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Grameen Bank and the Monster

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Grameen Rejects Mean The American Home "Monster" is held at bay in Bangladesh - but who is going to monitor the micro-creditors? Since when is "empowerment through indebtedness" a solution for poor farming communities?

On 27 July 1998 Muhammad Yunus, managing director of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh was reported by the BBC to have cancelled the Bank's planned relationship with Monsanto Corporation (often referred to as the American Home Monster" following its announced merger with American Home Products earlier this year). The abandoned arrangement would have given the micro-credit bank U.S.$250,000 to provide loans to poor farmers to buy Monsanto's agro-chemical and biotechnology products. Grameen's capitulation follows a month of intense international pressure that began June 25th when Yunus announced the Monsanto grant together with the Corporation's CSO, Robert Shapiro.

Grameen Turns Mean?

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From poverty-fighter to the peasants Pinkerton Is Bangladesh's fabled Grameen Bank turning mean with its Monsanto deal...or is the "Monster" turning farmer philanthropist?

The Grameen Bank's June 25th announcement that it will accept US$150,000 from Monsanto Corporation (St. Louis, MO. USA) to launch the Grameen Monsanto Center for Environment-Friendly Technologies is stirring up a storm of controversy throughout agricultural and rural organizations around the Third World. The surprise move was unveiled jointly by Muhammad Yunus, Managing Director of the Grameen Bank and Robert Shapiro, MonsantoÌs Chair and CEO. The company's initial grant is for soft loans to Bangladeshi farmers.

Volume 5, #2 Repeat the Term:

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Governments at FAO's Gene Commission fail to make the grade on Farmers' Rights and Benefit Sharing

Negotiations for a new International Undertaking took place on two fronts. The Commission Chair took a small regionally-representative group aside to discuss access and benefit-sharing in the Lebanon room while the Vice-Chair took on Farmers' Rights with the remainder of the delegation in the Green room. Both negotiating processes broke down when the North found itself without running room and the South presented "bottom line" positions in both arenas. Here's an overview of the dividing issues, what happened, and where diplomats can go from here.

Temas relacionados: 
Genómica y Biotecnología
Derechos humanos / Derechos de los Agricultores
Relacionados foros: 
Alimentación y Agricultura: FAO, CGIAR, CFS

Volume 5, #1 Terminator Trends:

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The 'Silent Spring' of Farmers' Rights - Seed Saving, the Public Sector, and Terminator Transnationals

The only thing that can keep pace with the rate of agricultural biotechnological change these days is the speed with which the transnatinoal Life Industry is eating itself. in the last couple of years, Monsanto has  spent more than $6.7 billion buying seed and other ag biotech companies. Now, American Home Products is merging with Monsanto for another $33 billion. Other massive mergers are inevitable within the next few months. That transnational agri-business wants to stop farmers from saving seeds and conducting their own plant breeding is hardly news.

Temas relacionados: 
Terminator y Nuevos confinamientos

Icelanders Put deCODE Genetics and Roche on Ice

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Corporate Gene Hunters' Bid for Monopoly on Icelanders' DNA put on Hold

The Iceland government has been forced to postpone a bill to give genomics company, deCODE an exclusive license to collect current and retrospective medical information about all Icelanders into a central database and the sole right to commercial exploitation. A number of major concerns were cited in the announcement to postpone the initiative.

Temas relacionados: 
Patentes y Biopiratería
Genómica y Biotecnología
Derechos humanos / Derechos de los Agricultores

American Home "Monster"?

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Implications of the Monsanto / American Home Products Merger

The $33 billion merger between AHP and Monsanto will force the life industry into a race to see who will come out on top. The merger creates a new challenge for anti-trust and anti-monopoly law enforcement in the areas of pharmaceuticals, crop chemicals, plant breeding, human genomics, and livestock.

Temas relacionados: 
Concentración Corporativa
Genómica y Biotecnología
Biodiversidad y diversidad cultural

RAFI Takes Terminator to COP IV in Bratislava... and COP IV Responds

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As a result of solid NGO pressure, the ominous Terminator Technology" became a topic of substantive discussion and debate at the recent meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP IV) in Bratislava, Slovakia, 4-15 May.

Temas relacionados: 
Concentración Corporativa
Patentes y Biopiratería
Terminator y Nuevos confinamientos
Armas biológicas
Genómica y Biotecnología
Derechos humanos / Derechos de los Agricultores
Biodiversidad y diversidad cultural

Quinoa Patent Dropped

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Andean Farmers Defeat U.S. University

Andean farmers forced Colorado State University to surrender its US patent on 'Apelawa" quinoa. The anti-patent campaign that began 14 months ago (1997) ended on May 1st 1998 when on eof the quinoa 'inventors' admitted that the patent had been abandoned.

