Re: [Fwd: Natural Life Magazine #61 - Saving Seed Becomes Illegal]
>Windy, we differ in our views of this subject that plain..As most crop( and
>home garden seed for that matter) currently, largely F1 in nature this hardly
>seems necessary as it will not reproduce true from saved seed anyway ..So why
>the necessity to render them entirely unable to reproduce?, the answer is of
>course obvious ,money and dependency on the sole source of attaining these
>seeds..
Well, Connie, I certainly can't deny that the seed and biotechnology
companies are in it for the money, but it's really more complicated than
that.
As someone with practical experience in the genetic engineering field, I
can tell you that the investment in doing this kind of work (whether you
agree that it is good or bad - and that is a whole discussion in itself) is
very expensive. While I am not going to try to defend all practices done
to protect this investment, there is the same rationale that folks use in
the patenting of conventionally (non-genetically engineered) plants. One
you have made an investment of millions of dollars to develop a superior
variety, you want some assurance of making back your investment (again,
here is an area of widely varying views). If you do not have the promise
of significant return on your money, you lose the source of research
dollars.
It is also a bit simplistic to think that the F1 generation is useless. If
you have (at some considerable expense) inserted a gene (such as pest
resistance from Bt), that gene is still there and could be used for further
breeding. Perhaps the average farmer might not do this, but a competetor
might.
Another consideration is that this is very unlikely to impact on us peons.
The biotechnology companies are going where the money is, and that is for
commercially valuable crops.
I'm not saying any of this as a blanket defence of the biotechlology
industry. As we're all aware, this industry is opening up a whole
Pandora's Box of ethical and legal questions. However, it is my opinion
that we have far more to gain than we have to lose. Only the future will
answer the question as to whether this will be true.
Don Martinson
Senior Research Associate
Medical College of Wisconsin - FMLH/West
Department of Medicine
Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Clinical Nutrition
9200 W. Wisconsin Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53226
(414) 259-3817
d*@post.its.mcw.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@mallorn.com with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE PERENNIALS
