Re: Food for thought

**"Duane Campbell" d*@chilitech.net**

> Terminator seeds are clearly a grave danger to all of us--I can't
> imagine any other opinion.

As Jonathin Swift said, "You cannot reason a person out of a position he did 
not reason himself into in the first place." The danger of terminator seed 
is clear only to those who accept myopia as the norm. I notice in the 
several messages on the subject that the responses are extremely vague with 
no specifics given, but that seems sufficient for those who already want to 
believe. I am not concerned about terminator seed, but nothing frightens me 
more than people who cannot imagine any opinion but their own.

Several years ago I debated Hope Shand of RAFI. Some of her arguments were 
flat-out wrong, some dishonest. When cornered it came down to the fact that 
she didn't believe in ANY property rights, intellectual or otherwise.We have 
a word for people who think like that.

One really good thing about terminator seed is that I don't use the word 
"terminator" very often in my gardening column, so it took only a couple of 
seconds for my search applet to pop out the column I wrote on the subject in 
1998.. For those who are not offended by opposing views, I pass it on here.

D

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Organic zealots have got their undies in a bunch once again. This time their 
bete-noire is a nascent genetic engineering process called TPS, or 
Technology Protection System, but which they have labeled "terminator seed," 
apparently commemorating that great organic sage, Arnold Schwarzenegger. 
(His catch phrase, "I'll be back," is an homage to recycling, but you 
probably already knew that.)

Rights to the TPS technology belong to a small southern seed company that 
specializes in cotton, but the organic cultists have taken aim at Monsanto. 
This is partly because Monsanto is negotiating to buy the patent, but mainly 
because they are myopic marksmen and Monsanto is a bigger target.

Let me set the scene. An agribusiness invests a million bucks in R&D to 
create a plant variety that will provide some benefit to the farmer and the 
consumer. After throwing all that money at a product, they would like to 
make some money from it, first to recoup the development costs, second to 
store up some cash to pay for future research, and third to pass on some 
profit to the stockholders. This is called capitalism, and as Martha Stewart 
will tell you, it's a good thing.

But organic gardeners think that they have a natural right (well, of course 
it would have to be a Natural right) to steal the seed. They call it 
"saving" seed rather than stealing it, but euphemisms aside, it's still 
taking something without the consent of the guy that worked to produce it.

TPS causes the treated crop to set sterile seeds so that the 
back-to-the-Earth bunch cannot use them the following season, and this has 
made them apoplectic. They have started a screeching campaign, and Organic 
Gardening magazine has been on it like brown on rice.

Their first argument is brazen. They proclaim that taking the seed that 
someone else has developed is their right. They don't explain just how this 
right is derived, though, or why a company should bother to improve a seed 
strain without compensation. Why complicate the issue.

Maybe someone can explain this to me. If these people are already saving 
their own seed of their own favorite varieties, what's the problem? They 
wouldn't use the new seed anyway, would they? So they wouldn't be affected 
by it, right?

Their first argument, while not compelling, is at least honest. Their second 
is not. They hint darkly that the "terminator" gene will escape and 
annihilate the entire world's food crops. That would be serious. If it were 
true.

There is an old joke that winds up, "If your parents didn't have any 
children, there is a good chance that you won't either." Organic gardeners 
don't think that's funny. Most of 'em don't have much of a sense of humor 
anyway.

Confronted with the reasoning that sterile seeds cannot multiply and take 
over the world, they mumble something vague about pollen. There is a grain 
of truth in it, but only a grain.

IF an organic gardener has land right next to a modern, progressive farmer 
using TPS seed, and IF he happens to be growing exactly the same crop there, 
and IF some pollen crosses over, then it MAY cause a FEW plants to produce 
sterile seeds. So what? Even organically grown plants randomly produce 
sterile seeds. And since the sterility gene will prevent any affected plant 
from reproducing, it stops right there. This isn't Attack of the Killer 
Tomatoes, folks.

Plant breeders have as much right to protect their product from piracy as do 
video producers. And just as videos have thingies that make your illegally 
copied tape of Babe fade in and out (at least that's what I'm told happens), 
seed companies have a right to protect their product from theft. If organic 
gardeners don't like it, for whatever feeble reason, they don't have to buy 
it. That's the way the market system works. But they have no right to force 
their extreme views on everyone else.

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