Boycott Called Against Rice-Tec Biopirates.

Basmati Action Group (BAG)

Basmati rice has been grown in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan for centuries. Working with nature's own creative capacities, farmers in this area have, over time, crossbred and cultivated this distinct form of rice known for its fragrant aroma and unique taste. For the farmers of India and Pakistan, their basmati rice crops represent a vital source of income.

In 1997, the United States Patent and Trademark Office accepted Rice Tec's application to patent basmati rice (patent # 5,663,484). By cross-breeding two basmati rice varieties this corporation insists that it has "invented" a "novel" variety of basmati and has patented it as "basmati 867." The Rice Tec patent covers any basmati variety crossed with a semi-dwarf strain grown anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Despite Rice Tec's claims of "novelty," "basmati 867" has been derived from Indian and Pakistani basmati rice lines crossed with semi-dwarf varieties. The basmati varieties used to "invent" Rice Tec's "basmati 867" are farmers' varieties bred over centuries in South Asia. What Rice Tec has done with its patent is to pirate what until now had been communally shared and claimed it as its own private property.

The crux of the issue is not whether the basmati rice variety bred by Rice Tec is "novel" and therefore patentable because the facts show that it is not. The real issue is that no one should be able to hold a patent over a life form. By taking out a patent on "basmati 867" Rice Tec is participating in what has been described as "biopiracy."

Biopiracy is the theft of indigenous knowledge, the theft of the creative capacities of nature and the false claim by patent holders--mostly corporations--that they created the life form they have pirated. Biopiracy lays the groundwork for the colonization of creation--of life itself--by scientists and, ultimately, the corporations they work for.

Life-patents further the power of corporations. Imagine a world where nothing is grown except crops that a corporation has claimed "invention" of and can profit by. Imagine if nothing is grown without farmers having to go to corporations to buy back seeds stolen from them in the first place. Or a world where nothing can even grow without the permission of corporations (i.e. the "Terminator Technology" that prevents plants from reproducing themselves). This is the world that biopirates, and patents like the one on basmati 867, are already helping to bring about!

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