This is a call presented by ATTAC --- Action pour une Taxation des Transactions financières pour l'Aide aux Citoyens before the European Parliaments and the Union´s one on the subject of manipulations on life. ATTAC is the fastest growing movement against neoliberalism all over the world. Though having just 13 months of existence in France, its country of origin, ATTAC's first world congress last June gathered about 1,500 delegates from 71 countries.
From: "Laurent JESOVER" <jesover at attac.org> To: <welcome at attac.org> Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 Subject: [ATTAC] To prevent a hold-up of multinationals on life
Original document: http://attac.org/fra/cons/inter7en.htm
RTF : http://attac.org/fra/asso/doc/tele/berlanen.zip PDF: http://attac.org/fra/asso/doc/tele/berlanen.pdf
CALL ON THE PUBLIC AND ITS ELECTED MEMBERS
To prevent a hold-up of multinationals on life
The current hold-up on life (in the name of "progress" and "competition") is a threat to our future and the one of this planet. With the avent of biotechnologies (the transformation of living matter into a source of profit), the seeds industry has been taken over by a small number of multinational companies of the chemical-pharmaceutical sector in the last fifteen years (Monsanto, Novartis, DuPont, Zenaca, Aventis.). Yet the seeds industry determines the evolution of agriculture as well as to a large extent that of nutrition since the success of agricultural innovations depends on how plants and animals react to them.
Up to now, this genetic factor widely remained under the control of public research in agronomy. The companies that lead the transformation of agriculture during this century (through mechanization, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides) preferred that the plants (or animals) be adapted to their innovations by the taxpayers. Neither McCormick nor International Harvester would fund any research to develop some varieties of corn or wheat fit for mechanical harvesting. All over the world, public research in agronomy therefore had this important responsibility of adaptation which in fact was dictated by the agro-industry. Its objective part - it matters little that all of it was done in the name of general interest or the one of farmers- was to ensure the disappearance of the pre-capitalist farming production. At its heart is the improvement of plants and animals.
This improvement, although useful, was not directly a source of profit: as long as the plants and animals would reproduce in the farmer's field, the seed breeder's capital could not. This situation has been deeply altered by biotechnologies. And this privatization of living matter logically induces the one of public research. The (molecular) biologists who replace traditional agronomists don't have their ethical scruples (I).
The ultimate aim of the multinational seed producers is to avoid, at all costs, that plants and animals reproduce at the farm. In other words, they want to manufacture sterile plants and animals. This is nothing new (2), except that the amount of money that these powerful investors allocated to biotechnologies during the least fifteen years leaves them no other choice then to tighten their grasp on the living. For their capital to live, life itself needs to be sterilized. The political economics of our society, so good at walking on dead bodies, as well as the financial voracity of the shareholders now impose that objective with a sense of urgency.
Terminator, the well-named necrotechnology
In this line, the Terminator biotechnology (immediately acquired by Monsanto) allows plants to be genetically modified so as to destroy their own germ once mature. A complex genetic system is introduced into the plant (transgenes, i.e. genes coming from other species) and it works according to the principle of an antipersonnel mine: a neutralizing device (repressor gene), a detonator (promoter gene) and an explosive (gene producing the suicide-toxin). Before their being sold, the seeds are soaked in a tetracycline bath (but many methods of activation exist) in order to "unpin" the system. The detonator then comes into contact with the explosive. The plant's state of ripeness triggers the promoter, that activates the gene producing the toxin which finally kills the developing germ. The seed harvested by the farmer is then biologically sterile.
As emphasized by the director for plant production research unit at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), this technique - of which there exist many versions with patent pending - " also allows a complete collection of the genetic resources". (3) Actually, as farming started with our ancestors putting apart some of the harvested seeds and sowing them the next year, this confiscation of the most fundamental property of living beings - to be able to re-produce and to multiply - is the final blow to farmers and farming. What comes afterwards will still be called "farming": as we continue to call "breeding" (and even subsidize) pig plants floating on a sea of excrements. A few multinationals are thus in the process of acquiring with no other control than the "markets" they shape an tremendous power upon our food resources and our lives, in industrialized as well as Third World countries.
