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Biotech Company To Patent Pigs
Anonymous Swine writes "Monsanto, a US based multinational biotech company, is causing a stir by its plan to patent pig-breeding techniques including the claim on animals born by the techniques. 'Agricultural experts are scrambling to assess how these patents might affect the market, while consumer activists warn that if the company is granted pig-related patents, on top of its tight rein on key feed and food crops, its control over agriculture could be unprecedented. "We're afraid that Monsanto and other big companies are getting control of the world's genetic resources," said Christoph Then, a patent expert with Greenpeace in Germany. The patent applications, filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization, are broad in scope, and are expected to take several years and numerous rewrites before approval.'"
It better taste good
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
"Do only evil."
So far they're on track.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
I think i'm going to invent a pair of scissors and extend the patent to cover anything you cut with them.
I was going to suggest some prior art, but I realized that cowboy neal has never been laid.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Did anyone else notice the 2005 date on the press release?
As far as I can tell, no patents have been granted from WO2004/003697 which seems to be the most likely application in question.
"We're afraid that Monsanto and other big companies are getting control of the world's genetic resources," said Christoph Then, a patent expert with Greenpeace in Germany.
Isn't Greenpeace against GMO? Why do they care then? It's not like Monsanto suddenly owns all pigs ever born.....they can still keep using normal, everyday, unmodified pigs like they do now. In fact, they should be HAPPY, because Monsanto's patent protection will prevent other people from researching and developing GMO pigs based on these techniques. It gives me the feeling that Greenpeace just wants to protest anything. Kind of reminds me of the tea-party protesters, who mostly seemed like they were out there to have fun in the name of a protest.
Qxe4
How are we gonna train politicians now???
NO SIG
For a second I thought that I had traveled 20 days back in time. Then I realized it wasn't a joke...
And still I have to wait for the future. Better method for breeding pigs? How about making bacon (and pork chops and all the other piggy goodness!) without breeding? Where's that cholesterol free bacon we were promised?
I keep waiting for the militant vegans to give up ignoring the problem (which is all abstinence does) and move to economically crush their enemies - that's what boycotting is supposedly for after all, not that it works. Buy meat from organic farms that treat animals with the respect they say animals deserve. Demand more such farms. Then demand new and better techniques for getting meat without harming animals.. like genetically engineering animals to grow fat meaty tails that drop off, or something. Then, eventually, demand meat production in vats that doesn't even need an animal brain.
Shouldn't biotech companies be making vat grown meat by now? With everything that is happening in biotech, "farming" pigs should be laughable. It should be compared to plowing a field with horse power.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Someone has to stop these stupid genetic patents. Patents and copyrights are both way out of hand these days. Software patents, now this. I've heard of companies attempting to patent viruses and such (the kind they use to get DNA into other organisms), but a pig? I think patent law has a clause saying you can't patent a living organism (when did genes become "inventions"?). Recently though, big pharma and biotech companies like Monsanto has been lobbying to let this shit happen.
There was a movie that touched on this The Corporation. It's a Canadian movie and I think Monsanto is mentioned in there more than once.
I sincerely don't know how these companies get away with it. Giving them the same rights as people legally was a bad idea. Don't the people working at Monsanto realize how twisted this shit is?
As other posters have already mentioned, this is OLD news.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/monsanto-pig-patent-111
FTFS: "its control over agriculture could be unprecedented"
It already is. It holds 70-100% of the genetically modified seed market, and is the largest producer of non-GMO seed, not to mention a major player in Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) and of course pesticides and herbicides.
That's not including the lawsuits against farmers who's plants are fertilized by Monsanto crop due to airborne pollen.
In short, the vast majority of industrial farmers in the Corn Belt rely heavily on Monsanto, and those that don't are sued by Monsanto.
I am officially gone from
God help you if one of their seeds blows onto your property and one of their pigs eat it.
"Best" is relative here. Having a single company control agricultural output in the way that Monsanto does, free markets or no, is a damned dangerous thing. This is about the core structural support of civilization. Fuck with the food supply, and bad things can happen.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Using a specialized device to inseminate sows deeply in a way that uses less sperm than is typically required.
A longer turkey baster.
Whodathunkit?
