Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 5 • Number 20 • 11th November 2005
EU, CANADA GRANT PATENTS ON GURTS
EU, CANADA GRANT PATENTS ON GURTS
The EU on 5 October and Canada on 11 October issued a patent to Delta & Pine Limited, a US-based biotech company, for a genetic use restriction technology (GURTS) that could be used to make plants sterile. The technology has been dubbed "terminator technology" by environment, farmer and indigenous groups, who warn that inhibiting a plant’s ability to reproduce could have adverse effects on rural livelihoods and biodiversity. GURTS provide the means to turn on or off genes, for example genes that control fertility and formation of seed.
The particular EU and Canadian patents, EP 775212 and CA 2196410 respectively, cover a genetic modification process that enables a characteristic such as sterility or enhanced growth to become active in a plant only when the plant is treated with an external chemical, reaches a certain stage of growth, or bred with another GM plant (in which case the characteristic is present only in the offspring). The patent application notes that the "preferred" way the technology could be used would be to create seeds which, when matured into fully-grown plants, become sterile and produce seeds that will not germinate. This use could help to avoid "accidental reseeding, escape of the crop plant to areas outside the area of cultivation, or germination of stored seed", according the application.
Greenpeace International and the Ban Terminator Campaign, who have long been campaigning against GURTS and have called for an explicit ban to be instituted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) based upon the work they have done since 1998 (see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 18 February 2005), said in a press release that the new technology would create a monopoly, lead to unnatural control of the seeds and restrict farmers’ ability to use seeds from such plants for the following season’s cultivation.
Countries that have supported the technology are thought to be preparing to challenge the CBD opposition to GURTS at the upcoming March 2006 meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD. Similarly, a meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Intersessional Working Group on Article 8(j) and related provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity on 23-27 January 2006 will discuss the impacts of GURTS technologies on indigenous peoples and smallholder farmers.
At its 5th Conference of the Parties in Kenya in 2000, the CBD decided in what has been described as a "de facto" or "informal ban" to recommend that "in the current absence of reliable data on genetic use restriction technologies […] in accordance with the precautionary approach, products incorporating such technologies should not be approved by Parties for field testing until appropriate scientific data can justify such testing, and for commercial use until appropriate, authorized and strictly controlled scientific assessments […] have been carried out." (CBD V5/3). The move was sparked by three patents granted the US granted three patents on similar technologies in 1998.
Additional Resources
The EU patent can be found at https://publications.european-patent-office.org/PublicationServer/search.jsp by searching for EP 775212 B1
The Canadian patent can be found at http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/details?patent_number=2196410&language=EN
CBD V5/3: http://www.biodiv.org/decisions/default.aspx?m=COP-05&id=7147&lg=0
ICTSD Reporting; "Corporates Gain Control - Terminator Patent Granted," GREENPEACE/BAN TERMINATOR CAMPAIGN, 25 October 2005.