Shiseido Corporation, a Japanese cosmetics company, has patented 11 traditional Indonesian herbal medicines known as Jamu that are used to promote health, beauty, and vitality. This is an example of "biopiracy" where a corporation patents indigenous knowledge and genetic resources without permission. A researcher from Pesticide Action Network is lobbying for laws to protect the intellectual property rights of Indonesian farmers to use and benefit from their traditional crops and medicines. Small farmers globally are vulnerable to biopiracy from large corporations and policies of organizations like the World Trade Organization that facilitate the theft of indigenous knowledge through intellectual property laws.

1. BIOPIRACY
and The
New World Order
by Liz Sheridan,
UK Correspondent
In our postmodern, North-South
economically divided world, treasures
still exist. Since ancient times,
Indonesian emperors employed
traditional Jamu herbs prescribed by
herbal doctors to maintain good
health radiance, a youthful appearance,
libido and vigour. Jamu, comprising
over a thousand formulas, remained
the sole property of the Royal Court
until modern times, when it was
finally released for public sale. 1
says Mr Tjahjadi who is lobbying for
protective and preventative legislation
and insists, “We would like to educate
our farmers about their rights, and their
ownership rights of their traditional
crops. We call farmers’ crops our
‘traditional seeds’, we say these are
‘community intellectual rights’ ... and
we would like to have protection for
our property against such biopiracy.”
Fact is that the world’s small farmers
and poorest, most populous nations
Now Jamu is under threat ...
and Pesticide Action Network 2
researcher, Riza Tjahjadi explains that
the Shiseido Corporation of Japan, 3
cosmetic and skincare Transnational
Corporation (TNC) has patented 11
traditional Jamu healing herbs. Since
1999 they are double-patented in both
Japan and Europe, reports Mr
Tjahjadi. It is not the herbs themselves
that have been patented but chemical
compounds within the herbs, rare
compounds unique to traditional Jamu
which effect skin-whitening, hair
restoration and skin rejuvenation.
Every time shoppers purchase skinwhitening products from Shiseido’s
‘UV White Range’, or the SkinWhitening Formula priced at circa
$150 for a 50ml pot, we are unwittingly
supporting Shiseido’s corporate theft.
“This biopiracy by Shiseido means
they’ve stolen what belonged to our
traditional healers, stolen our farmers
knowledge, their seeds and systems,”
Mr Riza Tjahjadi, Pesticide
Action Network Researcher
don’t have the mega-buck muscle to
pay for patent rights. Probably they
never felt compelled to patent
indigenous varieties. Small farmers
such as Jamu herb growers in
Indonesia are ‘stewards of the earth’
and believe they own the seeds and
plants anyway. The last thing such a
small farmer would choose, would
be to prove that seeds and agricultural
systems inherited down the generations are his intellectual property. In
the light of all the patenting and
bureaucratic jargon we must ask, why
has protecting our farmers’ traditional
‘intellectual property rights’ (IPRs)
become so controversial?
Controversy currently surrounds all
traditional ownership because
ordinary people have become
players in a global biotech battle.
The stakes are very high, indeed the
prize is our natural heritage thinly
disguised as a genetic commodity
b y T N C s a n d t h e Wo r l d Tr a d e
Organisation (WTO). Mr Tjahjadi is
in good company, his grievances are
the same as those that fuelled the
Seattle protest when 40,000 people
rallied against WTO policies in 1999.
In Prague last year 15,000 protesters
a g a i n m a r c h e d a g a i n s t W TO
policies. 4 The WTO is targeted
because of the sinister role it plays
in assisting the TNCs to steal with
impunity. However, protesters fear
it could soon be too late for direct
‹
action ...
Apr ‘01 • Healthy Options 31