The practices Monsanto wants to patent basically involve identifying genes that result in desirable traits in swine, breeding animals to achieve those traits and using a specialized device to inseminate sows deeply in a way that uses less sperm than is typically required.
Umm I think nature invented that device a long time ago....
Needs to be stopped, burned and sealed away.
All of your arguments are valid and applicable to agriculture and Monsanto...but not effective when compared to patents on DNA, Genes, and genetics in an over-broad approach that Corp.s (and specifically, Monsanto) are trying to exploit, with grave consequences.
Just search google, wikipedia, or your favorite reference source for 'DNA patents", Genome patents', or 'Gene patents' for a scary look into our future.
You should be scared by the implications.
Do your own research, just keep an open mind.
Follow the trend with recent(past 20 years) 'IP' thinking/law.
If you are not scared, you either do not understand/care, or are a MegaCorp drone, and don't care.
Yes, I did set up a 'Straw man Dichotomy'
Disprove it, if you can.
I await a relevant reply.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Fuck with the food supply, and bad things can happen.
Umm.. fail to innovate farming and we all die.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Way to fail to make an argument. Idiot.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Pigs have been breeding for millions of years. Pigs in captivity have been bred for thousands of years. Methinks there might be some prior art here! Perhaps these pigs are breeding using a non-doggy-style position? I'm pretty sure the Kama Sutra contains prior art on that as well. I'm also pretty sure Mendel and others called "prior art" on selective breeding a long time ago. So what is left to patent?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Pigs have been breeding just fine well before Monsanto existed.
It does lead to funny mental images of a pack of lawyers running around the farm yelling "Stop Fucking or we'll sue!"
She wants her turkey baster back.
No, they don't fly...unless you strap *enough* rocket-motors to them, and successfully ignite them at the proper time.
Yes, let's "IP approve" something that has been happening for eons....and more importantly, patent it!!!!
The whole concept of "IP", will be mankind's fall from prominence. It is our greatest weakness, and will be exploited in the future to our downfall!
Base anything on something imaginary, and it will crumble on you! Why be surprised, except for stupidity?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
They didn't patent pigs so much as pig fucking? Perhaps they should change their slogan to "World leader in the field of pig fucking".
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
from http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto_today/for_the_record/pig_patent.asp
In 2007, Monsanto sold Monsanto Choice Genetics to Newsham Genetics LC of West Des Moines, Iowa. The transaction was completed in November 2007, and Monsanto is no longer in the swine breeding business.
Since a Greenpeace publicity announcement in 2005, rumors have continued to circulate among activists and on the internet that Monsanto is trying to patent pig genes. When Monsanto owned the business, the company performed research work for a patent application related to a specific gene marker for a pig trait, but not for the trait itself, and also a patent application for a unique set of breeding processes, including an artificial insemination method. Monsanto never filed a patent application for a pig gene.
Thereâ(TM)s been some rather wild speculation that these patent applications would prohibit pig farmers from breeding lines of pigs to which they had always freely bred. This isnâ(TM)t true. Any claims issued from these patent applications would apply to only animals and their offspring which had been bred using marker technology covered by patent claims.
In any case, the sale to Newsham Genetics included any and all swine-related patents, patent applications, and all other intellectual property. Weâ(TM)re out of the pig business.
the united states is a nation of laws; badly written and randomly enforced -- frank zappa
I am sure there sre s lot more Vegans, its just that its a long way (26 light years) from Vega.
Monsanto patented some corn strains. The patent covered any corn found to have their patented genome. They planted it, it grew and pollinated. The pollen drifted into nearby fields and pollinated the crops there. Monsanto got some of the resulting corn, tested it, found their genome, and sued the farmers for theft of intellectual property. I don't know if they finally won or not, but at the time they prevented the farmers from farming until it was resolved causing loss of income, as well as proving themselves to be willing to use the high cost of defending one's self in order to keep from losing. And that was in the US, just prior to them releasing the same strains in third world countries. The strain they distributed had the trait of not producing viable seed. They wanted all the farmers to have to buy seed every year rather than grow their own, and they feared cross pollination would produce a viable strain overriding the nonviability genes.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
"Your farm is belong to us."
Farming is fine - I recommend you do research before spouting such nonsense.
