Terminator - Not A Movie
Posted 19th March 2001

Syngenta, the world's largest agribusiness firm, was formed on 13 November 2000 with the merger of AstraZeneca and Novartis. The next day the company won its newest Terminator patent, US Patent 6,147,282, 'Method of controlling the fertility of a plant.' (The patent was issued to Novartis - but the company's intellectual property goes to Syngenta.) With pro forma 1999 sales of US $7 billion, Syngenta is the world's largest agrochemical enterprise, and the third largest seed corporation. 'Syngenta's newest Terminator patent should set off alarm bells for governments concerned about biodiversity and Farmers' Rights,' said Julie Delahanty of RAFI. 'Some governments and civil society organizations (CSOs) mistakenly assume that the threat of Terminator is diminished. The reality is that the Gene Giants are winning new patents, and Terminator seeds are moving closer to commercialization,' warns Delahanty. 'Terminator technology' refers to plants that have been genetically modified to produce sterile seed; it is designed to prevent farmers from saving and re-planting their seed, forcing them to buy new seeds every year.

Terminator has been widely condemned as an immoral technology that threatens global food security, especially for 1.4 billion people who depend on farm-saved seed. In 1999, due to mounting opposition to Terminator seeds, both Monsanto (now Pharmacia) and AstraZeneca (now Syngenta) vowed not to commercialize genetic seed sterilization technology. Syngenta now controls at least six Terminator patents and a host of new patents on genetically modified plants with defective immune systems. If the Gene Giants get their way, warns RAFI, sterility is just one of many traits that could be controlled by the application of external chemicals. 'Traitor' technology or genetic trait-control allows companies to engineer crops that depend on the external application of a chemical in order to develop into fertile, or healthy plants. Using inducible promoter systems, a plant's genetic traits can be turned 'on or off' with the application of an external chemical catalyst. RAFI and other CSOs warn that a new generation of chemically dependent plants will be among the next wave of genetically modified crops unless action is taken to ban them. 'Terminator and Traitor seeds are a real and present danger for global food security and biodiversity,' said RAFI's Hope Shand. 'The Biodiversity Convention's scientific advisors (SBSTTA) meeting in Montreal this week can't afford to let genetic trait control technology - or GURTs -slip beneath their radar.'

A new report to be released by RAFI this week points out that Terminator patent portfolios have changed hands in the latest round of industry mergers and acquisitions. RAFI's new report on Terminator technology examines new patents, identifies the Gene Giants who controls them, and offers recommendations to policymakers. Highlights include: Syngenta's New Traitor Patents: Civil society organizations (CSOs) are particularly alarmed by Syngenta's new patents which involve the engineering of plants with weakened immune systems. The new patents were identified in October 2000 by Action Aid, Berne Declaration, GeneWatch and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.(1) RAFI identified earlier AstraZeneca and Novartis patents for 'chemically dependent' plants - dubbed 'Traitor' technology by RAFI. If companies can successfully engineer seeds to perform only with the application of a proprietary pesticide or fertilizer, it will reinforce chemical dependencies in agriculture - and both farmers and food security will be held in biological bondage to the Gene Giants.

The inventors claim that they are developing 'immune-compromised' plants for research purposes only. But CSOs cannot ignore the specter of chemically dependent plants in the hands of the world's largest agrochemical corporation. For SBSTTA's scientific advisors meeting in Montreal, the handwriting is on the wall: Research and development of genetic trait control technology - including Terminator seeds and the development of plants with weakened immune systems- is moving forward. Unless governments take action to ban these technologies, they will be commercialized, with potentially devastating impacts on farmers, biodiversity and food security. If present trends continue, farmers will become trapped in a pattern of biological controls that lead to 'bioserfdom.' National seed sovereignty will be destroyed, and food security endangered.