Biotech giants demand a high price for saving the planet

The Independent by Geoffrey Lean | Jun. 10, 2008 (News Report)

Giant biotech companies are privatising the world's protection against climate change by filing hundreds of monopoly patents on genes that help crops resist it, a new investigation has concluded.

The study - by the authoritative Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), based in Ottawa, Canada - has found that nine firms have filed at least 532 patents around the world on about 55 different genes offering protection ... Full Story »

Posted by Dwight Rousu

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by Michael Nolan - Oct. 1, 2008

Although privatization of seeds for food crops is nothing new (I'm not a farmer or even an activist in the area, yet I've known about it for some ten or fifteen years), it's an important story that has to get out. The story offers a new twist on the problem--climate change--and it gives some hard figures to back up its point.