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CSO's and the Third System.

A 39 page document.

Civil Society Organizations and the "Third System"

The only thing that can keep pace with the rate of agricultural biotechnological change these days is the speed with which the transnatinoal Life Industry is eating itself. in the last couple of years, Monsanto has  spent more than $6.7 billion buying seed and other ag biotech companies. Now, American Home Products is merging with Monsanto for another $33 billion. Other massive mergers are inevitable within the next few months. That transnational agri-business wants to stop farmers from saving seeds and conducting their own plant breeding is hardly news.

The $33 billion merger between AHP and Monsanto will force the life industry into a race to see who will come out on top. The merger creates a new challenge for anti-trust and anti-monopoly law enforcement in the areas of pharmaceuticals, crop chemicals, plant breeding, human genomics, and livestock.

As a result of solid NGO pressure, the ominous Terminator Technology" became a topic of substantive discussion and debate at the recent meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP IV) in Bratislava, Slovakia, 4-15 May.

Andean farmers forced Colorado State University to surrender its US patent on 'Apelawa" quinoa. The anti-patent campaign that began 14 months ago (1997) ended on May 1st 1998 when on eof the quinoa 'inventors' admitted that the patent had been abandoned.