Iraqi Seeds Patented by US Companies
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Wednesday November 10, 2010 13:12
by Dave Donnellan
Order 81
At the recent Afri Hedge School Clare O'Grady Walshe argued strongly that if we give away our food sovereignty and our right to grow our own seeds as happened in Iraq it will prove disastrous for the world food system.
A few days before Paul Bremer III, the American pro-consul in Iraq, left Iraq in 2004 he passed 100 orders. Order 81 was an order to patent the plant varieties and the seeds of that country. It was a very sinister move really. It was apparently designed by the US Department of Agriculture and it was basically not to stop framers immediately from sowing their own seed but it was that anybody that would characterise, name or label any new plant, that company or that person would own them.