IN APRIL last year, a pair of Australian government agencies tried to patent
two species of chickpea grown by subsistence farmers in India and Iran. The
agencies had borrowed samples of the plants from an international gene bank in
Hyderabad, India, where they are kept in trust along with tens of thousands of
other seeds so that researchers anywhere can use them.
The two agencies, Agriculture Western Australia and the Grains Research and
Development Corporation, realised when they grew them that they produced
stronger and taller pods than commercial varieties. So they applied to the
government鈥檚 Plant Breeder鈥檚 Rights Office in Canberra for intellectual property
rights on the two chickpeas鈥攚hich would prevent anyone else marketing
them鈥攄espite the fact that they had done little more than propagate them.
They even gave them Urdu names: Sona, meaning gold, and Heera, meaning
diamond.
When rural pressure groups found out, they were furious. 鈥淚t鈥檚 blatant
biopiracy,鈥� said Farhad Mazhar from the South Asian Network on Food, Ecology and
Culture. 鈥淎ustralia is privatising seeds that belong to our farmers and planning
to sell them back to us.鈥� Alerted to the situation, the gene bank that had
provided the chickpeas, the International Crops Research Institute for the
Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), told the Australian agencies it would be wrong to
patent plants that are meant to belong to everyone. As a result, on 13 January
the two agencies withdrew their applications.
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But the story does not end there. The episode has sparked an orgy of claims
and counterclaims about Australia鈥檚 right to dozens of seeds from developing
countries, and widespread alarm about what other rich countries might be up to.
Worse, it has raised doubts about the effectiveness of the system that is
supposed to protect the world鈥檚 plant genes from piracy. The two agencies
responsible for looking after the world鈥檚 agricultural resources, the UN Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome and the Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in Washington DC, have launched
urgent investigations and will report to a meeting of 150 governments in Rome in
June.
The UN regime for protecting crop resources was supposed to be watertight.
The CGIAR, an intergovernmental agency based at the World Bank, oversees 11
large agricultural gene banks around the world, including ICRISAT. Each bank is
run as a separate research institute, and together they contain more than half a
million distinct genetic varieties of food crops. In 1994 the gene banks signed
agreements with the FAO promising to hold this germ plasm 鈥渋n trust for the
benefit of the international community鈥�. They also agreed to make seeds
available for scientific research or plant breeding 鈥渨ithout restriction鈥�, on
condition that no one claimed legal ownership or intellectual property rights
over them.
But the system has started to show cracks. One of the gene banks, the
International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) at
Aleppo in Syria, has admitted signing agreements with Australian research
institutes allowing them to claim rights over seeds as long as they gain
approval from the countries of origin. Applications for rights to two ICARDA
varieties, a grain from Syria called flatpod peavine and a red lentil whose
origins are uncertain, were lodged with the Plant Breeder鈥檚 Rights Office last
year by the Centre for Legumes in Mediterranean Agriculture, a joint research
venture set up by universities and government agencies in Western Australia in
1992.
The Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), a lobby group based in
Canada, says that the ICARDA has 鈥渇undamentally misinterpreted its authority鈥� by
allowing its germ plasm to be subjected to patent claims. The RAFI is warning
developing countries not to give their seeds to the Syria-based institute until
it has cancelled its agreements with Australia.
Pat Mooney, executive director of the RAFI, argues that the ICARDA鈥檚
behaviour undermines international efforts to prevent the world鈥檚 gene banks
from being 鈥渞ipped off鈥� by government institutes and private companies. The
trustee arrangements put in place by the FAO and the CGIAR are ineffectual and
must be overhauled, he says. 鈥淚n twenty years of work with crop genetic
resources, the RAFI has never encountered a problem such as this.鈥�
The RAFI鈥檚 accusations have prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity within
the FAO and the CGIAR. Ismail Serageldin, chairman of the CGIAR, wrote to the
FAO last week suggesting that governments should be urged to ban patents on
seeds from gene banks. He has asked one of the leading banks, the International
Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) in Rome, to examine ways of
strengthening trustee arrangements.
Geoff Hawtin, director-general of the IPGRI, says that the way in which the
ICARDA has interpreted its trustee status is different from the interpretations
made by 鈥渕ost, if not all鈥� the other ten banks. The ICARDA defends its actions
by pointing out that the seeds were sent to Australia years before they were
officially placed in trust in 1994. Its director-general, Adel El-Beltagy, says
that agreements were made with Australian agencies 鈥渋n good faith鈥� and that he
welcomes the investigations being carried out by the FAO and the CGIAR.
Hawtin is also concerned about Australia鈥檚 attempts to lay claim to seeds
that are part of the world鈥檚 heritage. 鈥淚f any company or any country tries to
take materials out of the public domain and make them private, there is a
problem and something has to be done about it,鈥� he says. The RAFI is
investigating 40 other cases in which it alleges that Australian organisations
may have falsely claimed rights to seeds from other countries. These include
grasses from Kenya and Tanzania, lupins from Italy and Poland, clover from
Turkey, nuts from Brazil, and pearl millet from Zambia. Australia, says the
RAFI, is suffering from kleptomania.
Out of line
Senior officials in the international agricultural organisations are also
worried about Australia鈥檚 record. 鈥淭heir intellectual property rights are out of
line with the rest of the world,鈥� says a source at one of the seed banks. This
may be, he suggests, because Australian agriculture specialises in southern
crops such as chickpeas that tend not to have been intensively bred.
Australia鈥檚 own plant conservation lobby is also critical. Bill Hankin,
president of the Heritage Seed Curators Association in Bairnsdale, Victoria, is
backing the RAFI鈥檚 campaign. He says that cuts in state funding over the past
five years have forced four government agencies to apply for rights to seeds so
that they can earn royalties from them.
Doug Waterhouse, director of the Australian Plant Breeder鈥檚 Rights Office,
promises that every instance quoted by the RAFI will be investigated. But he
suspects that in many cases the organisations that have applied for rights will
be able to show that they have obtained authorisation from the country of origin
and have bred new and distinct varieties, as Australian law requires.
Australia鈥檚 stance is also defended by Bill Scowcroft, director of the
Australian Centre for Oilseeds Research in Horsham, Victoria. The RAFI鈥檚
accusations are unfair, he says, pointing out that many other countries have
benefited from plants like the eucalyptus that have been bred in Australia and
then freely exported. 鈥淭he RAFI and Mooney have got their knickers in a knot,鈥�
he says. 鈥淭o call Australia into question is being malicious, way over the top.
We are not doing anything that others are not doing.鈥�
Hankin, however, is calling on the Australian government to mount an
investigation into the Plant Breeder鈥檚 Rights Office. 鈥淲hat is important here is
Australia鈥檚 scientific reputation in agriculture,鈥� he says. 鈥淥ur reputation as a
country is on the line.鈥