BACK	FOOD-BIOTECHNOLOGY: Civil Groups Want A Halt To 'Patenting of Life'

To mark Thursday, World Food Day, the groups urge the EU's leadership to reject a draft EU directive allowing the patenting of the genetic structure of living organisms, be they vegetable, animal or human, whether laboratory made or found in nature.

Such 'patents on life' are already legal in the United States and in Japan, where the gene or sequence of genes patented become the intellectual property of the researcher, institution or a private company which discovered, not invented, it.

Patenting of living organisms opens up new markets to pharmaceutical and agrochemical transnational companies, the only beneficiaries of such patents, notes the joint statement. It called the patenting of living organisms ''is an act of 'bio- piracy' which would dispossess local communities in developing countries of the wealth they protected and improved for centuries''.

The Commission's directive upholds the bio-engineers' rights to 'own' biological material while nominally restricting patenting of actual varieties of flora. ''Under its present form, the proposed directive allows the plundering of genetic resources of foreign countries, essentially Southern countries,'' warns the document.

The coalition estimates that the use of Southern countries' genetic resources in industrialised agriculture already brings some four or five billion dollars in income to developed countries.

During a symposium on the future of biotechnology held Tuesday in Austria, European commissioner for agriculture Franz Fischler said that, if the biotechnology industry's turnover growth follows present trends, it will hit 160 billion dollars in the year 2005, creating more a million jobs.

Most Europeans believe that current regulations are insufficient to protect people from any risks linked to modern biotechnology. A recent EU-wide opinion poll found that a majority of Europeans fear that ''irrespective of regulations, researchers in biotechnology will do whatever they like''.

Seven out of ten EU citizens expect that dangerous new diseases will be created in the next 20 years through the development of bioengineering.

Fischler was concerned that public hostility to biotechnology may see the industry relocate to countries where the they can operate more freely -- a development that could cost the EU up to 200,000 jobs, he claimed.

''The most crucial question concerning the application of a modern technology is the matter of public acceptance,'' said Fischler. But without waiting for this, the EU executive Commission is pressing on with the directive to harmonise policy with Japan and the U.S. and secure the bloc's own biotech industry.

This week the environmental NGO Greenpeace published the first compilation of several genetic engineering experiments around the world which have produced unexpected results.

Douglas Parr, author of the report, says that his study shows that things will inevitably go wrong in genetic engineering: ''Its like the genie in the bottle: once it's out, you cannot put it back. Already there are too many cases of things going wrong.''

The report describes experiments in which genetically engineered bacteria unexpectedly killed beneficial soil fungi, escaped into sewers through human error and unanticipated pathways, became toxic to plants, or survived when they were not expected to.

As most of the industry is focused on engineering plants for agricultural applications, the mistakes are very difficult to control once out in the fields.

The NGO Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN) warns that while the draft directive says that plant and animals cannot be patented, it is still possible to patent plant and animal biological material as long as the end product is not called a 'variety'.

''This (directive) is a major setback for all of us who have been fighting for the sustainable management of biodiversity in the hands of local communities,'' says Henk Hobbelink, GRAIN's director.

GRAIN says that farmers now freely using seeds could be expected to seek permission and pay royalties in the future if the genetic makeup of the seed they use is later patented.

Plant material recognised for hardiness and high yield is being sought out, especially in the developing world, by bioengineers and is being quickly patented by their employers.

''Many examples already exist where companies take local varieties from these farmers and patent them and their genetic contents without innovation. The directive negates the rights of the 'original breeders' from the South,'' claims GRAIN.

They say the directive circumvents the European Patent Convention's existing ban on the patenting of plant varieties, by allowing companies to patent entire crops, such as transgenic soya beans. The directive in its current form would legalise such patents and effectively concentrate crop research in the hands of a few biotech corporations, they add.

The 1992 Rio Biodiversity Convention, signed by all the EU member states, explicitly requires signatories to ensure that patent systems protect the historic rights of use of traditional farmers. The directive is silent on this obligation.

Greenpeace says governments seem ''awe-struck'' by the genetic engineering industry.

''The science of genetic engineering is unpredictable, but few, from scientists to governments, dare raise the fact that today's 'Golden Goose' of industry is laying some rotten eggs,'' said Susan Leubuscher, of Greenpeace's European Unit. (END/IPS/NS/MOM/RJ/97)