Please, explain to me how any of Monsanto's 'innovations' have benefited society.
We are anonymous.
We cannot be stopped.
We have targeted your top executives and scientists for extermination.
We are tracking your every move.
You cannot run.
You cannot hide.
Your time is up.
Anonymous.
Innovation in the agriculture industry is fine. This has nothing whatsoever to do with innovation. Quite the opposite.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
Patents run out in 20 years. What's the problem? We had food before any Monsanto patent. For a lot longer than 20 years.
I think I understand though. Some company might make some money by inventing something that helps people. That's a problem for anti-corporate haters. They'd rather companies not invent and people not be helped. If just one company can be denied a profit, all the damage to human potential and standards of living is worthwhile!
Do you like:
1) Bacon
2) Ham
3) Pork chops
4) Pork roasts
5) Any pork product
6)many vegetables,
If answer is yes to any of the above, BOW DOWN TO YOUR MONSANTO MASTERS!
Don't like that?
Then fight back, it is happening currently.
DNA, Genetics, and Genes all need to be exempt from patent law!
Or, reap what you sow!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Step 1. Eat breakfast
Step 2. ??? = I have found it, it's patent human breeding!!! (I will first patent missionary and doggystyle)
Step 3. PROFIT!!!!!
They can have my pulled pork sandwich when they take it from my cold dead hands... Why's my arm tingling... Whats that pain in my che
but Monsanto's are more equal than others?
I think that what they're saying :-)
(just wait until they try to apply this to designer babies...)
Too bad ass-hats, you can't patent what happens naturally, nor what pig / hog breeders have done for centuries...
Anything you can think of is an OBVIOUS extension to techniques that have been in use longer than you've been around, and longer than you will be around.
My nth grand pappy
Was the lost dolphin of France
Now I ownz your kidz
If you read up on Monsanto, this isnt surprising, infact, i'm surprised they havn't tried to patent their employees yet. To put it bluntly, they're evil. Like, bond villain evil.
Can't wait to eat illegal bacon on Pirate Fastfood!!!
GMO is a scam, IMO (disclaimer in advance. I am a farmer, I admit bias against monsanto and their ilk, I effin hate the bastids for years now, so take what I write with a grain of salt). It leads to proprietary vendor lock in in spades, along with a host of other issues, health issues, environmental issues and economics, it isn't all rosy. And the issue with superweeds now is getting serious. In my own state, pig amaranth is taking over a lot of fields that were grown with GM cotton then sprayed. Except it doesn't work now, the amaranth is winning. It gets ten feet tall. Some guys just *give up*. Roundup ready crops are just crops designed to be able to withstand roundup or generic equivalent herbicide so they can spray MORE on the crop and more often and not damage the crop. It works-for awhile, that's the real bottom line "for awhile", and you get lots more herbicide residue on whatever you grow. and the stuff itself ain't cheap, over a hundred bucks a jug now and goes up all the time, even the generics keep going up.
You never *really* get rid of all the weeds, you just fast track selective breed resistant weeds (or insect pests if it is insecticide, like with their BT modded corn). Even the crops themselves turn into weeds, they are having a hard time controlling their GM supercanola, it will spread to other fields and being resistant to herbicides...I think you get the picture.
Our farmers are by and large stuck in the 70s by mindset, swallowed all that rah rah rah corporate PR bullshit, now are stuck because they don't know any better and can't avoid it and will NOT admit they got suckered bad.
You think microsoft has vendor lockin...computer OS or some "office suite" is WAY down the list of humanly important *things*. Be concerned, be very concerned over food and availability going into the future is all I can say. They already have had several screwups, one of them one of these days is going to be the czar bomba screwup and will lead to mass famine sometime. I don't know what it will be, but I can about guarantee it will happen. That's my prediction.
We have climate indicators, and we have health of the crop and insect indicators, and the status of our honeybees now is a good indicator or canary in the coal mine if you will. Superweeds, honeybees croaking off, vendor lockin, loss of biodiversity..you have to look at the whole picture.