Temas relacionados: 
Patentes y Biopiratería
Derechos humanos / Derechos de los Agricultores
Biodiversidad y diversidad cultural

RAFI Launches Postcard Campaign to Oppose Basmati Rice Patent

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Thousands Drop A Line to the Prince Urging Him to Drop the Patent

RAFI officially launched the latest in a series of civil society protests with an international postcard campaign aimed at Prince Hans Adam II, the Prince of Liechtenstein. The Prince is the chairman of the RiceTec Group, whose Texas-based subsidiary, RiceTec Inc., holds the controversial patent laying claim to Asia's famous aromatic on Basmati rice.

Temas relacionados: 
Patentes y Biopiratería
Biodiversidad y diversidad cultural

Terminating Food Security?

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The Terminator technology that sterilizes seed also threatens the food security of 1.4 billion people and must be terminated

Advocates for the newly patented terminator technology" developed jointly by the US Department of Agriculture and Mississippi-based Delta and Pine Land seed company claim that it will not only be an incentive to plant breeding investment but also a boon to food production in the South. This is "nonsense" according to RAFI Research Director, Hope Shand.

Inter-American Foundation Strays into an Intellectual Property Minefield

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A public row over the notorious US patent on the medicinal plant ayahuasca has broken out between COICA, the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples' Organizations of the Amazon Basin, and the US government's Inter-American Foundation (IAF). In correspondence made public on the internet by COICA on March 4th, IAF has demanded COICA disavow a 1996 resolution approved by Amazonian indigenous peoples' organizations from 9 countries, that condemns the US plant patent (#PP5751) held by the International Plant Medicine Corporation (IPMC). IAF has further threatened to withdraw funding from groups that don't heed its command.

Temas relacionados: 
Patentes y Biopiratería
Derechos humanos / Derechos de los Agricultores
Biodiversidad y diversidad cultural

Harvard Oncomouse (and all Mammals) Still Not Patentable in Canada

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Canada is holding the line on life patenting. Bucking patent trends in the USA and Europe, Canada's Federal Court ruled last week that Harvard's "oncomouse" is not patentable under Canadian law.

On August 4, 1995 Canada's Commissioner of Patents ruled that Harvard University's genetically altered mice were not patentable in Canada. The President and Fellows of Harvard appealed that decision to Canada's Federal Court. On April 21, 1998, the Federal Court ruled against Harvard, and dismissed the appeal

Temas relacionados: 
Patentes y Biopiratería
Genómica y Biotecnología

Terminator Technology Targets Farmers

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New Genetic Technology Aims to Prevent Farmers from Saving Seed

RAFI's first publication alerting the world to Terminator technology - published just weeks after RAFI discovered the patent. On March 3, 1998 the US Department of Agriculture and an American cotton seed company, Delta & Pine Land Co., received a US patent on a technique that genetically alters seed so that it will not germinate if re-planted a second time. It is a global threat the farmers, biodiversity and food security.

Monsanto Takes Terminator

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Its Now or Never for Agricultural Biodiversity in Bratislava

After a week of silence on the subject, the USA (a country that is not a Party to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity) is lobbying hard to re-write the Friends of the Chair' report on the Terminator - a technology widely condemned by numerous CBD members. Why the sudden spurt of behind the scenes activity? On May 11th, the giant Monsanto Corporation - a company with close White House connections and major multinational muscle - bought control of the Terminator patent. For Governments fighting to protect agricultural biodiversity in the Convention, its now or never.

Monsanto, the world's second largest pesticides corporation, has vaulted from nowhere to become the world's fourth largest seed company. Between mid-1996 and the end of 1997, Monsanto spent roughly US $2 billion in seed-related acquisitions. Its May 11th announcement that the corporation will take over Dekalb and Delta and Pine Land seed companies adds a staggering US $4.3 billion to its merger bill. By way of comparison, if Monsanto's Monday splurge were spent on public sector research, it would fully fund the entire CGIAR system at 1998 levels for over 12 years. But it is not who Monsanto is buying - but what patents it is acquiring - that has observers alarmed. Monsanto now has the Terminator - and maybe much more.

US Patent on New Genetic Technology Will Prevent Farmers from Saving Seed

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Delta and Pine Land Co. (Mississippi, USA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that they received US Patent No. 5,723,765 on a new genetic technology designed to prevent unauthorized seed saving by farmers. The patented technology, Control of plant gene expression" would allow seed companies to control the viability of progeny seed without harming the crop. In other words, the new technology genetically alters the seed so that it will not germinate if re-planted a second time.

Temas relacionados: 
Concentración Corporativa
Patentes y Biopiratería
Terminator y Nuevos confinamientos
Armas biológicas
Genómica y Biotecnología
Derechos humanos / Derechos de los Agricultores
Biodiversidad y diversidad cultural

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