Anyone ever heard of the sterile seed?

[Th1onein]

http://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/terminator.htm

Terminator Technology

On March 3, 1998, Delta & Pine Land Co. (the world’s largest cotton seed company with a 73% share of the U.S. market) and the USDA received U.S. patent #5,723,765 for a new genetic technology designed to render seed-saving by farmers impossible. Dubbed the “Terminator Technology” by the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), it would enable seed companies to create genetically altered varieties programmed by their DNA to kill their own embryos, producing sterile seed.

Although it has been tested so far only on cotton and tobacco, it is believed to have broad application to the seeds of all species, including self-pollinators which reproduce true to type. The world’s two largest food crops, rice and wheat, as well as several others of great importance (including soybeans, oats and sorghum), are self-pollinated. The ease of saving seed from these crops has kept control of the seed in the hands of farmers and mostly out of commerce until now. That could change dramatically if Terminator Technology reaches the marketplace.

According to RAFI, USDA spokesperson Willard Phelps said the agency “wants the technology to be widely licensed and made expeditiously available to many seed companies” so as to “increase the value of proprietary seed owned by U.S. seed companies and to open up new markets in second and third world countries.” Molecular biologist Melvin J. Oliver, its primary inventor, justified it as a “way . . . to protect the technology of patented seed.” The patent holders have targeted 87 countries, many in the developing world or the economically ravaged former Soviet Bloc.

[DenverDem]

1. This is the goal of genetic modification.

So corporate globalists can control your food exclusively.

[whistle]

2. Not just food in the form of plants and animals...

...but people also. :evilgrin: :evilfrown:

[ulTRAX]

3. follows the imperatives of our pathological market system

I haven't heard about this for a few years. I thought... hoped... it was dead... but the imperatives of our pathological market system will not doubt resurrect this appalling idea again.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. Back again, eh?

Monsanto got slammed for this years ago, but now it's back. Put a stake in its heart.

The technology could possibly give us an unlimited food supply, but that would be at the price of making us dependant upon the seed suppliers. Not only would relatively well-off Western farmers be hurt, but emerging nation agriculture dould be wiped out.

We already have a problem with the diversity of seed stocks in grains that the UN has been trying to work out, and this could make things worse.


Or better... who knows what the future will bring. Or at what price.

[mulethree]

5. Haven't heard of it since 1998

Turns my stomach to to see our government happy about this. Yes it would make more money for seed companies, but it .... just feels wrong.

Already something akin to it in hybrids that loose their "hybrid characteristics" after 2 or 3 generations. Like those pinkish flowers I put for groundcover by the front steps. They reseed themselves and come back every year, but after 2 years they were either white or purple with no pink, and after 4 years they are almost completely white with a few purples showing up.