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To offset the cost of testing, it has been proposed that a new form of life patent be granted, giving sole rights to the entire species and its genome to the corporation paying for the testing (it being unlikely that individuals will be able to afford such testing), and granting complete immunity to the patent holder of the species becomes a pest. This will place over 99% of the natural world off-limits - it is the greatest "theft of the commons" from humanity, and the greatest extension of government and corporate control over the natural world in history.

NOTE: Sitting on the Federal Invasive Species Advisory Committee

Dr. Nelroy E. Jackson
Monsanto Company
Agricultural Sector
400 South Ramona Avenue, Suite 212
Corona, CA 92879-1448

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1573646/posts
How do you say No NAIS in Japanese?

Excerpt:

>>>Genes and the products of genetic engineering can be patented and owned. In 1980, two federal landmark decisions influenced the business side of biotechnology. A Supreme Court ruling allowed patents to be granted for genetically engineered organisms, processes of transforming cells and expressing proteins, and genes themselves. More recently, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a Patent Office decision and ruled that DNA sequences that code for particular proteins are patentable. The Bayh Dole Act rules that all intellectual property resulting from federal funding resides in the university, rather than in the government. Unless, the univeristy link is linked to funding by a company, such as Monsanto.

This is what is fueling the drive for a major restructuring of the agriculture, food, and fiber industries. The Bio and now Nanotechnology sciences have presented fundamental problems for the protection of intellectual property rights. As the main OECD publication on patent protection has put it (Beier et al., 1985):
"In the past the patent system rested safely on a semantically clear [and] objectively defensible separation between (patentable) invention' and (non-patentable) 'discovery'. The recent development of biotechnology where some scientific discoveries could be turned into commercial products almost immediately has blurred this separation. This may have far-reaching legal and practical consequences."

Monsanto has sued hundreds of farmers for saving gene-altered seeds from each year's harvest to replant their fields the following season -- a practice farmers have followed for years. In fact, three-quarters of the world's growers are subsistence farmers who rely on saved seed. Monsanto claims "seed piracy" and said replanting the company's patented, gene-altered seeds violates a three-year-old company rule requiring that farmers buy the seeds fresh every year. Monsanto does not sell its engineered seeds in the traditional sense but "leases" them, in effect, for one time use only.

The Creation of National Animal Identification System

(more at link)