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Media Release Issued by the African Centre for Biosafety
**Africa’s Granary Plundered: **
**Outrage at Patents on Tanzanian Sorghum protected by International Seed Treaty.**
Johannesburg, 11 January 2010. The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) has today released a report titled ‘Africa’s Granary Plundered:
Privatisation of Tanzanian Sorghum Protected by the Seed Treaty’, showing that the patenting of a gene isolated from Tanzanian sorghum by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and the Texas A&M University (US) violates the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) also known as “the Seed Treaty.”
The gene in question, called SbMATE, was recently isolated from a Tanzanian farmers’ variety of sorghum and may yield tremendous profits for multinational companies and government researchers in the United States and Brazil. The SbMATE gene enables tolerance to aluminium toxicity in acid soils, which is a problem affecting parts of north America and Europe and as much as 30% of arable land in Latin America, East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
SbMATE is not only useful in sorghum, but also may be used in other crops including genetically engineered (GE) maize, wheat, and rice as well as GE eucalyptus tree plantations.
Sorghum is a crop covered by Annex 1 of the Seed Treaty and the Tanzanian farmers’ variety, which was collected decades ago, is held in trust under that Treaty by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India. The Treaty prohibits patent claims on varieties and genes of plants that are held in trust. According to Mariam Mayet, Director of ACB, “the patent raises serious questions about the legality of the patent claims. On the face of it, it appears as if the Seed Treaty has been violated.
The patenting of the SbMATE gene is a new chapter in a long history of appropriation of African sorghum diversity by foreign interests. ”
According to Edward Hammond, the ACB’s researcher “If ICRISAT and the ITPGRFA are found to be derelict in their obligations to protect the Tanzanian gene and generally, germplasm held by them in trust, the legitimacy of these institutions as stewards of the world’s crop biodiversity will be called into serious question.”
The gene has been patented in the US, and an international patent application has been filed that will assert ownership of the gene, and any plants with this aluminium tolerance trait, across the world including in its country of origin and other African countries where sorghum is indigenous.
The commercial potential of the gene is strong. Although it was only recently identified, the giant multinational Dow Chemical is already negotiating with the US government to license it. Japan’s second largest paper products company has also expressed interest in buying access to it.
The USA already profits substantially from the ingenuity of African farmers who maintain sorghum diversity. A recent external review of one US Agency for International Development (USAID) program operating in Africa concluded that sorghum varieties released by the program to US plant breeders benefit the US economy by US $680 million per year.
The report can be downloaded from the website of the African Centre for Biosafety at www.biosafetyafrica.org.za
Contact:
Edward Hammond: +1 512 217 1416
Mariam Mayet: +27 (0) 83 269 4309
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