European Patent Office grants Monsanto patent on conventionally bred melons
MELONS NOW A MONSANTO ”INVENTION”
US corporation awarded a European patent on conventionally bred melons.
Recent research conducted by the coalition No Patents on Seeds! shows that in May 2011, the US corporation Monsanto was awarded a European patent on conventionally bred melons (EP 1 962 578). Melons have a natural resistance to certain plant viruses. It is especially evident in melons grown in India. Using conventional breeding methods, this type of resistance was introduced to other melons and has now been patented as a Monsanto ”invention”.
Monsanto U: Agribusiness's Takeover of Public Schools
By Nancy Scola, AlterNet
Posted on February 15, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/76804/
I've startled a bug scientist. "Yeah, now I'm nervous," said Mike Hoffmann, a Cornell University entomologist and crop specialist who spends his days with cucumber beetles and small wasps. But he's also in charge of keeping the research funding flowing at Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. What have I done to alarm him? I've drawn his attention to the newly released FY 2009 Presidential Budget.
Theft of the Commons
by Girish Mishra
August 31, 2006
For quite some time two news items have been dominating the media in Delhi. The first relates to the intervention by the higher judiciary to remove commercial establishments and other kinds of encroachment from the residential areas and public land. The second item concerns the controversy whether the drinks marketed by Coca-Cola and PepsiCo contain pesticides whose level is 24 times or above the safe limit. The Centre of Science and Environment has come out with concrete facts and figures in this regard.
Ten Tenets: The Law of the Commons of the Natural World
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Ten Tenets: The Law of the Commons of the Natural World
What is government for? It is to protect the commons, all the things we own together and none of us owns individually, such as air, water, wildlife, the human gene pool, the accumulated human knowledge that we each inherit at birth, and more. Can protecting the commons be expressed in a simple set of guidelines? Here's a start...
*TEN TENETS: THE LAW OF THE COMMONS OF THE NATURAL WORLD*
By Carolyn Raffensperger**
BIOCOLONIZATION: THE PATENTING OF LIFE AND THE GLOBAL MARKET IN BODY PARTS
Andrew Kimbrell
Biotechnology extends humanity's reach over the forces of nature as no other technology in history. Bioengineers are now manipulating life forms in much the same way as the engineers of the industrial revolution were able to separate, collect, utilize and exploit inanimate materials. Just as previous generations manipulated plastics and metals into the machines and products of the industrial age, we are now manipulating and indeed transferring living materials into the new commodities of the global age of biotechnology.
