Biotechnology multinationals, which already hold 40% of the world seed market, are trying to strengthen their monopoly and threaten food security, says a report published on 20 October by seed, environmental and consumer NGOs.
For example, Corteva (formerly Pioneer Dupont) holds a patent for a process that modifies the genome of a cell using the CRISPR technique and claims intellectual property rights over all cells, seeds and plants that include the same genetic information, whether in broccoli, maize, soybeans, rice, wheat, cotton, barley or sunflower.
Corteva has applied for some 1,430 patents on new GMOs while Bayer/Monsanto has applied for 119.
The strategy criticised consists of applying for “wide patents that would also cover plants which naturally present the same genetic characteristics as the GMOs they engineered. They will be lining their pockets from farmers and plant breeders, who in turn will have a restricted access to what they can grow and work with”, summarises Mute Schimpf of the NGO Friends of the Earth Europe.
The NGOs call on policy makers to protect food crops from patenting, to end the abuse of EU patent legislation and to properly regulate all GMOs, both old and new genomic techniques.
See the report: https://aeur.eu/f/3r6 (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)