As a Democratic Steakhouse (at buyblue.org) and I found this. :eyes:
August 02, 2005
Monsanto Wants To Patent All The Pigs In The World
In a move to give intelligent design creationists the shivering fits, Monsanto Corporation has been outed by Greenpeace for seeking to patent pigs.
http://www.ems.org/nws/2005/08/02/greenpeace_reveaMonsanto's ambition is to prevent hog breeders and farmers from breeding pigs with certain characteristics, or by conventional methods of breeding, or force them to pay royalties.
Conventional methods of swine breeding involve the boar humping the sow. Monsanto presumably wants to patent pigporking. It's a noble ambition.
Filed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in
Geneva, Monsanto's patent application stakes a claim on pig rights in more than 160 countries, including the UK, Germany, the US, Russia, Brazil, Australia, China and India.
I am warning you hogs right here and now, you pork, you pay Monsanto, or Monsanto sues your owners for letting you do the wild thing.
Seriously, Monsanto wants to patent this particular form of life, however ignoble, and the method of procreation, however beastly, presumably to turn an honest dollar.
I like a company that says it's a pig pimp and wants to corner the market in pigpimpery. I knew a fellow once in the Fillmore District who pimped foxes, with an occasional pig thrown in, but he never got rich. He had a limited reach. Monsanto wants to own the breeding rights to all the pigs in the world.
I see a searing fracas with President Bush over the bacon barons' gambit to patent a life form. The President has recently announced that American schools should teach "intelligent design" alongside of evolution.
If God created hogs, and if Monsanto patents future pigs, then Monsanto is designing a species, practicing Intelligent Design, and the Designed Swine Monsanto makes is a repeatable experiment. And then Monsanto is practicing Swine Science. But there is no scientific theory of Intelligent Design about the origin of biodiversity from earlier organisms. So Monsanto is not only making a profit from patenting pigs but also driving a nail in the heart of that Great Satanic interrupter of profit, Intelligent Design. Bush will pork them for that.
But meanwhile, the company that sued a Canadian farmer for having their genetically modified pollen in his organic corn field now wants to patent all pigs. Greed is at the trough. I hope they are stymied.
Posted by Martha at August 2, 2005 10:13 PM