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Campaign against seeds privatization
We are asking you to sign against seed privatization rejecting the bill on Rights of Breeders of new Plant Varieties which is now being discussed by Chilean Parlament due to current Free Trade Agreement with the United States of America. We are campaigning to defend peasants and indigenous communities livelihood so that they can continue to freely use their harvests and native seeds. We are against GMOs and for organic and biologic agriculture and healthy foods. We reject privatization of traditional farming knowledge and of our heritage for the profit of transnational corporations.
This bill will allow GMO cultures and farm drug cultures to expand. The results of this process will be contamination of conventional and organic cultures as it has happened in other countries. Peasants will be chased by police private corps created by corporations to search for infringement of their rights. Growers will depend on registered seeds and this will deepen the loss of food variety.
Food prices will be higher because certified seeds will be sold by corporations and their local associated companies controlling GMOs and pesticides marketing.
This bill attacks our food sovereignty and promotes loss of seed varieties. Foreign companies owing breeder's rights will control marketing, import and export of seeds and propagation materials.
The basis of agriculture, farming knowledg and food security lies in seeds. Seeds are our ancestral heritage and stand for the rights of current and future generations. Life cannot be patented.
Lucía Sepúlveda
Encargada Base de Datos RAP-AL
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(Position Paper)
16 reasons to reject Chile seeds and Traditional Farming Knowledge Bill
1. "Rights of breeders of new plant varieties" is a bill which will do away with Chilean current 19.342 Act on this issue. The bill is being discussed by Chilean Congress in order to enable our country to sign 1991 amendments to UPOV Convention. The main sponsors of both this bill and 1991 Act of UPOV Convention are TNCs searching total control of seeds production and sales. This bill generated by our government not only accepts 1991 Act of UPOV but also adds new advantages to TNCs. Monsanto, the Corporation leading 90% of GMO seeds sales, and local companies belonging to the National Association of Seeds Producers (ANPROS), are active lobbyist for this bill introduced by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.
2. This bill gives no protection to traditional/ancestral knowledge or biodiversity. Conversely it promotes its privatization and allows seizure of common heritage of indigenous and peasant communities. Thus it expands a non acceptable principle: "it is possible to privatize knowledge and diverse kinds of life as well". This bill goes together with a pack of several legal procedures aiming to promote privatization of knowledge and forms of life, such as Patents laws, privatization of research systems, education and so forth. This kind of rules concentrates increasing power in a few transnational corporations. It expropriates and privatizes national biological heritage. National research systems will be driven to ruin. Information exchange, which is basic for scientific development, will become more difficult. The bill also attacks peasants and indigenous people's livelihood. It stands against basic ethical principles such as free access to knowledge. By allowing seeds' privatization, this bill and also current 19.342 Act focus on profits and deny the fundamental right to food.
3. The new legal frame welcomes expropriation and privatization of Chilean rural and wild biodiversity. In spite of the introductory paragraphs, this bill makes it possible to privatize genetic resources and native biodiversity by expanding the so called breeders rights ("derechos de obtentores") to all kind of vegetal species. Any native specie can be registered and owned by national or foreign companies. The only requirement to register a variety is to make a simple selection in order to get a relatively homogeneous population or group of plants. The new law will not prevent such aberrant cases as registration under former Act (or other mechanisms) of Chilean alstroemeria (Alstroemeria mollensis), sweet cucumber, (Cucumis sativus), boldus (Peumus boldus Molina), Soapbark tree (Quíllaja saponaria Molina) or Chilean hazel (Gevuina avellana), all of them Chilean native plants. This bill strengthens this trend to restrict use of these species in Chile. It also paves the way for any company to seize native and indigenous varieties by considering "new" any variety that has not been marketed or otherwise disposed of for commercial purposes prior to filing for protection. (sections 5, 6 and 7 of the bill).
4. It threatens biological diversity and traditional knowledge. It increases the risk of organic cultures pollution by GMO cultures, because it has been proved that coexistence between GMOs and organic cultures is not possible. This bill also would create a scenery where markets demanding foods proved to be innocuous and healthy will become lost for our exports. Consumers are increasingly aware about GMO foods. 70% of Europeans rejects GMO cultures.
