Battleangel

The Coalition Against Biopiracy has released its Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy 2006. For the record, “biopiracy”

refers to the monopolization (usually through intellectual property) of genetic resources and traditional knowledge or culture taken from peoples or farming communities that developed and nurtured those resources.

The awards include but are not limited to:

• Most Shameful Act of Biopiracy: US Government
  For imposing plant intellectual property laws on war-torn Iraq in June 2004. When US occupying forces “transferred sovereignty” to Iraq, they imposed Order no. 84, which makes it illegal for Iraqi farmers to re-use seeds harvested from new varieties registered under the law. Iraq’s new patent law opens the door to the multinational seed trade, and threatens food sovereignty.
• Biggest Threat to Genetic Privacy: Google Inc.
  For teaming up with J. Craig Venter to create a searchable online database of all the genes on the planet so that individuals and pharmaceutical companies alike can ‘google’ our genes – one day bringing the tools of biopiracy online.
• Worst Threat to Food Sovereignty: Syngenta
  For its Terminator-like patent designed to prevent potatoes from sprouting, despite the company’s pledge not to commercialize technologies involving sterile seed. US patent 6,700,039 describes a genetic modification method that prevents sprouting unless an external chemical inducer is applied. And for Syngenta’s multi-genome patent applications on thousands of gene sequences vital for rice breeding and extending to dozens of other plant species.

I must say I also like the reappropriation of the word “piracy.” Though these “pirates” are actually more like “emperors” in accordance with Augustine’s parable.