View this letter as a web page
January 8, 2008
Good news for food security
Dear Shan,
Good news for the planet's biodiversity, people's food security and the right
of farmers to save seeds.
In a blow to biotech agribusiness, the U.S. Patent Office has upheld
a challenge by the Public Patent Foundation and invalidated four of Monsanto's
key patents for genetically engineered food plants.
Monsanto's "ruthless persecutions (of farmers) have fundamentally changed
farming," says PUBPAT. "The result has been nothing less than an assault on the
foundations of farming practises and traditions that have endured for centuries
in this country and millenia around the world, including one of the oldest, the
right to save and replant crop seeds."
PUBPAT filed the legal challenge after Monsanto forced Saskatchewan farmers
Percy and Louise Schmeiser to destroy all the seeds they were saving for the
following year because, against their wishes, some Monsanto-patented GMO seeds
had spread from neighbouring farms into their fields and seed supply.
For more information, see article by Helke Ferrie in the December 2007 Monitor
of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
And on a futher sweet note, Percy and Louise Schmeiser were awarded the 2007
Right Livelihood Award (sometimes called the "Alternative Nobel Prize") for
"their courage in defending biodiversity and farmers' rights, and challenging
the environmental and moral perversity of current interpretations of patent
laws."
The Canadian farm couple, said the Jury, had given the world a wake-up call
about the dangers to farmers and biodiversity everywhere from the growing
dominance and market aggression of companies such as Monsanto engaged in the
genetic engineering of crops. (www.rightlivelihood.org)
Meanwhile, Monsanto holds a patent in Canada for Terminator seed technology,
which causes seeds to become sterile after one harvest.
If you haven't already done so, please send your letter to Prime Minister
Harper calling for a ban on Terminator technology. And please ask all your
friends to do the same. Thank you!
In solidarity,
Kathleen, Peggy, Pauline and Becky for RightOnCanada.ca
RightOnCanada.ca is a project of the Rideau Institute.
For information, please contact:
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Tel. 613-565-4994 Fax. 613-565-7720
www.rideauinstitute.ca
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