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Food expert warns against monopolies

Rashme Sehgal

Food security expert Pat Mooney, executive director of the Canada-based Rural Advancement Foundation International, warns that a consolidation between the food, agricultural and pharmaceutical industries called the life sciences industry is an extremely dangerous development.

Mooney shot into the limelight in the late '70s with a series of hard-hitting reports warning against how seed patenting would lead up to loss of global agricultural genetic resources.

"A tighter connection between genomics or gene sequencing research that deals with plant, animal and human life and data management allows MNCs to mix and match genes thereby playing around with the basic DNA," Mooney stated. "Once you gain control over the technology, it can be applied to a wide spectrum of products. All this is being done to gain control over the marketplace through use of patent and other monopoly controls," he said.

"Twenty years ago, we did an assessment of the markets seed industry and found there were over 7,000 public and private institutions around the globe. Now three companies control 47 per cent of the global seed market. In the late 1970s, there were 65 companies marketing herbicides and insecticides, but today nine companies constitute 91 per cent of the global market. In the late 1970s, the top 20 pharmaceutical companies collectively had about 5 per cent of the global pharmaceutical market. Today, they control 40 per cent of the global pharmaceutical market," said the seed expert.

"The result is there for everyone to see. Seventy five per cent of the biological diversity of this world has already been wiped out. These companies are telling governments that in order to feed the poor and hungry, they should be handed over proprietary control of all seeds. I must add that 82 per cent of all seeds being sold are patented. Ten years from now, 100 per cent of all seeds being sold will be patented," he said.

While their long-term strategy is to create a life-science industry which combines pharmaceuticals and food in one package, the last 18 months have got these companies a little worried. Mooney said, "For one, they realise that the GMO foods have turned out to be a complete dud. I think their own projection is that the second generation of GMOs is also going to be a dud and that it's the third generation of GMOs that will help them make some money."

"But it's not going to be as easy as they think because the public has begun to ask some tough questions. There is a real scare amongst the public and farmers that the ownership of life is a very scary thing and should not be handed over to a a handful of companies," he said.

"The consumer has also become aware that the fellow who is selling them a herbicide-tolerant crop is also the owner of the pharmaceutical company. For the first time in a quarter century, we're seeing the issues of who owns and controls life becoming important," he said.