5. This bill encloses severe penalties for practices which have been present since the very beginning of agriculture: selecting, improving, getting, saving and multiplying freely seeds after harvesting time. This common practice is a fundamental right of women and men working in rural areas and it has been acknowledged by FAO's International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (http://www.planttreaty.org/) signed by Chile in 2002. A rather confuse writing disguises the meaning of section 48 which in fact prevents peasants and indigenous communities to improve and exchange seeds, a process acknowledged as a main contribution to current diversity. For worse, this future law, plus an industrial property rights Act which is also being discussed, will make it possible that growers whose cultures result contaminated by GMOs can be legally punished and deprived of their plants. It looks just as the popular saying about "here you have a thief chasing after a judge".
6. By granting property (called "protection" in this legal frame) on varieties without requiring any proof of improvement, usefulness or innocuity and only under the single expression of a trait, this bill generates the climate wanted by seeds corporations in order to expand GMO cultures and GMO plants that produce medical drugs for pharmaceutical companies. In Section 6 the definition of requirement to grant property does not request for a variety to be better than those already existing, and it does not require it to be useful or innocuous. By defining that a single trait sets the difference, (section 7) it eases a very common practice of GMO companies: use of old varieties in order to add some cosmetic genes (with no commercial value but able to show a visible difference) followed by registration as "new" varieties. The existence of toxic cultures of GMO plants to produce drugs is also eased by the fact that the law will not request any improvement or innocuity of the variety.
Under 7th section it is possible to register varieties "essentially derived" provided that they are registered by the owner of the original variety. This gives additional advantages for use and reuse of old varieties and introduction of new varieties of poorer quality but submitted to monopoly control.
7. This bill also threatens a better access to varieties. Because of the impact of current 19.342 Act on Breeder's Rights and other agrarian policies we already have less availability of natural varieties. This legal initiative is deepening that trend. World experience has proved that industrial property laws on plant varieties have resulted in a process of extreme concentration of global seeds production, restricting access to new varieties. 39th section of the bill prevents free access to present varieties for new actors searching to create new varieties. Actual varieties have been the basis for gene improvement, so this restriction will make this access very difficult for any companies or individuals no related to TNCs, reducing the technological offer in favor of monopolies.
8. This bill generates conditions to expand the presence of seeds corporations in Chile, harming national development of plant varieties. The 19.342 Act already resulted in a process of concentration of plant varieties by transnational corporations, and the sections of this bill increases their advantages over national gene researchers. 16th section grants important benefits to foreign companies. They will be able to register their varieties just by homologization. Reversely, national companies should prove they are fulfilling requirements of novelty, homogeneity and stability. These advantages will be even greater if the Congress passes the Treaty on Patents which is now being discussed.
9. This bill guarantees foreign companies to define the varieties that will be used in our country and those who cannot be used here, because it grants the right to control sales, import and export of seeds, branches and propagating material (39th section). These rights will empower the companies to decide about food production and at the same time, to prevent growers to exert their right to make their own decision on their cultures. This bill allows a company to register a plant variety so that it cannot be used in our country.
10. It will greatly increase the prices of seeds and food because of monopoly on seeds. It will interfere with the process of genetic improvement by independent sources. It will prevent growers to produce their own seeds and it will ease the process of global seed industry concentration. This bill paves the way to monopoly control of seeds, which are the first chain of food production. Currently this is not so because seeds production is developed by very many men and women growing their own cultures.
11. It will allow the seeds company to have their own police corps, because the enforcement of their rights is defined as their responsibility (48th section states: "Enforcement of the rights involved in this section will be the exclusive responsibility of legal owners of the plant protection breeder's rights"). In other countries, Monsanto and Syngenta have created their own police forces in order to control growers and peasants using what they consider belong to the companies. This section will force our nation to empower the companies with exclusive police forces with no public control or supervision. If this section is infringed Chile can be submitted to a plaint by CIADI, International Centre of Settlement of Complaints on Investments. This is a violation of our law because all Chilean police forces are under public command and control. Supervision of these forces must be done by state allowed institutions.
