After Basmati And Neem, They Want Chapati  

Monsanto’s Bio-Piracy

K Varadha Rajan

Now it is the turn of wheat plants. The traditional knowledge of producing Chapati and wheat plants of India has become a victim of patent rights regime. Monsanto, the world’s largest genetically modified seed company, has been awarded patents on wheat used for making chapati-the flat bread staple of northern India.

The patents give the US multinational company exclusive ownership over ‘Naphal’, a strain of wheat whose gene-sequence makes it particularly suited to crisp breads. Another patent filed in Europe gives Monsanto rights over the use of  “Naphal” wheat to make Chapatis, which consists of flour, water and salt.

The plants claimed as inventions in Monsanto’s patent are essentially derived from Indian wheat. In Hindi the word ‘Naphal’ means that ‘which gives no fruit’.  ‘Naphal’ is not an Indian name for an indegenious wheat variety. Naphal is evidently a distortion of ‘Niphad’, Niphad is a place in Maharashtra, which has a crop-breeding centre. Those at ‘Niphad’ had the nomenclature Niphad P-4/ NP 4. Niphad 4 is an Indian variety which is a selection from the local  “mundia” found in the UP hills.

European Patent Office (EPO) granted patent on May 21, 2003. Under the EPO, objection to the grant of patent has to be filed within nine months, which expires on February 1, 2004. The question on the Monsanto’s wheat Biopiracy was raised in parliament on July 21, 2003. The minister of agriculture has replied, “M/s plant breeding international, a unilever company which was acquired by Monsanto in 1998 has obtained a patent for a new variety of wheat designed for use in Europe. This variety incorporates some charctaristic of the Naphal land race of wheat from India. The Naphal land race is not covered by the Eruopean Patent and continues to be available to Indian farmers and researchers”.

The reply indicates that the government of India is not planning to take any action against the Biopiracy and is in fact legitimising it. The reply also accepts two flaws in the patent claim. Firstly, European law does not allow patenting   of plant varieties. Secondly, the reply accepts “Naphal” as a   name of a land race in India, even though no farmer in India would name a traditional variety as “Naphal”.

But the government of India did not file objection to the grant of patent before May 21, 2003.The supreme court had issued notice to the minister of agriculture on a public interest litigation petition filed by the Research Foundation for Science and Technology, to take steps to oppose Monsanto’s bid to get a Europe patent on Indian wheat.

There is a little hope of the Indian government intervening to prevent the ‘chapati’ being patented by Monsanto. In fact, the ministry of commerce sent a circular out last year, which said that there is no money to file these cases any more. The government’s, explanation is that it cannot afford legal fees, having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting a US decision to grant a Texan company a patent on Basmati rice in   1997.

Not only chapati, the number of patents relating to rice issued every year in the US has risen from less that 100 in the mid 1990s to more 600 in 2000. After neem, turmeric, and Basmati, US Corporations have taken a patent on atta (wheat flour) chakkis through the patent No 6, 098,905 granted to Con-Agra on August 8, 2000.The method which has been patented is the familiar method being used in thousands of atta chakkis throughout South Asia. The patent application filed by Con-Agra said, “the present invention relates to a method for producing an atta flour. Which is typically used to produce Asian breads such as chapati and roti. The atta flour method includes passing an amount of wheat through a device designed to crack the wheat so as to poduce an amount of cracked wheat, followed by passing the cracked wheat through at least two smooth rolls designed to grind the cracked wheat into flour, with the smooth roll importantly grinding the wheat to a smaller particle size and shearing the wheat to cause starch damage in the finished atta flour. The atta flour will have an amount of starch damage equal to between about 13 per cent and about 18 per cent and an amount of ash equal to at least 1 per cent (Indian Express, December 10, 2002.)

Atta is most essential basic need of millions of people of India. It nourishes the people and provides livelihood to crores of farmers who grow the wheat, to over 30,00,000 local small chakkis which grind the wheat for the consumers to meet their special needs of quality and taste. Con-Agra patent on chakkis will have very disastrous impact on these small chakkis. Millions of people will be out of job. And Indians will be forced to eat stable packed atta instead of fresh atta from the neighbourhood chakkis.