And it isn't so much that the tech is just evil, I don't believe that, it's that the tech is near completely uncontrolled despite so called regulations and studies and they have no idea whatsoever what the long term consequences will be and there's more than a little hanky panky going on with the studies. Think about all the past big corporate screwups, the really bad stuff, and they all have two things in common: 1) the corporations themselves always maintained until the last second there wasn't any problem and if there was they were just innocent bystanders, and 2) they always manage to trot out their posse of tame private scientists and academic scientists to "back them up" until it was so obvious they had to 'fess ip, pay up and admit wrong doing. That's just normal corporate policy taken as a general rule of thumb (same with governments, never admit they were wrong, even in the face of overwhelming evidence). Just the nature of the beast. Your default should be, be a skeptic to corporate and governmental PR and spin.
Extrapolate at your leisure, but I am not convinced at all they are the best way forward at this point. They are very profitable for monsanto and a few others, at this time, but that's it. It's bankrupting smaller farmers all over the world and leading to a global hegemony on seeds and food. Do we *really* want that to happen, do we really want to lose natural biodiversity and to keep putting millions of the poorest even further into the poorhouse? And, more importantly than that, something that impacts everyone, think of this: we have no "food insurance" or backup planet either once they
Reading the article it seems they're actually trying to patent a preferred method of pig-fucking... Not sure if that's better or worse.
Innovate farming can be done without having to do genetic manipulation.
One thing that I've never quite understood is the 'Prior Art' restriction on obtaining patents. Why doesn't this provision deal with %99 of the frivolous patents out there? Obviously it doesn't. Could someon please provide me with a link that will accurately, and without paranoia about a 'conspiracy' tell me what the current precedent is and how it got that way?
In this dire times the heads of the aristocracy should be used as ammunition for trebuchets.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Those bastards have been allowed to monopolise the food supply, polluting the Earth with their GM madness for far too long. They even want a monopoly over water! The Monsanto / GM appologists will tell me how much 'better' off we all are when eating roundup-riddled, petro-chemical-fertilised GM foods, but I allege they are full of shit.
Time to protect our food supply from both GM and patents. First step is a Monsanto boycott.
Let the number of people whom you can feed with a loaf of bread be n.
Let the number of people who can jerk off to one porn file, or use a Windows ISO image be M.
Clearly M > n. Economists call this phenomena scarcity. A loaf of bread is more scarce than a porn video file because potentially infinite number of people can get utilize a porn video file but that is not true for bread.
Scarcity leads to opportunity costs. i.e. the amount of stuff that needs to be not-produced to produce bread.
Differences in opportunity costs for various goods is what drives capitalism. Somebody will find it cheaper to produce bread instead of cereal flakes. Somebody will find it cheaper to produce cereal flakes instead of bread. They will exchange these commodities through a common token of exchange (money) and achieve a total higher production than if each where trying to produce both bread and corn flakes individually without specializing in one commodity & exchange.
However, there is catch. The society needs to legalize private property rights for goods-with-scarcity for the above plan to work. Or else nobody will have the incentive to capitalize on their lower oppurtunity costs for a particular widget if everybody can own/copycat everything he/she produces without exchanging anything in return for it. This will inevitably lead to very low production like what happened in communist economies which had no private property rights.
Geeks are right when they say patents & copyrights are bad for goods with no scarcity. e.g. software, digital media formats
Geeks are wrong when they say patents & copyrights are bad for goods with scarcity. e.g. goods made using biotech.
So my advice for geeks is keep their FOSS ideologies where it belongs, i.e. goods with no scarcity. e.g. bioinformatics.
Biotech is a whole different story. FOSS ideas won't work there.
P.S: Don't mistake biotech for bioinformatics
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
They shot genetic material at cells until the cells take up the genetic material and hopefully do what the researcher wants it to do. They usually use a sequence that protects it from some herbicide to know what cells take up the genetic material. I realize that the benefits are immense from these products, but I kinda have to stop. Do they actually now what they are doing or are they just guessing? I don't know what can happen, but it really bugs me when they try to sound like they know exactly what they are doing.
This company isn't looking to be our new Pig Breeding Overlords they basically want to say this is a Monsanto Bred Pig with a certain process and no other pigs can be called Monsanto pigs. If you copy the process you can still sell your pig but you can not call it a Monsanto Pig.
Scraping the barrel or what, that original story is from 2005...
