From: Jim Diamond <[log in to unmask]>

At one of my daughter's birthday parties a precocious 7 year old spat on
his fingers and then marked the part of the cake he wanted (and got).
This
is Monsanto's strategy for wheat, a grain which is, well, engrained in
our
culture, part of human civilization since the dawn of the agricultural
age.

The product of ten thousand years of farming knowledge, the seeds by
which
our collective life is nourished represent one of the last great
commons,
the embodiment of a collective knowledge which can be shared by farmers
around the globe. This is not a small matter. How societies feed
themselves
is as basic as it gets. And agricultural surplus funded the rise in
arts,
education, technology and indeed almost every aspect of our culture.
Farmers around the world are dependent on seed saving.

Yet with a simple patent for "RoundUp Ready" wheat, Monsanto can mark
the
genome of this grain exactly as if they put a barcode into the DNA --
and
just as easily as the 7 year old marked my daughter's birthday cake. The
patent right means the company can put its "dibs" on a farmer's seed.
The
farmers may no longer be able to save seed for next year's crop unless
they
pay Monsanto it's technology licensing fee. This robs farmers of a
right;
this is fact, not speculation -- the company has sued and collected in
both
Canada and the U.S.

Can farmers opt to just ignore this? No, because wind blows the patented
genes from one field to the next. Monsanto almost has a patent on the
wind!
And because it's trivially easy for every seed company to reshuffle the
genetic code and so put their corporate dibs on the bounty of nature,
corporate-patented genetic code will tend to proliferate -- it's a money
maker for seed companies even if not for farmers. It's time to stop it
now.

To protect the right to save seeds -- as well as the right to grow
organic
crops -- Sierra Club hopes that farmers will join environmentalists in
opposing GE wheat.

Corporate patented, hacked-for-profit genetic code can harm nature, too.
Wheat has many close cousins in nature and the genes will spread. If
this
product is introduced, there will be dozens more and those genes will
re-assort in unpredictable ways, not only in farmers' fields but also in
the wilder places of nature. That's why Sierra Club is joining the fight
against corporate dibs on our daily bread.

We appeal to those who want to wave a yellow flag of caution and those
who
feel a red stop sign is more in order to unite to sign our petition to
the
USDA.  Please help by signing our message!  If you're a member of an
organization which might be interested in signing on, please bring it to
the group's attention, no matter whether small or large.

Jim Diamond, M.D.
Sierra Club Genetic Engineering Committee (chair)
[log in to unmask]

How to sign on:
Individuals and groups can sign on at
http://www.sierraclub.org/biotech/amberwaves/
alternatively, you can e-mail your information to Jim at the address
given
above -- name, city, State required; degrees and affiliations if you
wish
Organizations which are signing on as such should send full contact
information.
Thanks!

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