What can be placed under license protection? The organizations “No Patents on Seeds!” And “Noah’s Ark” want questions like these to be answered precisely and are starting a petition.
The case caused a sensation: patent on salmon, patent on trout, patent on the mixture of plants that are fed to the fish. This was recently negotiated at the European Patent Office in Munich (EPA) after civil society organizations raised an objection.
The patents were initially granted in 2018. The complaint has now been granted, but for the two NGOs, “No Patent on Seeds” and “Noah’s Ark”, the provisional end of the proceedings in the individual case is not sufficient. The case had shown that patenting life was initially possible.
That is why the two organizations are now starting the petition “Life is not an invention”. This is to ensure that a conference on the European Patent Office will be convened within one year. Specifically, the 38 ministers of the signatory states to the EPO who are to decide in this conference are addressed, according to the petition, that patents on conventionally bred plants and animals are excluded.
Patents on crosses, selections and random mutations as well as on seeds should therefore also be taboo. The organizers set themselves the goal of finding 15,000 supporters for their cause.
The fish whose patent was recently negotiated are not an isolated case. For example, “No Patents on Seeds!” Says that in the past ten years around 100 patents on plants have been applied for in Europe alone. Around 200 have already been granted.
This has far-reaching consequences for agriculture: once under patent protection, plants are owned by corporations; Farmers who want to grow them have to pay license fees. The work done by generations of farmers to date (through cultivation, previous breeding or crossbreeding) is not taken into account. In the north-south relationship, this also has a development policy dimension.
According to a fact sheet of the organizations, “with this”, “a handful of international corporations gain increasing control over the production of our food”. And further: “These corporations could ultimately decide what farmers produce, what the food trade offers, what we eat and how much we all ultimately have to pay for it.”
Finally, it was not only the salmon that ensured that the topic was brought into the limelight, but also brewing barley and beer, a salad that can be grown at elevated temperatures, or bushy melons. Patent protection has been applied for for all of them.
>> Petition against patenting seeds, plants and animals