Tagged 'capitalistpigs' for obvious reasons. =)
Anyone want to bet on how long it will take before this whole silly scam that is the current patent system will come tumbling down, due to this kind of possibly legal, but obviously unsound patents? As far as I can see, it will have to go one way or the other; it has long been simply a way for big companies to stifle competition and extort money from those who can ill afford it, and it is well on the way to become the next, big stumbling block for our economy.
So at SOME point, Monsanto seeds will be free for the grab, and farmer with contaminated fields can smile at any Monsanto lawyer and show them the bird.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
--Christoph Then, a patent expert with Greenpeace in Germany--
If Then then Then = True
If Not Then then Then = False
If Then AND Not Then then Then = File_Not_Found
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
No, just enough of us to provide a supply of Soylent Green for the rest until the population is small enough to support using more sustainable farming techniques.
Alas, the maximal population that the land can support will probably be severely reduced by then, because modern agricultural techniques ruin the land for anything except heavily industrialised agriculture.
After decade or two we can expect corporations lobbying for patents term extension for another 20 years. Copyright holders pushed it through, why not patent owners ?
Viagra patended human intercourse.
"We applied for a patent for some specific reproductive methods used by humans" said Viagra spokesperson John Smith, "Any enjoyment or kids produced using these methods would be covered by these patents."
When asked on pricing, mr. Smith responded "We expect to present very affordable licences to the general public, shortly."
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
So you admit that you arguments are based on an invented stance that no one actually supports, and yet somehow everyone else is supposed to disprove it to win the argument?
Sounds to me like you work for Greenpeace
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
and who's next? of course, YOU PIGS! mahahaha!
Fuck with the food supply, and bad things can happen.
No civilization is ever further than three meals away from an armed civil uprising.
Just like the seed vault in Norway, we are going to need a pig vault in case Monsanto decides some day to stop selling pig sperm to our farmers.
BTW, please someone tell me if this is not the perfect plot for a James Bond movie. They even have a lair-looking building
OK, here is another way to look at it. We've had an ongoing bad problem with just normal species introduced into areas that didn't have them with bad results. Think of the zebra mussel for one, and there have been numerous others down through the years, all over, the cane toad in Australia is another, in the US south, kudzu, various insect pests, there's a big list. Then we can look at invasive species that came from just normal intra species breeding and crossing, the Africanized European honeybee is a big one there.
Now, geneticaly modified organisms are "invasive species", just all man made. We have now this political dilemma as we put stricter controls on moving species around the planet, we are lessening controls on moving/introducing man made new species. Well, which is it, are invasive species a problem or not? We just don't call man made organisms invasive species, but in a very real sense, they are. All we have is past examples, some seem to be OK, others to be really *not* OK, and we don't know until it happens.
Sorta like casino bank gambling, except with living things. Are we really being honest about the risk side of risk/reward? I maintain we aren't, they are severely downplaying the risk, and there is no insurance available, we have no backup full ecosystems once invasive species get loose, and they sometimes create rather large problems that even with all our tech we cannot solve.
We have no idea long term what will happen with many of them, and all we have to go on so far is some examples like I mentioned, the canola superweed, and like starlink corn, etc., and then the side effects of modding local environments with these invasive species so that you can re-mod it with specific chemicals, and it doesn't seem to take long to start having problems from another vector, the example of the Palmer pigweed amaranth showing up heavy in GM cotton fields, then taking them over, developing huge resistance to the very chemicals pushed in the beginning as being "economical". Yes they were-for awhile., but a generation or two at the most and now these problems are starting to show up. And that is state of the art, it is as specific as we have to look at, we just don't know until after a generation or two timewise. We don't know in advance, they guess and take the default it will be OK because it is their economic investment. This has turned into faith based science, that's the worry, faith based on corporate PR.
The thing is we just don't know. And the economics can sometimes not be there either, look at the recent big wipeout of corn/maize in South Africa for an example, they had a lot of farmers there who grew monsanto GM corn that failed to produce much in the way of edible grain this season, and that is the number one food crop there. The farmers blame the company, the company blames the farmers, but none of that matters once you look at the result, a severely restricted crop. We keep seeing unintended consequences, glitches, bugs, small 0 days, biological programming errors compounded by inapproriate user actions to continue my analogy. Whoopsies. I am just worried we will start seeing really LARGE 0 days, because the small and mediums are now starting to show up after a generation. And if a big corporation screws up, I mean really screws up, they go bankrupt..but that economic bankruptcy still wouldn't solve the problem of their biological screwup now running rampant all over. There is no biological insurance out there available.
