Posted on 02/11/2013 9:16:12 AM PST by Theoria
Then allowing their gene into the wild to “infect” a non-Monsanto crop disallowing it’s use by a non-customer of his use of seed crop constitute a taking by Monsanto.
Soybeans don’t cross pollinate.
Thank you for the interesting discussion.
I might be bit rusty on my genetics, but I’m fairly certain that the resulting crop would have traits from both the donor and the receiver of the pollen.
I understand your point concerning the soybeans and even your point concerning the utility (lack thereof) of planting the resulting hybrid.
That said, the patent issue still remains, because certain genes were patented, not just the complete resulting hybrid. Therefore, it is logical to assume that depending on the dominant nature of that gene, it could very well be present in the resulting crop or animal.
The patent holder might choose not to sue, for the reasons you stated, but that doesn’t address their ability to sue.
Let’s say you patent a certain dog gene that you’ve created to produce bright green eyes in Labs. Now one of your male Labs jumps the fence and tangos with one of female dogs. The resulting puppies have green eyes. Is my possession of the puppies a patent infringement? What if I desire to sell the puppies or breed them? What if you were breeding tastier deer and some got away, do you own the rights to the resulting line of wild deer that you don’t own or control?
My point is that it opens up Pandora’s box on certain matters of “control”.
I presume that these gene patents expire the same as regular patents?
Large corporations or anyone else will fail miserably to the point of bankruptcy by investing in any attempt to corner the seed market by engineering non-viable seeds. They would by functionally unable to compete with any ordinary farmer's privately grown legacy seed crops.
Our food supply chain is already so fragile, if we had some major anything happen, this type of thinking would seem to compound the issue.
It's nowhere near that serious. The only thing that is anywhere near that serious is US government (USDA) interference with the market.
Then allowing their gene into the wild to “infect” a non-Monsanto crop disallowing it’s use by a non-customer of his use of seed crop constitute a taking by Monsanto
This is exactly why so many people hate Monsanto.
If you are growing corn next to someone who is growing Monsanto corn, it is a virtual certainty that at least some of your corn will be pollinated with Monsanto genes from the other field. If you sell your entire crop for corn chips or ethanol, Monsanto probably won't bother you. But if you sell any of it for seed -- or even keep any of it for see -- you might find yourself faced with fighting a lawsuit that will destroy you, or acquiescing to Monsanto's terms.
Monsanto doesn't win every lawsuit they file, but they can afford it. Farmers can't.
A plant patent has a 20 year life, I think.
The farmers who have found themselves in court have been unable to explain how their entire field was cross pollinated by a neighbors more distant plants, rather than plants from the same field and how they knew it would be.
The farmers who have found themselves in court have been unable to explain how their entire field was cross pollinated by a neighbors more distant plants, rather than plants from the same field and how they knew it would be.
That's certainly true in a lot of cases. Someone mentioned a Canadian case upthread. What most people are not told is that the farmer who was sued sold his own line of hybrid seeds and claimed -- get this -- that his canola was contaminated with Monsanto seed that fell off a passing truck. As you know, not a credible story.
The original “green revolution” in agriculture was possible because there was a great diversity among each of the crops they were trying to improve - their was genetic diversity from which to mix and match different traits.
Nowdays, the world over, high volume production values, economics and technology are stripping our basic food crops of much genetic diversity, with each one dwindling down to just a few “best” selected seed sources, and now this too:
“Market concentration has resulted in 10 multinational corporations holding approximately two-thirds (65%) of commercial seed for major crops, reducing choice and innovation, and increasing prices for the American farmer.”.
Lack of genetic diversity has proven to be disasterous to most all species of life sooner or later. Things seem to be fine for some time as most every condition is handled well, until something new, or some change occurs and there is a genetic problem to mounting a good response and the gene pool has little diversity from which to find enough survivers.
If ever the whole world is using Monstanto’s “Ready Roundup” soybean seeds, you can bet for certain that sooner or later something will develop that will be adverse to soybean farming and with most of the world’s crop using the same seed there will be few soybean crops that will survive.