Patents versus farmers and farming
Terminator is such a disgusting (necro)technology that the current international campaign for its ban will perhaps succeed in outlawing it. But this tree must not hide the forest. The patent permits the same goal to be reached, as shown by the example of the USA. When a farmer wishes to use Monsanto patented and GMOed seeds, he must sign a contract on not sowing his harvested grain. If the farmer has obtained his seeds without any contract, from neighbors for instance (a current practice), Monsanto then has the possibility to sue him for using patented seeds. Yet the farmer was guaranteed that his practice - to sow his harvested grain - was a right. But according to Monsanto and the bio-industry, this right is applying only to seeds obtained by ordinary methods of selection and not to the ones with a GMO patent!
Therefore, the patent is used against the farmer, against the ability of plants and animals to reproduce, against life and, consequently, against each one of us. The same way that the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) meant to protect investors against economic risks, the patent protects them against the unfortunate possibility of living beings to reproduce by declaring plants and animals legally sterile. Isn't the mystification of an ultraliberal society the creation of new priviledges, as we celebrate the two hundred years of their abolition? The patent is a formidable incentive for the generalization of transgenetic techniques at the expense of research work on the improvement of plants and animals using available, efficient, but devoid (for the time being) of priviledges for anybody.
Leading the way, Monsanto invites farmers to report their "pirate
neighbors and puts at their disposal a free informer line. The patent is a legalized Terminator with the big advantage to spare the multinationals the manufacturing of this complex biologic sterilization and have the tax-payer-and-citizen pay for the costs of its own expropriation! Indeed, the patent allows a "complete collection of the genetic resources" too.
GMO's rape of the public
The same seed producers concurrently organize the rape of the public by trying to make us consume products manufactured from GMOs that we do not want. And this for two ligitimate reasons: they are useless and expose us to long-term risks. The majority of scientists are against the widespread use of poorly controlled techniques that were not subject to any health danger assessment and that introduce into our environment a new risk: a genetic pollution which nobody knows how get rid of.
To create genetic chimeras like pesticide or herbicide plants (2/3 of the current GMOs) is to accelerate the movement towards a yet more industrial agriculture and nutrition, factors of the alarming advance of diseases like obesity (one fourth of the population in the United States), cancers and cardiovascular diseases.That means turning our back on sustainable agriculture and the respect of biodiversity. That means increasing the level of chemical pollution. That means going on with the announced destruction of farming jobs and of our extraordinary agricultural heritage.
Brussels helps the "investors ".
It is worrying to see that in July 1998 the European Parliament and Council passed, within the frame of the codecision procedure, a directive (98/44/CE) for the "legal protection of biotechnological inventions". July 30, 2000, is the deadline for the member States to conform their legislation to this directive.
On october 21, 1998, the Netherlands appealed against the directive to the European Court of Justice in order to have it cancelled. Certain points put forth by La Haye are of legal order but others go to the heart of the problem. The appeal addresses for instance the violation of the convention on biodiversity and the one on fundamental human rights: "Under directive 98/44/CE, it will be possible to patent individual parts of the human body. Such a materialistic partition of the human body is against human dignity". Italy as well as Norway, a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) also appealed against the directive, arguing that it should have been accepted by unanimous approval according to article 235 of the CE treaty and not by a qualified majority (article 100 A of the treaty).
The legal services of the Parliament and the Council now draw up a report for the Court of Justice in the hope to convince the recently elected Parliament not to come back on last year's decision. According to certain officials, this would trigger a legal and political mess. The French government also is preparing such a report via the National Institut for Industrial Property and the legal affairs department of the Foreign Ministry. Since in both cases the work has been given to "technicians", public representatives are put aside. It is important that they take back the advantage and this time be fully informed about the issue. This to counter the life patent lobbyists' hope that since the appeal has no suspensory effect, the directive has already been transposed to a national level at the time the Coiurt of Justice takes its decision. It will then be too late to step back .
The European Commission, which prepared the text passed by the Parliament and the Council is also flying to the rescue of the directive, with its own report to the Court of Justice. Neither the Commission nor the executive officials of the Union seem to recognize that they organize a worldwide hold-up of living matter by a handful of multinationals, i.e. on our biological future and the one of this planet. Do they realize the absurd character of directive 98/44/CE ? The re-production and multiplication of plants and animals are as ubiquitous as sunshine. They are even the fundamental property of living beings. What a shame ! We better be careful : this logic will soon force us shut our doors and windows to let candel retailers fight against the unfair competition from the sun. And why ? To support the investments of the cartel of multinationals in genetic chimeras that neither farmers nor the public want!