There are no easy answers here, none. All I have is this mental graph in my head of remembering back, how this industry has progressed, it started out amazing, everyone jumped on the bandwagon, then the gotchas start showing up, little niggling problems, then the larger ones, then.....it made me change my mind because I am about convinced now the whoppers will eventually show up, right now I think honeybee CCD could be the first really large one. Here's one that might happen, modding crops to produce pharmaceuticals. Ce
after someone claims rights to everything in the world, the rational people are going to wake up and realize it's fucking meaningless. It'll probably happen after some douchebag rights holder tries to sue someone for infringement, but then finds out the rights for suing someone for rights infringement belong to someone else, so they have to file for a license to sue for infringement but the troll holder is an extortionate cunt and demands unreasonable licensing fees, only to find out that the rights for charging unreasonable licensing fees is held by someone else. You see where this is going?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Why are we rehashing the news from 2005?
WO2005/015989 and WO2005/017204
http://v3.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?adjacent=true&KC=A1&date=20060503&NR=1651030A1&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_V3&CC=EP&FT=D
Let's get up to date.
Check out some US file history at
http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair
with application number 10/565548 .
Or some EP file history from
http://www.epoline.org/portal/public/registerplus
with Application number EP20040757318 .
Or stick with old news:
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2240
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=GUP20060520&articleId=2480
Frankly, I am tired of the amateur approach to patents so prevalent at Slashdot.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They're trying to patent pig-fucking, which somehow seems ironic...
Some of the above comments are really funny, but this is actually quite serious. Monsanto is one of the most evil corporates ever. They force their genetically modified crap upon (bio)farmers. When their seeds then infect other crops, their lawyers appear and claim intellectual property rights, suing farmers left and right.
They promise better crops / results from GM origins, but the crops are actually worse over the years, they can't be sold in as many markets (because of GM bans), they require much more chemicals, superweeds take hold, and cancer increases.
I pray that genetically modified seeds (or animals, as the article says) never come to Europe. Ever.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This article was from 2005. In 2007 Monsanto sold its swine breeding business, Choice Genetics, to Newsham Genetics LC. Monsanto's doing plenty of other crazy stuff people should be paying attention to, but this is old news.
Coming from a strong Jewish heritage, that's... that's so incredibly offensive!
I love it!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
It should have been a no-brainer very early on in the process that reproduction is "obvious to a person skilled in the art."
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
And I'm not arguing against innovation. I am arguing against essentially giving a single entity such a large degree of very direct control over agricultural production. We're already seeing the effects of having Companies Too Big To Die actually dying wreaking havoc with the economy. I don't care to have such analogous circumstances happening to the single most important aspect of civilization.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well this is a pickle, do we allow the creationists to try and claim prior art?
Why bother
Pigs != Breeding techniques for pigs
/* No Comment */
For someone who thinks that what Monsanto is doing is wrong and harmful to the world, is there any organization whose primary mission is to stop Monsanto and companies like it? If not...
There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
just ask momma pig and daddy pig.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Pigs and pig breeding were not invented nor created by Monsanto. How is this not immediately rejected by our patent system.
Furthermore, since when are natural, non-invented, life forms patentable? And even if an organism is modified, it is only the modification that was contributed, not the whole organism. To allow patent to whole organisms based on simple discovery or modification is akin to allowing a patent on Iron because you've found a way to make something with it.
This is nonsense. I think our politicians need an education beyond law school (aka learning how to manipulate and exploit).
I'm probably buried in the comments thread by now, but I'm a Monsanto grunt, so I thought that I'd throw my two cents into the ring, since I'm also a long-time Slashdot reader. I've been working at the company for about a year, and it seems to me to be run by very smart people. I've honestly never worked with this many talented people outside of the University - where everybody works for practically free. And to be honest, my access to research is much higher than at the university I worked at previously.
