Biotech Company To Patent Pigs 285
Anonymous Swine writes "Monsanto, a US based multinational biotech company, is causing a stir by its plan to patent pig-breeding techniques including the claim on animals born by the techniques. 'Agricultural experts are scrambling to assess how these patents might affect the market, while consumer activists warn that if the company is granted pig-related patents, on top of its tight rein on key feed and food crops, its control over agriculture could be unprecedented. "We're afraid that Monsanto and other big companies are getting control of the world's genetic resources," said Christoph Then, a patent expert with Greenpeace in Germany. The patent applications, filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization, are broad in scope, and are expected to take several years and numerous rewrites before approval.'"
Time machine also patented (Score:5, Informative)
Did anyone else notice the 2005 date on the press release?
As far as I can tell, no patents have been granted from WO2004/003697 which seems to be the most likely application in question.
Re:patented bacon (Score:5, Informative)
Could we ask them to develop a pig with an uncloven hoof? It would be interesting to see kosher bacon on the shelf.
It's already available. The text literally translates as "cloven hoof that trods the ground", so they raise pigs on slightly elevated wood floors - their hooves never touch the ground, so they're kosher.
Cue all the "a priest and a rabbi" jokes ...
Unprecedented control (Score:5, Informative)
FTFS: "its control over agriculture could be unprecedented"
It already is. It holds 70-100% of the genetically modified seed market, and is the largest producer of non-GMO seed, not to mention a major player in Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) and of course pesticides and herbicides.
That's not including the lawsuits against farmers who's plants are fertilized by Monsanto crop due to airborne pollen.
In short, the vast majority of industrial farmers in the Corn Belt rely heavily on Monsanto, and those that don't are sued by Monsanto.
not that i necessarily believe monsanto, but... (Score:4, Informative)
from http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto_today/for_the_record/pig_patent.asp [monsanto.com]
In 2007, Monsanto sold Monsanto Choice Genetics to Newsham Genetics LC of West Des Moines, Iowa. The transaction was completed in November 2007, and Monsanto is no longer in the swine breeding business.
Since a Greenpeace publicity announcement in 2005, rumors have continued to circulate among activists and on the internet that Monsanto is trying to patent pig genes. When Monsanto owned the business, the company performed research work for a patent application related to a specific gene marker for a pig trait, but not for the trait itself, and also a patent application for a unique set of breeding processes, including an artificial insemination method. Monsanto never filed a patent application for a pig gene.
Thereâ(TM)s been some rather wild speculation that these patent applications would prohibit pig farmers from breeding lines of pigs to which they had always freely bred. This isnâ(TM)t true. Any claims issued from these patent applications would apply to only animals and their offspring which had been bred using marker technology covered by patent claims.
In any case, the sale to Newsham Genetics included any and all swine-related patents, patent applications, and all other intellectual property. Weâ(TM)re out of the pig business.
The Next Move (Score:5, Informative)
Monsanto patented some corn strains. The patent covered any corn found to have their patented genome. They planted it, it grew and pollinated. The pollen drifted into nearby fields and pollinated the crops there. Monsanto got some of the resulting corn, tested it, found their genome, and sued the farmers for theft of intellectual property. I don't know if they finally won or not, but at the time they prevented the farmers from farming until it was resolved causing loss of income, as well as proving themselves to be willing to use the high cost of defending one's self in order to keep from losing. And that was in the US, just prior to them releasing the same strains in third world countries. The strain they distributed had the trait of not producing viable seed. They wanted all the farmers to have to buy seed every year rather than grow their own, and they feared cross pollination would produce a viable strain overriding the nonviability genes.
Re:patents and insanity (Score:5, Informative)
It's not like Monsanto suddenly owns all pigs ever born.....they can still keep using normal, everyday, unmodified pigs like they do now.