So the “Ready Roundup” seed is genetically modified so that the seed and the plant survive the deadly “Ready Roundup” herbicide that Monstanto also sells.
I wonder if Ready Roundup is so deadly to everything that grows, what concerns should we have as it is passed into the soil, the water table and runoff into our streams, rivers, lakes and oceans? Do the rest of us need to get genetically modified for protection against Ready Roundup in our environment?
Monsantos arguements about what would or would not be if it were not for things like Ready Roundup are a lot like someone claiming that some goal (improvement of seeds for basic food crops) is ONLY obtainable by the means and method they are obtaining “improvements” with. That’s merely self promotion and NOT intrinsic to finding ways to improve seed crops.
As you can see, I am not a big fan of GM crops.
When the green revolutions began they improved seeds for crops by USING the genetic diversity of the seeds themselves, crossing different varieties that held promise toward particular traits. They didn’t make man-made genes, they used the plants own genetic store, within the diverse genetic pool for that plant. They didn’t add some man-made gene to the biosphere, they maximized the plants use of the genes it had that offered promise of improvment of the crops.
Now the gene pool of many crops is shrinking to seed monopolies world wide, and someday the world will regret the whole crop of something was planted with the same seed.
Conservatives see a “business venture” and they have a kneejerk reaction that ignores the fact that the adage “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” actually applies not just to the political sphere but the economic sphere as well.
Your point is that Monsanto believes it can highly profit from the GM terminator technology, and I believe that is an accurate and highly important point.
In the late 90's, Monsanto was at the point that it could broadly deploy terminator technology, but pledged not to do so, and claimed to hold no patents on terminator technology (Terminator only, Monsanto holds many other GMC patents).
Monsanto then acquired outside companies that held terminator GM patents and again pledged not to use them.
Four nations signed on to Monsanto's patents and pledge, the US, Canada, Argentina, and China.
The rest of the world banned Monsanto's enforcement of said patent agreements, and China won't enforce them for Monsanto, just themselves.
In the last decade, Monsanto has been vigorously researching Terminator II technology, a technology intended to isolate the terminator gene in the variety it is placed and prevent it's spread to legacy crops in the field. They may not be successful.
At this point I will offer the belief that this will eventually be highly damaging to Monsanto's profitability, which is why I predicted that the market would destroy Monsanto, and I recommended Monsanto use the technology.
Currently the US and Canadian courts have been friendly to Monsanto's efforts, however Monsanto is a crony capitalist corporation, and crony capitalist is only a nice way of saying Fascist and Fascism takes it's self down in the end.
Court decisions may change and they certainly won't become more friendly toward Monsanto outside the US and Canada, making things more difficult for Monsanto.
Without going on too long, I also have to stipulate your concern, that it is possible that Monsanto will corner the world seed market before they crash.
I agree
I am confused by the hostility to Monsanto and your claim that they “cornered” the seed market.
There are plenty of other seeds available to grow soybeans. Why not buy those? Is it because those seeds don’t have the same useful work/money saving properties as the Monsanto seeds? Why, per the article, are 90% of the soybeans grown in the US using Monsanto seeds? Did Monsanto force anyone to buy/plant those seeds?
It seems to me that farmers voluntarily buy the Monsanto GMO seeds because of their unique work saving or pest/disease avoiding properties, and then complain about their having to pay Monsanto for their improvements.
Monsanto obviously has vastly improved soybean growing. No, you don’t need to thank them. Payment is sufficient.
I don’t think they have cornered the market...but I can tell you that is their business goal long term.
I think they produce more food in less space generally that ends up helping the world currently....I just think that they are treading on dangerous ground when they start modifying seeds to be sterile because if that little experiment turns bad...it only has to go bad once to cause a whole bunch of damage. Any way...it is an interesting market that I had no idea about ... all sensationalism aside.
So Senior Citizens should not be allowed to eat Cat Food then right?? After all that is not it’s implied use.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.