Génoplante or the private ownership of public research
In any case, this dimension entirely escaped to the management of INRA and its guardian ministers who just celebrated the "wedding between computer science and biology" with the program Génoplante aimed at "manufactuting industrial property", i.e. patents. The operational responsible of Génoplante goes as far as to invite scientists to be an active part of the "Economic war". Génoplante, with its two technological platforms (in Evry and Montpellier) and a FRF1.4 billion budget over five years associates public research institutions (INRA, CIRAD, IRD, CNRS) and private companies into a scientific interest group meant to spawn into an economic interest group. The private companies will mostly benefit from it since they only pay 30% of the funds and have the majority in the executive boards: the "strategic committee" of Génoplante counts the head of the INRA (also member of the board of directors of Rhône-Poulenc Agro from 1989 to 1994), the head of Rhône-Poulenc Agro and the president of Limagrain who has close tights to Rhône-Poulenc.
Génoplante will partly subcontract its projects through invitations to bid. The laboratories, whose fundings were first punctured to finance the scientific interest group, will then have to send in proposals to it in order to stay afloat. Public research is being funneled towards private interests. The non-profit globalization of genetic resources and knowledge, the common good of humanity are being replaced by the promoters of Génoplante with a market cartelization and an "economic war". This represents a tremendous regression.
The self-proclaimed multinational "life sciences" companies have declared war to living beings and to farmers, i.e. to humanity. We do not accept these threats on our freedom. We refuse that the farmer become a "pirate". We refuse a biototalitarian society governed by multinationals and their allies. We refuse the denaturation of the powerful fundamental research tools of transgenetics. We refuse that war.
ATTAC asks the European and National Parliaments, via their governments to :
- demand the setup of a moratorium on genetically modified organisms by the European Commission and its Council of Ministers.
- outlaw necrotechnologies like the Terminator.
- File reports with the European Court of Justice to back up the request made by the Netherlands, Italy and Norway to cancel the European directive on a "legal protection of biotechnological inventions".
ATTAC particularly asks the French deputies and senators to:
- convince the Foreign Ministry to act against and in favor of this directive.
- demand from the Minister for Research to stop the Génoplante project, which aims at making more social the price to pay for the privatisation of living matter, and in the contrary to restructure research for a sustainable, autonomous and farmer-oriented agriculture.
- create democratic controls for the powerful tool of biotechnological research to serve life, not profit or death.
- ask the French government, then the European Union and finally the United Nations to solemnly proclaim a new human right: the right on living matter and genetic resources as a common good of humanity, not subject to property.
NOTES
(1) Those great agronomists would reject with disdain the offer of reap a personal advantage from their works. The traditional public moral collapse, the general disorder of the minds appears in this, that now, a socialist government incites the public researchers to deposit patents in their names and for valorization.
(2) Read Jean-Pierre Berlan and Richard Lewontin. " La menace du complexe genetico-industriel " (genetic-industrial threats.) Le Monde diplomatique. Décembre 1998. And Jean-Pierre Berlan. " Confiscation du vivant " (Confiscation of the living). Transversales Science/Culture, n°55. Février-Mars 1999.
(3) Le Monde. 12 Mars 1999.
(4) That concerns some plants made tolerant by genetic manipulations to its main herbicide: the Round-up. Those plants can keep it in stock in their texture without damage. Those chemical firm's aim is then to increase the use of herbicides. So much for the genetically modified Organisms (GMO) which "protect the environment."
(5) The INRA Genoplant aims to " fabricate industrial property". They transfer part of the public laboratories resources to Genoplant which might conclude an agreement with it in order to recover the credits they have been deprived of. Thus the promoters hope mobilize I8O scientists, that means the most part of the INRA researchers in vegetal biology. The " strategic board of Genoplant is made by the general director of INRA (member of the board of directors of Rhône-Poulenc agro- chemie from 1989 to 1994), the general director of Rhône-Poulenc Agrochimie, and the president of Limagrain who holds straight contacts with Rhône-Poulenc.
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