Culture Foam: Bubbling Up

Genetically Engineered “Terminator Seeds”. Death and Destruction of Agriculture | Global Research – Centre for Research on Globalization May 26, 2015

This article was first published by Global Research in January 2013

The widely held belief is that genetically modified ‘terminator seeds’ are not available on the commercial market anywhere. Since 2001, there has been a de facto worldwide moratorium on the use of terminator technology (UN Convention on Biological Diversity). By definition, such seeds are genetically engineered to make them sterile and unusable for replanting, resulting in farmers having to buy new seeds from a central supplier each year.

Under Article 28 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights  (the TRIPS Agreement), “planting, harvesting, saving, re-planting, and exchanging seeds of patented plants, or of plants containing patented cells and genes, constitutes use,” and is prohibited by the intellectual property laws of signatory states

via Genetically Engineered “Terminator Seeds”. Death and Destruction of Agriculture | Global Research – Centre for Research on Globalization.

Mo Med – January February 2015 : CORRESPONDENCE May 26, 2015

GMO Author Reponds to Food For Thought

Thank you for taking the time to read and comment on my article. As I discussed in the article, from all of the studies conducted to look at the safety of GM crops, there is no evidence that they are any different, in terms of public or animal health, from crops developed by conventional breeding practices. I refer you to Nicolia et al. (reference 24) and the reports of the NRC and European Commission that address these claims directly for both livestock and humans. As a scientist, and as I am sure you are aware, one has to be very careful in how you interpret or act upon simple correlations and until one applies scientific rigor and methods to obtain reliable data to gain objective insight they remain hypothetical. There has been an equally strong increase in organic food sales since 1996 that tracks the increase in the production of GM crops. The independent variables that lay between any of these comparisons are numerous and would require specific studies to address any cause and effect relationships. Many such studies have been conducted by numerous agencies and researchers, as I document in my article, and there is no substantiated link between adverse health issues and GM crops. As for scientific consensus, I think I have documented that extensively in the article (for more information, see reports on GMOs by the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Science, The Royal Society of London, European Plant Science Organization, and the American Society of Plant Biologists among others). From a scientific perspective, it is difficult to comment on the 1998 lawsuit without having scientific data and information that might have factored into any deliberations that led to its dismissal.

Melvin J. Oliver, PhD Supervisory Research Geneticist, USDA Agricultural Research Service University of Missouri

via Mo Med – January February 2015 : CORRESPONDENCE.

Censored, 1999: The News that Didn’t Make the News — the Year’s Top 25 … – Peter Phillips, Project Censored (U.S.), Tom Tomorrow – Google Books May 26, 2015

Censored, 1999: The News that Didn’t Make the News — the Year’s Top 25 … – Peter Phillips, Project Censored (U.S.), Tom Tomorrow – Google Books.

The Teminator Technology: RAFI-USA Press Release May 26, 2015

The claimed source f the “Terminator Gene” name.

Rural Advancement Foundation International – RAFI

Press Release – 27 January 1999

http://www.rafi.org

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Genetic Seed Sterilization is “Holy Grail”

for Ag Biotechnology Firms

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New Patents for “Suicide Seeds” Threaten

Farmers and Food Security Warns RAFI

The Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), a Canadian-based

rural advocacy organization, announced today that it has uncovered over

three dozen new patents describing a wide range of techniques that can be

used for the genetic sterilization of plants and seeds. “The patents reveal

that engineered seed sterility is not an isolated research agenda – it’s

the Holy Grail of the ag biotech industry,” says Pat Mooney of RAFI. The

disclosure follows on the heels of a controversial patent unveiled last

year, christened the “Terminator” by RAFI, that continues to generate

worldwide protest and debate because it renders farm-saved seed sterile –

forcing farmers to return to the commercial seed market every year. The

Terminator patent is jointly owned by the US Department of Agriculture and

a Monsanto subsidiary, Delta & Pine Land Co.

“The notorious Terminator patent is just the tip of the iceberg,” explains

RAFI’s Mooney, “Every major seed and agrochemical enterprise is developing

its own version of suicide seeds,” he adds.

“We’ve uncovered dozens of patents that disclose new and more insidious

techniques for genetic sterilization of plants and seeds – and even

animals,” says Edward Hammond of RAFI. “Novartis, AstraZeneca, and Monsanto

are among the Gene Giants who have sterile seeds in the pipeline, while

others like Pioneer Hi-Bred, Rhone Poulenc, and DuPont have technologies

that could easily be turned into Terminators.” The primary goal of several

of the the newly patented techniques is to sterilize seed so that farmers

cannot save and re-plant seed.

A number of the patents use benign-sounding technical terms such as

“controlled gene expression” linked to “inducible promoters” to describe

their sterilization techniques. Other patents describe “killer genes” that

destroy pollen, or “GRIM proteins” that do the same to invertebrates or

even mammalian cells. A patent owned by Astra/Zeneca candidly admits that

their sterilization processes “are not desirable per se.”

Sterile Seeds: Why Worry? “These technologies are extremely dangerous,”

explains RAFI’s Mooney, “because over 1.4 billion farmers – primarily poor

farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America – depend on farm-saved seed as

their primary seed source. If they can’t save seed, they can’t continue to

adapt crops to their unique farming environments, and that spells disaster

for global food security.”

via The Teminator Technology: RAFI-USA Press Release.