Earlier this month, a federal court indicted a Chinese national for trying to steal GMO corn technology from DuPont, Monsanto, and AgReliant Genetics. The scientist’s arrest is just the latest in a series of indictments against six other people linked to a Beijing seed-development company called Dabeinong Technology Group Co. The FBI alleges the Dabeinong staff were part of a years-long seed collection effort that sometimes involved some low-tech methods. Science magazine reports:
The U.S.-based defendants roamed rural Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa in rental cars, digging up corn seedlings, stealing ears of corn, and stealing or illegally obtaining packaged seed, according to court documents. In 2011, a DuPont Pioneer field manager spotted one alleged thief on his knees digging in a field, as a collaborator waited in a nearby parked car. (1)
Patenting seeds…
How civilized…
We have patented everything. And now we look ridiculous.
Haidegger called for going back to the mother Earth.
As so many wise men before him.
But not like this.
The Earth is not our own.
Quite the opposite: WE are hers.
We must start digging with our hands.
We must start being dirty.
So that we clean up from all our sins…
All the seeds we need, are already in us.
Waiting to flourish.
Walk in the woods barefooted.
And you will feel that something magical transcends the cosmos.
And it surely is NOT the seeds of Monsanto…
Hear hear! What a funny image, heaped with irony: people sneaking around to steal patented seeds. Sins? Hmmm. How about an excellent demonstration of our own short-sightedness? Thanks.
Let’s just hope we change our way of thinking before it is too late. 🙂
It is a race, isn’t it?