Iraq's
New Patent Law:
A Declaration of
War Against Farmers
PRESS RELEASE /
Focus on the Global South and GRAIN 15oct04
[More on Monsanto]
http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Monsanto-Roundup-Glyphosate.htm
When
former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer III
left Baghdad after the so-called "transfer of sovereignty" in June 2004,
he left behind the 100 orders he enacted as chief of the occupation authority
in Iraq. Among them is Order 81 on "Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed
Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety." [1] This order amends
Iraq's original patent law of 1970 and unless and until it is revised or repealed
by a new Iraqi government, it now has the status and force of a binding law. [2]
With important implications for farmers and the future of agriculture in Iraq,
this order is yet another important component in the United States' attempts to
radically transform Iraq's economy.
WHO
GAINS?
For generations, small farmers in Iraq operated in an essentially
unregulated, informal seed supply system. Farm-saved seed and the free innovation
with and exchange of planting materials among farming communities has long been
the basis of agricultural practice. This has been made illegal under the new law.
The seeds farmers are now allowed to plant - "protected" crop varieties
brought into Iraq by transnational corporations in the name of agricultural reconstruction
- will be the property of the corporations. While historically the Iraqi constitution
prohibited private ownership of biological resources, the new US-imposed patent
law introduces a system of monopoly rights over seeds. Inserted into Iraq's previous
patent law is a whole new chapter on Plant Variety Protection (PVP) that provides
for the "protection of new varieties of plants." PVP is an intellectual
property right (IPR) or a kind of patent for plant varieties which gives an exclusive
monopoly right on planting material to a plant breeder who claims to have discovered
or developed a new variety. So the "protection" in PVP has nothing to
do with conservation, but refers to safeguarding of the commercial interests of
private breeders (usually large corporations) claiming to have created the new
plants.
To qualify
for PVP, plant varieties must comply with the standards of the UPOV [3] Convention,
which requires them be new, distinct, uniform and stable. Farmers' seeds cannot
meet these criteria, making PVP-protected seeds the exclusive domain of corporations.
The rights granted to plant breeders in this scheme include the exclusive right
to produce, reproduce, sell, export, import and store the protected varieties.
These rights extend to harvested material, including whole plants and parts of
plants obtained from the use of a protected variety. This kind of PVP system is
often the first step towards allowing the full-fledged patenting of life forms.
Indeed, in this case the rest of the law does not rule out the patenting of plants
or animals.
The term of the monopoly is 20 years for crop varieties and 25
for trees and vines. During this time the protected variety de facto becomes the
property of the breeder, and nobody can plant or otherwise use this variety without
compensating the breeder. This new law means that Iraqi farmers can neither freely
legally plant nor save for re-planting seeds of any plant variety registered under
the plant variety provisions of the new patent law. [4] This deprives farmers
what they and many others worldwide claim as their inherent right to save and
replant seeds.
CORPORATE
CONTROL
The new law is presented
as being necessary to ensure the supply of good quality seeds in Iraq and to facilitate
Iraq's accession to the WTO [5]. What it will actually do is facilitate the penetration
of Iraqi agriculture by the likes of Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical
- the corporate giants that control seed trade across the globe. Eliminating competition
from farmers is a prerequisite for these companies to open up operations in Iraq,
which the new law has achieved. Taking over the first step in the food chain is
their next move.
The
new patent law also explicitly promotes the commercialisation of genetically modified
(GM) seeds in Iraq. Despite serious resistance from farmers and consumers around
the world, these same companies are pushing GM crops on farmers around the world
for their own profit. Contrary to what the industry is asserting, GM seeds do
not reduce the use of pesticides, but they pose a threat to the environment and
to people's health while they increase farmers dependency on agribusiness. In
some countries like India, the 'accidental' release of GM crops is deliberately
manipulated [6], since physical segregation of GM and GM-free crops is not feasible.
Once introduced into the agro-ecological cycle there is no possible recall or
cleanup from genetic pollution [7].
As
to the WTO argument, Iraq legally has a number of options for complying with the
organisation's rules on intellectual property but the US simply decided that Iraq
should not enjoy or explore them.
RECONSTRUCTION
FAÇADE
Iraq is one more arena in a global drive for the adoption
of seed patent laws protecting the monopoly rights of multinational corporations
at the expense of local farmers. Over the past decade, many countries of the South
have been compelled [8] to adopt seed patent laws through bilateral treaties [9].
The US has pushed for UPOV-styled plant protection laws beyond the IPR standards
of the WTO in bilateral trade through agreements for example with Sri Lanka [10]
and Cambodia [11]. Likewise, post-conflict countries have been especially targeted.
For instance, as part of its reconstruction package the US has recently signed
a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement with Afghanistan [12], which would
also include IPR-related issues.
Iraq is a special case in that the adoption
of the patent law was not part of negotiations between sovereign countries. Nor
did a sovereign law-making body enact it as reflecting the will of the Iraqi people.
