India to drag Monsanto to court?

In an unprecedented move, India is expected to be the very first country (and hopefully, not the last one) to take legal action against a multinational company for bio-piracy!

India is expected to drag Monsanto to court for taking indigenous plants bred by generations of people in rural India; tinkering with their genes; and then re-introducing them as genetically modified varieties owned by Monsanto!

Besides it being an arrogant 'flipping the bird' in the face of the nation and its farming community, we also need to remember that the modified gene will eventually contaminate the indigenous genepool - and, technically, Monsanto could end up owning all the fields that are contaminated with the GMO.

Read how transgenes contaminated indigenous corn, the staple food of Mexico. As well as wild varieties of Canola in Canada.

And one thing I cannot quite reconcile with though, is the involvement of India's own Department of Biotechnology in tranferring indigenous know-how to Monsanto through its subsidiary, Mahyco, on terms that can be described as both ridiculous and disgusting.