PHA-Exchange> FW: US-Latin Accord Undermines Biosafety Meeting

[Maria Hamlin Zúniga]

-----Original Message-----
From: etc at etcgroup.org [mailto:etc at etcgroup.org] 
Sent: jueves, 26 de febrero de 2004 12:18
To: iphc at cablenet.com.ni
Subject: ETC: US-Latin Accord Undermines Biosafety Meeting

ETC Group
Genotype
26 February 2004
www.etcgroup.org

The complete text is available at: http://www.etcgroup.org

US-Inspired Trilateral Agreement
Condones GM Contamination and Undermines Biosafety Protocol
 
Argentina Announces Corporate Welfare for Monsanto


As negotiations come to a head in Kuala Lumpur at the first meeting of the
Biosafety Protocol of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) the
United States along with Canada and a few Latin American states seem poised
to render the 86-nation agreement irrelevant.  News earlier this week that
the Argentine Government has offered to collect taxes from its GM soybean
farmers in lieu of royalty payments has stunned many delegations attending
the meeting in the Malaysian capital. The announcement comes as the United
States, Mexico and Canada are pressing governments to adopt their Trilateral
Agreement. The agreement sets the actionable level for GM contamination at a
whopping five percent. At that level of tolerance, Mexico's maize crop would
be riddled with foreign DNA from the Rio Grande to Guatemala in less than a
decade. Last month, Brazil bowed to pressure from Monsanto and agreed that
soybean crushers and processors in Rio Grande do Sul should collect seed
royalties for Monsanto. Now, Argentina proposes to tax its own farmers and
collect an estimated $34 million in royalties for Monsanto and other seed
companies because Monsanto claims farmers are illegally replanting harvested
seed and infringing its patents.

The Argentine proposal collapses one of the major tenets of patent regimes.
"Argentina is saying that it will police the patent system for Monsanto,"
says Silvia Ribeiro of ETC Group, "The police and the courts will be used
against farmers."  Until now, companies have argued that the beauty of the
patent system is that it is civil law where the costs of obtaining and
defending patents are borne by the patent-holders at no cost to the state.
"This pushes patents into the realm of criminal law," argues Ribeiro, who is
attending the Kuala Lumpur meeting.  

"Meanwhile, if governments agree to accept the Trilateral Agreement's
standard of 5 percent contamination, there will be no need for the Biosafety
Protocol at all.  Contamination will be everywhere in a matter of years,"
says Hope Shand, ETC's Research Director based in the USA.  "Monsanto, the
USA, and Argentina will press other states to accept the tax-based approach
to royalty payments," Shand explains, "Then comes the triple whammy -
governments will find it cheaper to promote the use of Terminator technology
rather than act as an unpopular royalty-collector for the Gene Giants."
Terminator technology renders GM seed sterile, forcing farmers to buy new
seed each growing season.  It amounts to a biological patent without a time
limitation.  "Most governments and the Biodiversity Convention stand firmly
against Terminator, " notes Shand, "But the USA, Brazil and Argentina have
been working to undermine opposition at the CBD.  Faced with the choice of
either collecting royalty taxes or allowing Terminator, some governments are
likely to cave in." 

The full text is available at: http://www.etcgroup.org






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