The patenting of life forms aids in the introduction of destructive technologies based on genetic engineering into agriculture. This destroys biodiversity, the knowledge of farmers and our food security. Ultimately, the patenting of life forms seriously and negatively affects both food growers and consumers. We are fundamentally opposed to the patenting of life. We call it an act of biopiracy.
Biopiracy benefits only a privileged few at the expense of women, nature and the South.
Specifically we are opposed to the racist appropriation of Basmati rice by Rice Tec, a U.S.-based corporation, from farmers in South Asia who have developed this unique rice variety over centuries of seed saving and breeding. Instead of acknowledging the contribution of farmers' knowledge and nature's own creative and regenerative abilities, Rice Tec, through its ownership of a U.S. patent, has claimed to have 'invented' Basmati Rice. This is an outrage. We, the undersigned, ask the House of Commons to not accept Rice Tec's 1997 U.S. Patent number 5,663,484 in Canada. We also ask the House of Commons to stop accepting patents, Canadian, U.S. or that of any other country, on all life forms.