If you thought the restrictions of software companies on copying and transferring programs were unreasonable, just wait til corporate interests assert proprietary rights over the plants that feed the world! International protests recently caused Monsanto to back away from the so-called “Terminator” biotechnology that programs crops to produce sterile seeds. This is certainly welcome. However, neither Monsanto nor any other major biotech company has ruled out future commercialization in the larger area of “trait control”, whereby desired traits could be expressed only in the presence of a proprietary chemical or other treatment.

One hundred and fifty years ago, it was considered perfectly appropriate to justify human slavery with economic arguments. Southern plantation-owners argued, with persuasive facts and figures, that cotton simply could not be raised profitably without slave labor. In other words, slavery was justified by the need to “protect the investment” that plantation owners had made in clearing land, building slave shacks, and making a long-term capital outlay in the purchase of human beings.

Today, needless to say, this argument is appalling and completely inadmissible. Economic pay-offs cannot in any way justify the treatment of another human being as a commodity.

Slavery was a defining moral issue for the 19^th century. In a similar way, the debate over the genetic alteration and “ownership” of plants and animals will be critical for humanity’s fate in the 21^st century. The questions raised by such alteration are many, and must be debated from the perspective of ethics, not of profits. It is morally inadmissible to alter living things so that their benefits can be reserved for the enrichment of a few. The patenting of life forms – in other words, their reduction to proprietary commodities – cannot be justified by economics any more than economics could justify slavery. It is entirely predictable that if biotech companies are denied the right to patent their “products”, they will buy media time to claim that this will harm the world food supply. Perhaps denying patent privileges to biotech companies will inhibit the development of some new crops. So be it. The long-term “benefits” of such crops seem equivocal at best: most bioengineered plants are suitable only for the mechanized, chemical-intensive monocultures that are the most ecologically damaging form of agriculture. In any event, let there be no doubt: biotech companies develop these products for profit, not for public benefit. We all need to challenge these companies to show how their pricing, marketing, research priorities, and trait control strategies demonstrate the slightest concern for poor farmers.