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On the surface, amendments to the Plant Variety Protection Act 

 may appear quite innocuous, but there is more to this issue than 

 meets the eye. Proposed amendments to the U.S. Plant Variety 

 Protection Act have implications far beyond our borders. There is a 

 great deal of uncertainty, as well as conflict, about the potential 

 impacts of both plant breeders' rights and utility plant patenting. 



We believe that the newly revised UPOV treaty substantially 

 strengthens the rights of plant breeders at the expense of farmers. 

 Our concerns are further outlined in my written testimony, so I 

 will limit my remarks to just a few issues today. 



The first is the international controversy over control and owner- 

 ship of plant genetic resources and how that might jeopardize 

 future access to and exchange of crop genetic resources. All major 

 food crops, the crops that feed the majority of the world's popula- 

 tion, have their origins and centers of diversity in the tropics and 

 subtropics of the developing world. Erosion of crop genetic diversity 

 threatens the stability of our food supply. 



This is because the diversity that is found in developing coun- 

 tries is vital for the maintenance and improvement of new crop va- 

 rieties. The high yielding, elite cultivars of U.S. agriculture depend 

 on a steady stream of new exotic germplasm. 



The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization esti- 

 mates that since the beginning of this century, about 75 percent of 

 the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost. 



Unfortunately, in the rush to promote exclusive mechanisms for 

 rewarding plant breeders and developers of new agricultural bio- 

 technologies, there has been little or no consideration for the 

 impact of intellectual property rights on the future conservation 

 and exchange of biological resources. The danger is that intellectu- 

 al property rights without reciprocal benefits or meaningful com- 

 pensation for developing nations could set up formidable barriers 

 to access to the world's genetic resources. 



In the wake of new plant patenting proposals and strengthening 

 of breeders' rights, developing nations are questioning the notion of 

 full and free access to their biological resources. They are asking, 

 why is it that patented seeds, ultimately of Third World origin, are 

 bringing profits to seed corporations without corresponding com- 

 pensation for the developing world and their farmers? 



Although we hear little about this controversy in the United 

 States, the issue is extremely controversial in the developing world. 

 Consider, for example, the recent actions of over 1,000 angry farm- 

 ers who ransacked a local Cargill office in Bangalore, India to pro- 

 test plant intellectual property rights currently under negotiation 

 at the GATT talks in Geneva. These farmers are angry because 

 they don't want to pay royalties on seeds and other biological prod- 

 ucts that they believed were developed using their own genetic re- 

 sources and knowledge. 



We believe that international tension over ownership and control 

 of genetic resources will intensify if the United States ratifies an 

 international treaty that does not guarantee the right of farmers to 

 save seed. Again, the danger is that developing nations will restrict 

 future access to genetic resources, the cornerstone of modern plant 

 breeding and genetic engineering. 