12. This bill will allow confiscation and seizure of crops and harvest charged of not fulfilling this law or committing "piracy" on a registered natural variety. This could result in destruction of crops and orchards, confiscation of product being sold and even seizing of Chilean exports. (8th section). By setting severe procedures and also by setting no compensation in case a demand is rejected by a judge, this law eases non seriously based demands and it forces those "piracy" growers to spend high amounts of money paying a defense in court under notoriously uneven conditions.
13. This law will have retroactive effects under 6th section and its transitory sections. This is a new infringement of basic legal procedures. It could happen that somebody who got legally a plant variety abroad and was using it for one or more seasons, become forced to destroy his cultures or pay royalties to keep them.
14. The introduction of this bill and also the 56 sections enclose plenty of misconceptions and cryptic language. Introduction talks about biotechnology considerations which are not directly related to the bill. We already showed some examples of this. Besides that, this bill appears as though new technologies related to seeds and genes will be easily accessed because of the new legal frame. But in fact the access of national growers to them will be restricted. The real reason to force this law is the Treaty on Free Trade with the United States of America, the European Union and other similar agreements. This should be mentioned directly since this bill is giving foreign companies much more advantages than those requested by the agreements and by UPOP 91 Convention signed by USA and other countries.
15. The introduction is cheating when stating that most of growers want to use new plan varieties in the next years. The data enclosed in the introduction showed that is not true because only about a third of the growers surveyed agreed to that assert. So this bill is far from being the answer to the expectations of most Chilean growers.
16. We can infer from President Bachelet's message of introduction to this bill that this law is planning to generate conditions to introduce the so-called pharma/drug farm cultures, GMO plants to produce drugs for the pharmaceutical industry. This type of cultures are very toxic. If they are expanded in Chile they will generate public health problems and also they will drive food production and Chilean exports to ruin. The introduction to this bill assumes this kind of drug cultures will be introduced and it presents them as a great innovation, supporting those companies who demand their introduction in the future. It is alarming that essentially toxic cultures be presented as fit and necessary for Chilean agriculture, even if they produce supposedly benefic substances with no mention at all of the public health problems they could generate.
By no requiring innocuity, this new legal frame allows real property on plant cultures used to produce pharmaceutical drugs or chemical substances aimed for industrial uses. If Chilean law grants rights for this kind of cultures, we foresee increasing pressures of TNCs in order to move to Chile the negative environmental and public health impact of those cultures. Thus our country would become host for cultures considered as non wanted by developed countries. Accordingly, it would be impossible to protect food and agricultural production of the contamination with toxic genes. Our country should be forced to appoint important resources to research the environmental, food and public health impact of those cultures.
A strong trend towards innocuity in food can be seen in the globalized world. If Chile stands among countries labeled as contaminated by farm cultures for pharmaceutical industries, food exports will be severely affected.
This campaign calling social organizations and individuals to reject this bill and lobbying Chilean Congress members is open to everybody and sponsored by the following grassroots organizations:
Alliance for a Better Quality of Life/Pesticide Action Network Chile, formed by Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Rurales e Indígenas ANAMURI, National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women, and Observatorio de Conflictos Ambientales (OLCA) Environmental Conflicts Latin American Watch; Asociación de Agricultores Orgánicos de BioBio, BioBio Organic Agriculture Association; la Agrupación de Agricultura Orgánica de Chile AAOCH Chilean Organic Agriculture Union; la Asociación de Agricultura Biológica Dinámica AG Biologic/Dinamic Agricultura Association; la Asociación de Agricultores Orgánicos de Chiloé Chiloe Organic Agriculture Association ; GRAIN, Centro de Educación en Tecnología CETSUR Technology Education Center CET SUR, Fundación con Todos, Chiloé Chiloe Everybody's Foundation and y la Agrupación de Consumidores Conscientes, de Linares, Linares Consumers Association.
Chile, agosto de 2009
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