by No Patents on Seeds

The 38 Contracting States of the European Patent Office (EPO) at their meeting in The Hague decided to strengthen prohibitions in European patent law in regard to the breeding of plants and animals.

However, at the same time, new loopholes have been created that will allow the relevant prohibitions to be eroded. As a result, the EPO will shortly resume granting patents on conventionally bred plants and animals. Already in May 2017, companies were informed that several patents on plants derived from random mutations are ready to be granted. The legal and political controversy will continue.

"Pressure from civil society succeeded in strengthening current prohibitions in European patent law. But this is not yet a long term solution," says Christoph Then, spokesperson for "No Patents on Seeds!" The EPO and big business will continue to abuse patent law to privatise the resources of daily food production. In reaction, we will maintain our pressure on political decision-makers."

Important political decision on prohibitions in European patent law expected this week

26 June 2017

On Wednesday this week, the 38 contracting states of the European Patent Office will meet in La Hague to make a decision on the future interpretation of existing prohibitions in European patent law in regard to the breeding of plants and animals. The EU Parliament and the EU Commission are demanding that such patents are confined to genetic engineering. According to a proposal presented by the EPO, some of these patents will indeed no longer be granted in future. However, at the same time, new loopholes are being created that will allow the avoidance of the relevant prohibitions. Consequently, it is more than likely that there will be an overall increase in the number of patents granted on conventional breeding.

European patent law already prohibits patents on “essentially biological processes” i.e. breeding processes that do not use genetic engineering for the breeding of plants and animals. Nevertheless, the EPO has in the past granted several patents on plants bred through crossing and selection or other random processes, such as mutations. According to current proposal of the EPO, in future patents will only be refused if they claim plants or animals directly produced by crossing and selection. However, the prohibitions will become immediately ineffective and invalid for these plants or animals if a specific genetic condition is claimed.

It’s the first time RNA interference will be used to kill insect pests.

DvSnf7 dsRNA is an unusual insecticide. You don’t spray it on crops. Instead, you encode instructions for manufacturing it in the DNA of the crop itself. If a pesky western corn rootworm comes munching, the plant’s self-made DvSnf7 dsRNA disrupts a critical rootworm gene and kills the pest.

This last step is called RNA interference, or RNAi, and the Environmental Protection Agency last week approved the first insecticide relying on it. Just a few years ago, RNAi was the hot, new biotechnology generating both hype and controversy. But its first approval as an insecticide has been surprisingly low-key. The EPA’s decision attracted little attention from the press or even from environmental groups that reliably come out against new genetically modified crops.

The first product DvSnf7 dsRNA will show up in is SmartStax Pro, a line of genetically modified corn seeds made in collaboration between two agricultural giants, Monsanto and Dow. The RNAi part comes from Monsanto, which has its eye on a number of RNAi applications. Monsanto expects corn seed with RNAi to be on the market by the end of this decade.

LITTLE ROCK— In response to dozens of new complaints of misuse of the highly toxic and drift-prone pesticide dicamba, an Arkansas regulatory committee today recommended an emergency ban of the controversial pesticide that has spurred three lawsuits and a dispute that led to the murder of an Arkansas farmer.

If the Arkansas Pesticide Committee’s recommendation is approved on Tuesday by the Arkansas State Plant Board, as well as by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, the ban on in-crop uses of the pesticide will be immediate.

“What we’re seeing in Arkansas is proof of what we all already knew — that this dangerous, drift-prone pesticide is not safe to use,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Assurances from pesticide makers that new dicamba products and tighter application regulations would end the drift problems that damaged hundreds of thousands of acres simply ignored reality.”

More than 50 complaints of crops damaged by dicamba herbicide drifting from neighboring farm fields have been reported to the Arkansas State Plant Board so far in 2017.

That number is up sharply from 2016, in which 32 dicamba drift complaints were filed in the entire year, said Tom Barber, extension weed scientist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

Among the damaged crops are some 100 acres of soybeans in Division of Agriculture research plots at the Northeast Research and Extension Center at Keiser in Mississippi County.

Ironically, those soybean plots were part of research by Division of Agriculture weed scientist Jason Norsworthy on dicamba drift and volatility.

The dicamba drift and volatility trials, for herbicide products from Monsanto and Syngenta, are needed before the products can be certified for use in Arkansas, Norsworthy said. The damage from unexpected dicamba drift interrupted the trials, making Norsworthy’s data useless in most of the plots unless he replants and starts over.

Strasbourg (France) (AFP) - More than one million people have signed a petition demanding the EU ban the Monsanto weedkiller glyphosate over fears it causes cancer, campaigners said Thursday.

The petition comes as the European Union is deciding whether to renew the licence of the controversial herbicide produced by the US agro-chemicals giant.

The European Parliament has adopted a ban on the use of pesticides on land set aside for nature conservation. As a result of a plenary vote on June 14, EU Farmers who receive subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will no longer be allowed to spray pesticides on “ecological focus areas” (EFAs). In February, the European Commission had proposed a ban as part of a package of measures designed to simplify the so-called “greening” of the CAP. On May 30, Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI) adopted a resolution to veto this Commission proposal. A group of lawmakers argued that a pesticide ban would undermine the production of crops that are allowed to be grown in those areas. However, in Wednesday’s plenary vote, opponents of the pesticide ban failed to secure the required majority. 267 MEPs voted for a ban while 363 MEPs voted for pesticides, missing the absolute majority by 13 votes. This means that Parliament automatically supported the Commission’s pesticide ban. “Saved by procedure manual!,” was the comment of environmental organisation BirdLife. “Even if the majority of MEPs present in the European Parliament voted in favour of pesticides, nature still won,” said Trees Robijns, Senior Policy Officer at BirdLife Europe and Central Asia. “This vote, a brazen display of vested interests over public good, shows that a big part of MEPs are not listening to the hundreds of thousands of people who have repeatedly expressed their support for nature in recent EU public consultations.”

Environmental groups and other non-governmental organisations still welcomed the outcome of vote. PAN Europe, a network of European NGOs promoting sustainable alternatives to pesticides, said the EP refusal to undermine EFAs by allowing pesticides use “is a small but welcome victory for common sense, biodiversity and the wider environment”. But Henriette Christensen, PAN Europe Senior Policy Advisor, added that “in truth, much more must be done on the road to sustainable agriculture.” The World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) also welcomed the decision: “Banning pesticide use on a small percentage of arable land will not impact overall agricultural production and is the right thing to do to bring back some of the farmland biodiversity we have been losing over the last decades,” said Jabier Ruiz, Senior Policy Officer, Agriculture and Sustainable Food Systems. He heavily critisied COMAGRI: “The EU Parliament's Committee on Agriculture tried to block this improvement over the last few months, showing clearly that they lack environmental awareness, and that they cannot be entrusted with full responsibility in future debates on the Common Agricultural Policy.”

Ecological Focus Areas were introduced as part of CAP’s greening measures. Farms with more than 15 hectares of arable land are required to dedicate at least 5% of this land to EFAs in order to receive payments. On these areas, they can implement measures such as creating buffer strips, maintaining hedges, leaving land lying fallow or planting nitrogen-fixing crops. In January, research by a group of scientists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, the University of Göttingen and other institutions found that nitrogen-fixing crops like legumes do not benefit biodiversity much if farmers use pesticides on these areas. They had called for stricter management requirements. “It is of course essential to forbid the use of pesticides on EFAs,” said the lead author of the paper, Guy Pe’er. “It makes no sense to harm biodiversity in areas that are explicitly designated to protect it.” The ban on the use of pesticides in ecological focus areas will now apply from January 2018. (ab)

The reputation of glyphosate, a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide, i.e. the world’s most widely used weedkiller, also used as a crop desiccant, took a hit in 2015, with the publication of a World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) report, raising questions about its safety and the research practices of its manufacturer, the chemical giant Monsanto.

Will today’s debate on glyphosate authorisation, prompted by the IARC classification of the substance as “probably carcinogenic in humans“, trigger a transition to a better way of doing agriculture? A method that doesn’t rely on death, uniformity, and sterility via the constant application of pesticides like glyphosate, but relies instead on life, biodiversity, and the emergent natural processes it supports to ensure long term, rather than short term, fertility, and productivity?

To achieve sustainable development we must transform current agriculture and food systems, including by supporting smallholders and family farmers, reducing pesticide and chemical use, and improving land conservation practices. This was the message delivered by José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to European lawmakers last week. Addressing members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, da Silva highlighted the findings of FAO’s recent report “The future of food and agriculture”. “One of the main conclusions of the report is that the agricultural model that resulted from the Green Revolution of the Sixties and Seventies has reached its limits,” he said according to the statement released on FAO’s website. “In fact, high-input and resource-intensive farming systems have substantially increased food production at a high cost to the environment. Massive agriculture intensification is contributing to increase deforestation, water scarcity, soil depletion, and the level of greenhouse gas emissions,” da Silva added, warning that current farming practices would lead to a further degradation of natural resources.

The report, published in December 2016, argued that major transformations in agricultural systems, rural economies and natural resource management will be needed if current challenges for achieving food security, improving nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture worldwide are to be met. “To achieve sustainable development, we need to transform current agriculture and food systems,” da Silva said. “Business as usual is no longer an option,” he declared, echoing the message of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). “The future of agriculture is not input-intensive, but knowledge-intensive. This is a new paradigm,” the FAO chief explained. “We need to implement sustainable agricultural practices that offer nutritious and accessible food, ecosystem services and climate-change resilience at the same time. And this can be done by supporting smallholders and family farmers, reducing the use of pesticides and chemicals, and increasing crop diversification, just to name a few aspects.”

In his address to EU parliamentarians, da Silva focused on four issues: climate change, the spread of transboundary pests and diseases, food loss and waste and the importance of eradicating not only hunger, but all forms of malnutrition. Graziano da Silva cited estimates suggesting that nearly half of the EU’s adult population are overweight. “The way to combat this is to transform food systems, from production to consumption, and provide healthier diets to people,” he said, calling on EU lawmakers to ensure that adequate policies, programmes and operational frameworks are put in place. (ab)

The 2017 edition of the GM-Free Shopping List, published today, includes many brands not listed in earlier editions.

The GM-Free Australia Alliance (GMFAA) has further reported increasing interest from food producers this year to the demand for groceries free of genetically manipulated organisms (GMOs).

GMFAA spokesperson Jessica Harrison stated that the Shopping List acknowledges and promotes a growing list of brands whose GM-free status caters to consumers' right to choose non-GM foods. “Australians passionate about the right to choose have been voting with their wallets. Growing consumer awareness about genetic manipulation is increasing demand for both conventional and organic foods, supporting their producers and adding to market pressure on food producers to choose non-GMO suppliers".