Genetic Engineering & Biopiracy

Hassibullah Roshan
December 10, 2013
Kabul, Afghanistan

In “Piracy Through Patents,” Vandana Shiva challenges the safety of genetically modified seeds, and discusses that patents are a replay of colonialism, which is now known as the globalization and free trade. She traces the progression from the European colonization of “native people” to the present allotment of the natural resources that they need for their physical and cultural survival. The intellectual property rights laws of the GATT set the stage for foreign corporations to secure an absolute monopoly control of our food production by supplanting customary seed varieties with patented hybrids.   The notion behind “new colonies” not only erodes the diversity of heterogeneity species and cultural practices, but also contaminates and impounds the environment as whole. By manipulating an organism using advanced technology, genetic engineering designs products or “seeds”.   On the basis of (IPR) Intellectual Property Right, farmers, who use the “designed” products without the consent of the patent holder, are deemed criminals. Though the engineers “treat the tools of genetic engineering as the yardstick of improvement”, the seeds are not genetic-engineered to produce more nutrients, but to empower the corporations to make decisions on behalf of farmers at the first stage, and consumers thereafter.   Their decisions consequently result in the production of toxic foods and selling them at a high level “global” market price.

Additionally, genetic engineering promotes “uniformity” and “homogenization” which serve as the critical elements in the strengthening of globalization. In globalization, as Shiva argues, nature is seen as something to be tamed and used for human exploitation, control and domination. On the one hand, globalization represents the burden of one culture striving to homogenize the rest and on the other hand, monocultures and homogenization lead to a direct connection with violence in terms...