is an imperative for the poor farmers of India, but also
for the equally hard working farmers of the US; and the human species.
And the duty to save seeds is an ethical and ecological imperative.
Patents on life
violate the “Ordre Public”
or moral order
embodied in the philosophy of Vasudhaiv Kutumbhakam, all beings on earth as a
family. IP laws need to be subjected to ethical criteria, criteria of justice,
and on a clear definition of invention.
Life forms, plants and seeds are all evolving,
self-organized, sovereign beings. They have intrinsic worth, value and
standing. Owning life by claiming it to be a corporate invention is ethically
and legally wrong. Patents on seeds are legally wrong because seeds are not an
invention. Patents on seeds are ethically wrong because seeds are life forms,
they are our kin members of our earth family.
When the US talks
of strong patent laws , it is restricting itself to the corporate interest.On
criteria of corporate rights at the cost of nature and people, US laws are
strong.On grounds of ethical considerations and social and ecological justice ,
they are weak.
CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PERSONS, AND AN ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY
IS NOT FREE SPEECH
During your first election campaign, President Obama, you had promised
you would implement a law for labelling GMO foods. Sadly, $100 million has been
used to defeat labelling laws in California, Washington, Colorado, Oregon. And
Vermont which did pass a labelling law is being sued by corporations on the
false premise of corporate personhood, and the influence of money as corporate “free speech”. Denying Citizens
the Right to Know violates the fundamental principles of Food Democracy.
When the County of Maui in Hawaii voted to be GMO free, Dow
and Monsanto sued them, subverting the democratic process which rests on the
will of people, not the power of Corporations. This corporate jurisprudence
needs to be reversed if human rights and the rights of Mother Earth are to be
protected.
Dear President Obama and Prime Minister Modi,
Humanity and the
Earth are at a critical juncture. Patents on seeds and seed monopolies have created an ecological crisis of
biodiversity erosion, erosion of farmers rights and erosion of people’s freedoms.
It is not India’s IPR laws that need changing but US laws. On criteria of rights of
nature and people’s rights, India’s laws are strong. As our
democracies deepen their interaction, the citizens of India and the US expect
that it will be ethical and ecological values that will lead the dialogue, not
the false claims of
“invention” by corporations to establish ownership of life on Earth. Ownership and
royalty collections are the only reason GMOs are being pushed by corporations.
It is imperative that we protect our cultural and indigenous intellectual
property from being appropriated for short term profits of a few.
As citizens, we ask
that in each of our countries, you do not dismantle the protections that ensure
the ethical fabric of our societies and the fundamental freedoms like saving
seeds and knowing what we are eating, in order to allow corporate ownership of
nature’s bounty through false claims of innovation. We ask that our
democratic representatives take the strengths in our legislation (e.g. Article
3(d) and 3(j) of the Indian Patent Act) and multiply our strengths. Working
together, we resolve to protect these rights that we have and should have. Prime Minister Modi, we count on you to uphold the science based definitions in India’s patent laws that protect the
rights of citizens, and play a leadership role to work with President Obama to
help correct the distortions in the US IPR system.
We ask that the US not put pressure on India to undo article 3(d) and
3(j), and will instead take lessons from India about how to respect the
integrity of living systems and processes, and put the rights of farmers and
citizens first. For us seed freedom includes farmers rights to save, exchange, breed, sell
farmers varieties of seeds-
varieties that have been evolved over millennia without interference of the
state or corporations.
Prime Minister Modi and President Obama, let this Republic day in India
sow the seeds of Earth Democracy and Vasudhaiva Kutumbhakam, for our times and
the future. We hope you show great
leadership by working together to strengthen the laws to protect your citizens
and countries instead of making it easier for corporations to take control over
life-forms for short term profits. Let us build Purna Swaraj for all life on
Earth, freedom to grow our food and know our food. Let us work toward a future
where our food is our freedom.
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