Yeah, right...if one of the Monsanto boars gets loose, all the pig farmers in the area will get sued on the theory that the Monsanto pig impregnated all of their sows and they now owe Monsanto royalties on all the progeny. Just look at their history of suing farmers whose crops were contaminated by pollen from nearby Monsanto-licensed fields of the same crops. For the full saga of one such case which the farmer had to take all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court, see http://www.percyschmeiser.com/conflict.htm [percyschmeiser.com]. Mr. Schmeiser's fight, along with Monsanto's other dirty tactics, is also covered in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto [wikipedia.org]
Re:Unprecedented control (Score:3, Informative)
It already is. It holds 70-100% of the genetically modified seed market, and is the largest producer of non-GMO seed, not to mention a major player in Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) and of course pesticides and herbicides.
And if they get their way [overlawyered.com], soon enough that will be 100% of the crops you eat; produced from GMO seed with the "terminator" gene [nd.edu], fertilized with a synthetic fertilizer, and inundated with synthetic pesticides which destroy soil diversity and in fact make it impossible to grow healthy food.
Re:Time machine also patented (Score:5, Informative)
And Monsanto sold the swine business in 2007. http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2007/09/24/daily40.html [bizjournals.com]
Re:patents and insanity (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Unprecedented control (Score:4, Informative)
That thing that they pledged in 99 to never pursue, and then went ahead and bought a company in 2007 whose sole marketable product was that very thing, yeah, that.
Nice handy side effect of the terminator genes "helping" accidental genetic spread - means your farmer now has to buy orders of magnitude more seed. From you. (Realize that in many staple crops, Monsanto supplies between 70% and 100% of the commercially available seed). I think it's far more likely that "helping accidental genetic spread" is a side effect of "developing revenue maximization genetic technologies".
Re:Unprecedented control (Score:3, Informative)
And, why is that bad? Oh, GMOs weigh more than a duck and are therefore bad, right? Newsflash: All food you eat has been selected for certain traits.
I've discussed this subject exhaustively with people smarter than you, so here goes: While it is true that nature is capable of transferring genes from one organism to another even across Kingdoms with retroviruses, in practice this almost never happens and when it does, the resulting organism doesn't get cloned out hundreds of times and planted in a monoculture, and protected. While in theory humans can work "faster" than nature (to produce a specific result) the results are unpredictable.
However, the market is speaking and deciding it wants organic products, and H.R. 875 is essentially an attempt to shut down that market through legislation, nothing less than an assault on small-scale food production in America.
with the "terminator" gene,
You mean that thing they currently have no plans to bring to the market?
That is probably the dumbest thing I've seen on slashdot all day.
Unnatural=unhealthy? Citation needed.
This is not a secret [medicalnewstoday.com]. It's well-known that organic foods generally have greater nutritive value. One of the best fertilizers is human waste, which is perfectly safe so long as it's been "digested" by bacteria before you fertilize with it. Instead, we send it to a sewage "treatment" plant where it is rendered biologically "safe" and then we usually dump it into a river... downstream from which we pump water out of the river into a water "treatment" plant where it is rendered biologically "safe to drink" (a matter of some debate, but arguably true.)
Re:Monsanto's motto... (Score:5, Informative)
"taste" of monsanto's evilness? LOL
How about injecting dairy cows with chemical crap to maximize production, at the expense of the animal's health and resulting in milk that belongs in a "bio-hazard" container as opposed to a milk jug?
See "The Corporation": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225 [imdb.com]
Not to mention Monsanto using their muscle to prevent investigative journalists from actually reporting on the story. This company gives me the creeps.
Re:Monsanto's motto... (Score:5, Informative)
How about injecting dairy cows with chemical crap to maximize production, at the expense of the animal's health and resulting in milk that belongs in a "bio-hazard" container as opposed to a milk jug?
Meh, for that you can blame the US government. Neither, Canada, nor a good part of Europe, have approved those synthetic hormones you speak of for use in milk production. Pity your "regulators" don't actually regulate anything...