The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

316 the world according to monsantoalties) at a minimum by the system set up by the UPOV agreements. It isprecisely because the “protection” of seeds also brings about the protectionof the foods derived from them that many countries of the South, led bySouth Africa, India, and Brazil, have demanded that Article 27, paragraph3(b), be revised. They are also worried about the consequences of thepatenting of microorganisms (theoretically including genes), which can onlyencourage biopiracy, that is, the theft of genetic resources and the traditionalknowledge associated with them, to the detriment of the rural and indigenouscommunities that have maintained those resources for millennia.The WTO: A Veritable NightmareTo get a clear picture, I went to Geneva on January 13, 2005, to meet withAdrian Otten, director of intellectual property for the WTO, and I asked atthe outset a basic question that suddenly made him tense up: “What is thegoal of the TRIPS agreement?” Stammering a bit, he finally answered, “Well,I suppose that one of the fundamental objectives is to establish common internationalrules for member governments of the WTO to protect the intellectualproperty rights of certain member countries of the WTO, as well asthose of their citizens and companies.”“And which article has caused a problem?” I asked, to see if I had understoodthe WTO’s gibberish.“Well, it’s Article 27, paragraph 3(b), which adds a clause to the TRIPSagreement according to which inventions connected to plants and animalsshould be subject to patenting.”Put like that, it was as clear as spring water.“The goal of the TRIPS agreement is that a patent obtained in the UnitedStates—for example, by Monsanto—will be automatically applicable everywherein the world,” I had been told a month earlier in New Delhi by DevinderSharma. Chairman of the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security,this noted Indian journalist is a fierce opponent of the WTO. “If you observethe international evolution of the patent system, you can see that it followsexactly that of the Patent Office in Washington. With the TRIPS agreement,every country has to follow the model of the United States or else suffer severecommercial penalties, because the WTO has absolutely extraordinarypowers of coercion and reprisal. That means that if a country doesn’t enforce