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Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses
Doc Ruby writes "The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection.' The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, newly illegal. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from IP developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, shared freely like agricultural 'open source.' Other IP provisions for technology in the law further integrate Iraq into the American IP economy."
Maybe you haven't seen this story/editorial from Harper's Magazine.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The problem is that snce a small part of their crop is contaminated by GM seeds, there's no practical way of getting rid of them. They don't have the option to choose not to use them if they've used them in the past (when the IP laws were different), or if any of their regular seeds ever got mixed up with GM seeds by mistake.
-jim
Let's go to original from which you cited those words, and look at the context.
... ... by 30 m. Therefore canola pollen can move at least this distance....9 6.htm
... ... have been too small to capture the full spread of altered ... "It's the longest distance ... Most previous studies of gene flow have been done on far ...S pread+for+Miles-status-25-newsID-277... - 24k - Cached - Similar pages
The issue for Iraq is whether the farmer can save the seed grown once an agribiz claims they have found their genes in samples from his farm.
The answer was no, in the Canadian case.
He said he didn't buy the GM seed and that pollen spreads. Monsanto claimed it doesn't spread.
Current research says he's right.
QUOTE, a couple hits from a Google search:
GENE TRANSFER BETWEEN CANOLA (BRASSICA NAPUS) AND RELATED WEED
www.isb.vt.edu/brarg/brasym96/brown
Genes From Engineered Grass Spread for Miles, Study Finds
gene-flow study
www.onlypunjab.com/ fullstory904-insight-Genes+From+Engineered+Grass+
END QUOTE
Too late for him in this court case though.
Monsanto, because of the legal choice they used, did not get to take his bank account and his farm -- but they did stop him from saving the seeds that grew in his field to reuse.
The rest of the quote you cited is:
"Outcome:The Supreme Court held that the patent was valid and defendant/appellant Schmeiser infringed. However, because Monsanto elected to seek profits as a remedy, and the infringer Schmeiser earned no profit from the invention, plaintiff Monsanto is entitled to nothing."
That's "$Nothing" not "nothing at all" -- and that's the important part.
Schmeiser's neighbors growing the same species bought "Roundup Ready" seed. He did not. They sprayed with Roundup, killing everything but their Monsanto GM plants. He did not. All the plants flowered and set seed (Monsanto should have changed the timing of flowering, to really have some kind of control on genetic movement, eh?)
More from that study:
"Seed movement. Canola plants have small seed (approximately 200 seeds/g). During normal farm operations the seed will inevitably be lodged in farm machinery and transported around the farm and surrounding area. Seed also can be distributed by animals and birds, and seed can be lost while being transported for processing. In the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S.A., spring canola has only recently been grown commercially and already volunteer plants have been observed several kilometers from where they originated."
Remember -- once you know, or have reason to know, that your farm _may_ be producing some seed containing patented material, you're breaking the law if you save the seed growing in your own fields.
Once you know the stuff spreads, goes into weedy relatives of the crop (and back into crops elsewhere), spreads by birds, spreads in equipment tires and harvesting machinery that's taken from one field to another -- well, you know, eh?