Monsanto has given up the rBGH industry and the livestock, and I know of no plans to bring a Terminator gene to market - ever. I think it might be like how some countries are "nuclear ready" - they could start producing the weapons if a war broke out, but they aren't making it right now. People didn't like the Terminator gene, and it's my impression that the scientists who work here didn't either.
Personally, I think a lot of the blowback against GM crops is over the top and based on a gut reaction that people have. Organic techniques are not sufficient to feed everybody at this point. GM gives us the opportunity to do a lot more than increase yield - you can make plants that are able to grow in drought or flooding, use nitrogen more effectively and are resistant to bugs by using far less pesticide than conventional means, plus who knows how many other things. For the most part, you can probably even do that by just moving around the genes that are already in the plant.
My personal concerns are more about biodiversity and corporate control - I'm all for government regulations, but a corporation won't regulate itself (see the movie "The Corporation"). Genetic patents are a much bigger deal than the science, from this perspective, and if you believe they should be changed, then *please* email your representative. Also, realize that many other companies like Syngenta, BASF, and Dow are in this business, too - they're 50% of the market although they receive far less scrutiny.
I also don't believe that this business is bankrupting farmers around the world like some people are saying. It doesn't make sense to have a perennial business where people arenâ(TM)t going to be repeat buyers.
Of course, I'm also not so naive to believe that I can put total trust in a corporation. If the bailout has shown us anything, it's that these behemoths get too big for anybody to really know everything that's going on. Again: state and federal legislation is the best way to force the company to be accountable.
One other thing, I just think it's worthwhile to think "What does this really mean" before going straight from a company's name to "EVIL!!!!" It does a disservice to the people who are trying to make a change from the inside. Reasoned and intelligible critiques are much more likely to change things, even if they don't garner as many pitchforks.
Peace and love to the /.
Which is why they will get massive amounts of money when they finally do begin to fail.
Governments around the world will bankrupt themselves in order to prop up Monsanto if they ever fail or if their crops begin to. It's just like AIG except on a much more serious scale.
Has anyone suggested investing in commodities? :-)
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It may be the stuff of cyberpunk novels, but I believe we'll see widespread corporate warfare in the coming century. Heck, Blackwater (Xe) is already insinuated into government.
But we will hit a point where the only thing for the civilian population to do is rise up, and take arms against the corporations. And it will be with bloodshed, not lawyers. (Unless they beat them to death with lawyers, which some people may advocate)
It took ten years, but I can finally post on a Slashdot story with some degree of authority. I have a PhD in animal breeding and genetics and work actively in the area. Also note that IANAL. (Disclaimer: This post represents my opinions only, not those of my employer, the US Department of Agriculture.)
As noted up-thread, this patent was filed for years ago. We discussed it quite a bit around the office. Assuming a sane world in which there is a competent patent examination process most of the claims in the patent will be thrown out on prior art, and in many cases an innovative step is lacking. Note that the patent is species-specific. What does that tell us? It tells us that Monsanto (tm) was aware of prior art in other species but believed the PTO could be convinced that moving from cows or chickens to pigs is a novel step that is non-obvious to a practitioner skilled in the art. I believe that this application has gone nowhere, and that the IP was sold off, maybe to PIC or Newsham.
This is slimy, unpleasant stuff, but I am cautiously optimistic that any patent granted will be so narrow in scope as to not affect most of us consumers. Genetic evaluation programs for dairy cattle are now using high-density SNP arrays to improve predictions, and there are a number of nasty patent applications floating around out there, and the PTO may get some of them wrong.
Police departments worldwide expected to pay royalties.
*hangs head sheepishly*
I keep trying to avoid posting while drinking, but an obvious 'Epic Fail' this time. I reread my comment, and wondered what my own point was.
Sounds to me like you work for Greenpeace
Maybe I should infiltrate them, then turn alcoholic!
I think my point was about looking out for the dangers that can crop up from all of this patenting genomes/sequences/DNA, it could come back around to bite us in the butt.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Well as far as that goes, yea it has a lot of potential to bite us in the but. I don't think that we should be able to patent genes, unless they are engineered from scratch. Otherwise it's the textbook definition of trying to patent prior art
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde