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DCL

Who owns our seeds is the question again (or still) being asked by environmental and consumer organizations in Europe. A recent IPS story points to a large protest in Munich last month that signifies the widespread sense of dissatisfaction with corporations patenting the world's food supply.

The particular seed at issue this time is broccoli—a particular type of which agrochemical company Plant Bioscience says it has "invented" and increases a specific anti-carcinogenic compound, glucosinolates. The company has a patent not only on the seeds, but also on the breeding methods and the plants produced by the seeds.

The European Patent Office has just opened litigation into the legitimacy of this patent, which the EPO itself granted in 2002. So 300 organizations showed up at the office in Munich to protest this patent, which is not unlike others held by companies like—you guessed it—Monsanto and Syngenta.

From the IPS story:

According to Greenpeace and other environmental organisations researching patent claims by agrochemical corporations, the EPO has to decide on more than 1,000 other property rights filed on vegetables, seeds and animal products presented by the firms Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont-Pioneer, Bayer Cropscience, BASF and Dow Agrosciences, and others.

The broccoli case is typical of this battle among multinationals over conventional breeding methods. The agrochemical companies Limagrain and Syngenta, which have filed opposition against the Plant Bioscience patent, argue that the patent has to be revoked as its claims refer to an essentially biological process, and so to conventional methods.

It's a funny thing when large corporations find themselves on the same side of an issue as consumer organizations. I'm not confident that either of these corporations would not disagree with the right to patent a biological process if they were the ones interested in patenting, but for now at least, it's a coalition of strange bedfellows who want to preserve broccoli for the people.

Stay tuned: a decision is expected in October.