![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I was listening to the Thom Hartmann show the other day and they had somebody on talking about how Monsanto and other agricultural firms are plotting to use the patent laws to acquire a monopoly on all food production worldwide, by making it illegal for farmers to engage in the time-honored practice of saving seed from their crops for next season. The person being interviewed mentioned his website, Seeds of Deception, so I thought I'd do some research.
It's worse than I thought. It appears there is a branch of the World Trade Organization that is tasked with forcing nations to enforce patents worldwide that conflict directly with their national security and sovereignty, that is spreading this virus of legal extortion globally. And it looks as though Monsanto is branching out from plants to animals by trying to patent the raising of pigs, so that in theory every pig farmer worldwide would be required to sign an onerous patent license for the privilege of raising pigs.
Taken to its logical conclusion, this legal fiction would give large agribusiness firms the ability to acquire and maintain absolute control of the global food supply for their own profit. And that cannot be allowed to happen. To do so is to squelch biodiversity, and one bad crop could risk global famine, starvation on a scale unseen in the history of the planet, and perhaps the end of the human race. If that isn't evil I defy you to tell me what is.
I now understand to some degree what motivated those hordes of people here in Seattle and elsewhere to such fits of angry destructive protest aimed at the WTO. This has got to stop before some nation (China, anyone?) interprets this legal movement as an act of war and nukes one of these firms' headquarters out of spite, thus launching Armageddon.
Bottom line: Some things should never be anyone's property; they belong to the planet and every living thing in it. No company should even for a moment consider that it has the right to a monopoly on the growing of food. And no organization, government, or individual has the power to grant such a monopoly. Lastly, the WTO has overstepped its authority and needs to be abolished.
It's worse than I thought. It appears there is a branch of the World Trade Organization that is tasked with forcing nations to enforce patents worldwide that conflict directly with their national security and sovereignty, that is spreading this virus of legal extortion globally. And it looks as though Monsanto is branching out from plants to animals by trying to patent the raising of pigs, so that in theory every pig farmer worldwide would be required to sign an onerous patent license for the privilege of raising pigs.
Taken to its logical conclusion, this legal fiction would give large agribusiness firms the ability to acquire and maintain absolute control of the global food supply for their own profit. And that cannot be allowed to happen. To do so is to squelch biodiversity, and one bad crop could risk global famine, starvation on a scale unseen in the history of the planet, and perhaps the end of the human race. If that isn't evil I defy you to tell me what is.
I now understand to some degree what motivated those hordes of people here in Seattle and elsewhere to such fits of angry destructive protest aimed at the WTO. This has got to stop before some nation (China, anyone?) interprets this legal movement as an act of war and nukes one of these firms' headquarters out of spite, thus launching Armageddon.
Bottom line: Some things should never be anyone's property; they belong to the planet and every living thing in it. No company should even for a moment consider that it has the right to a monopoly on the growing of food. And no organization, government, or individual has the power to grant such a monopoly. Lastly, the WTO has overstepped its authority and needs to be abolished.