In Iraq, the patent law is just one more component in the comprehensive and radical
transformation of the occupied country's economy along neo-liberal lines by the
occupying powers. This transformation would entail not just the adoption of favoured
laws but also the establishment of institutions that are most conducive to a free
market regime.
Order
81 is just one of 100 Orders left behind by Bremer and among the more notable
of these laws is the controversial Order 39 which effectively lays down the over-all
legal framework for Iraq's economy by giving foreign investors rights equal to
Iraqis in exploiting Iraq's domestic market. Taken together, all these laws, which
cover virtually all aspects of the economy - including Iraq's trade regime, the
mandate of the Central Bank, regulations on trade union activities, etc. - lay
the bases for the US' bigger objective of building a neo-liberal regime in Iraq.
Order 81 explicitly states that its provisions are consistent with Iraq's "transition
from a non-transparent centrally planned economy to a free market economy characterised
by sustainable economic growth through the establishment of a dynamic private
sector, and the need to enact institutional and legal reforms to give it effect."
Pushing for these "reforms" in Iraq has been the US Agency for International
Development, which has been implementing an Agricultural Reconstruction and Development
Program for Iraq (ARDI) since October 2003. To carry it out, a one-year US$5 million
contract was granted to the US consulting firm Development Alternatives, Inc.
[13] with the Texas A&M University [14] as an implementing partner. Part of
the work has been sub-contracted to Sagric International [15] of Australia. The
goal of ARDI in the name of rebuilding the farming sector is to develop the agribusiness
opportunities and thus provide markets for agricultural products and services
from overseas.
Reconstruction
work, thus, is not necessarily about rebuilding domestic economies and capacities,
but about helping corporations approved by the occupying forces to capitalise
on market opportunities in Iraq. The legal framework laid down by Bremer ensures
that although US troops may leave Iraq in the conceivable future, US domination
of Iraq's economy is here to stay.
FOOD
SOVEREIGNTY
Food sovereignty is the right of people to define their own
food and agriculture policies, to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production
and trade, to decide the way food should be produced, what should be grown locally
and what should be imported. The demand for food sovereignty and the opposition
to the patenting of seeds has been central to the small farmers' struggle all
over the world over the past decade. By fundamentally altering the IPR regime,
the US has ensured that Iraq's agricultural system will remain under "occupation"
in Iraq.
Iraq
has the potential to feed itself. But instead of developing this capacity, the
US has shaped the future of Iraq's food and farming to serve the interests of
US corporations. The new IPR regime pays scant respect to Iraqi farmers' contributions
to the development of important crops like wheat, barley, date and pulses. Samples
of such farmers' varieties were starting to be saved in the 1970s in the country's
national gene bank in Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad. It is feared that all these
have been lost in the long years of conflict. However, the Syria-based Consultative
Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) [17] centre - International
Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) still holds accessions
of several Iraqi varieties. These collections that are evidence of the Iraqi farmers'
knowledge are supposed to be held in trust by the centre. These comprise the agricultural
heritage of Iraq belonging to the Iraqi farmers that ought now to be repatriated.
There have been situations where germplasm held by an international agricultural
research centre has been "leaked out" for research and development to
Northern scientists [18]. Such kind of "biopiracy" is fuelled by an
IPR regime that ignores the prior art of the farmer and grants rights to a breeder
who claims to have created something new from the material and knowledge of the
very farmer.
While
political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people
has already been made near impossible by these new regulations. Iraq's freedom
and sovereignty will remain questionable for as long as Iraqis do not have control
over what they sow, grow, reap and eat.
REFERENCES
[1]
Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant
Variety Law of 2004,
CPA Order No. 81, 26 April 2004, http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20040426_CPAORD_81_Patents_Law.pdf
[2]
The PVP provisions will be put into effect as soon as the Iraqi Minister of Agriculture
passes the necessary executive
orders of implementation in accordance with
this law.
[3] UPOV stands for International Union for the Protection of New
Plant Varieties. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland
it is an intergovernmental
organisation with 53 members, mostly industrialised countries. The UPOV Convention
is a set of
standards for the protection of plant varieties, mainly geared
toward industrial agriculture and corporate interests. See
http://www.upov.org.
[4]
Chapter Threequarter Article 15 B: Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds
of protected varieties or any variety
mentioned.
[5] The World Trade Organisation,
wherein the Iraqi Government has an observer status.
[6] http://www.grain.org/research/contamination.cfm?agenda
[7] GRAIN, "Confronting contamination: 5 reasons to reject co-existence",
Seedling, April 2004, p 1. http://www.grain.org
/seedling/?id=280
[8] GRAIN,
PVP in the South: caving in to UPOV, http://www.grain.org/rights/?id=64
[9]
GRAIN, Bilateral agreements imposing TRIPS-plus intellectual property rights on
biodiversity in developing countries,
http://www.grain.org/rights/?id=68
[10]
http://www.grain.org/brl/?typeid=15
[11] http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=387
[12] http://www.ustr.gov/Document_Library/Press_Releases/2004/September/United_States_
Afghanistan_
Sign_Trade_
Investment_Framework_Agreement.html
[13] http://www.dai.com