2. The WTO was inaugurated in 1995. or government grants - effectively
Wi t h i n t e r n a t i o n a l h e a d q u a r t e r s taxpayers subsidise the unelected
in Geneva, Switzerland and a staff ‘shadow’ world government, the NWO.
of 550, they ‘administer and enforce Many business networks exist within
more than 20 international agreements, the NWO infrastructure, such as those
resolve trade disputes between states that legitimise the theft and
a n d p r o v i d e a f o r u m f o r g l o b a l confiscation of global Intellectual
trade negotiations’. 5 One of these Property Rights (IPR).
international agreements is the
In the Philippines the theft of Asian
‘Trade Related Intellectual Property
rice varieties is one aspect of
Rights’ or TRIPS council. The TRIPS
legislation is vehemently disputed b i o p i r a c y b e i n g c h a l l e n g e d b y
b e c a u s e i t s a r t i c l e 2 7 . 3 a l l o w s lawyers, Benjamin Ramos Jr and
patenting of life forms, plants
a n d m i c r o o rg a n i s m s , a n d
microbiological materials. 6,7
Every biotech market-leader is
But first let’s look at how the
trying to be the first to ‘spin’
TRIPS legislation can
protein in laboratories within
theoretically benefit the
TNCs. Simplifying a complex
ten years, then to market
procedure such as genetic
laboratory-food globally
modification (GM) we could
say that biochemists normally
splice a ‘sticky end’ (a
g r o u p i n g o f m o l e c u l a r m a t e r i a l Mario Denito. As Board Members of
including a virus) into an original M A S I PA G , a N o n - G o v e r n m e n t
c e l l , g r o w a G M v a r i e t y o f t h e Organisation (NGO), they represent
o r i g i n a l , t h e n s u b m i t p a t e n t i n g the interests of 900,000 farmers,
applications as if a new ‘life form’ farming families, scientists and other
was created. After which they market legal experts. MASIPAG, like PAN,
it globally as if it belonged to them, is part of a larger grouping of NGOs
and WTO protects their business in the region, and throughout the
i n t e r e s t s t h r o u g h t h e T R I P S world, fighting to protect local small
legislation. Simple sticky ends .......
farmers’ rights. The stakes are so high
It is clear that most of WTO’s 135 that all small farmers obviously need
member nations joined in order to
protect their national economic
interests against various aspects of
economic fascism. WTO’s role is that
of a powerbroker in an unelected
world government intent on
protecting the corporate/elitist
agendas and business interests of the
New World Order (NWO). NWO
comprises WTO, the World Bank,
United Nations, International
Monetary Fund, the Business Round
Table, Club of Rome and a massive
web of various interlinked but
unelected organisations. (Including
recently formed Food Authorities,
Health Regulatory bodies, and soon
the WTO’s ‘General Agreement on
Trade in Services’ (GATS) will mean
that the world’s public services 8 will
also be corporatised.)
Many of these organisations are
partially funded by taxpayers’ money
32 Healthy Options • Apr ‘01
busy reproducing themselves.
SYNGENTA, the world’s biggest
biotech TNC, was created when
NOVARTIS and ZENECA merged
on 10 October 1999 in Basel,
Switzerland (with European Union
permission). They plan to integrate
seed corporations into their
‘life sciences’ division, chemical
divisions into a ‘crop protection’
group, and also operate pharmaceutical ‘healthcare’ corporations.
They hope to reinvent new forms of
pharmaceuticals and are ‘moving
from the seed business to food and
pharmaceuticals’. 9 AVENTIS is the
second largest biotech TNC and
MONSANTO, until recently biotech
market leader, is now third largest.
According to Bill Wadsworth, senior
food technologist in the food
retail industry itself a corporation
manufacturing and retailing food,
every biotech market-leader is trying
to be the first to ‘spin’ protein in
laboratories within ten years, then to
market laboratory-food globally.
These corporations will make their
true GM business agenda known to
the public slowly and deliberately.
They might even engineer a few
major global food disasters so,
‘ s t a n d a r d - e q u i v a l e n t , 10 s a f e a n d
nutritionally excellent GM lab-food’
will be welcomed into a currently
GM wary market to ease
shortages.
They might even engineer a few
major global food disasters
NGO assistance to retain ownership
of traditional systems, resources and
traditional seed varieties.
According to Mr Ramos, “Half a
million people signed a petition to
register their solidarity against the
patenting of life. We had a MASIPAG
conference in February 1999 and
presented that petition to the
Department of Agriculture and also
the Department of Agrarian Reform.”
The biotech TNCs would be well
advised to listen to the opinions
of both protesters and NGO
representatives, but they are too
We must never forget the
biotech TNC’s gruesome past.
As the world’s chemical
giants, they sprayed agrichemicals into soil and food
chain, forcing it down our throats
for the past 50 years. 11 Although
patenting and GM is the second
wave, the first wave of chemical
madness still severely chemically
poisons three million people annually,
and more than 20,000 of those may
die. 12 Great advertising for such
a dedicated good-news industry!
For example, rural suicide is a plague
in countries like Sri Lanka where
impoverished rice farmers often
use chemicals to poison themselves,
their debt/desperation cycle often
caused, ironically by chemical
farming. 13
‹

3. In the past five decades the world’s
traditional organic agricultural
systems were supposedly ‘upgraded’,
but really they were usurped by greedy
multinational chemical companies
interested in profit. This ‘industrial
advancement’ meant reliance on agrichemicals and artificial chemical
fertiliser inputs, which were of course
‘safe and effective’. These were
essential to maintain newlyintroduced broad-acre farming
systems, producing so-called
‘conventional’ food which Joe Public
was assured would be safe and, ‘feed
the world’. Today’s GM marketing
uses the same cynical ‘feed the world’
slogan, and biotech TNCs reassure
public of ‘safety’ and ‘benefits’.......
TNC biotechs may be challenged to
win the lab-food race but in southern
lands the unrelenting legal battle to
save many varieties of indigenous
plants continues. Rice is the staple
d i e t f o r o v e r h a l f t h e w o r l d ’s
population and also under greatest
threat from patenting and GM.
According to MASIPAG researchers
approximately 160 biotech-patents
are owned by TNCs, and 13 biotech
corporations also hold most of the
patents on rice. Since May 2000,
a c c o r d i n g t o M A S I PA G , t h e
International Rice Research Institute
funded a project to grow a trial crop
of ‘BB rice’, so-called because it is
genetically engineered to resist
bacterial blight. MASIPAG opposed
the project and Mr Ramos explains
that ‘BB rice’ will inevitably
contaminate other rice varieties.
There should, he insists, be a
minimum ten year moratorium on
GE because it endangers existing
crops and food security.
Amongst the bleak ‘sticky ends’ of
GM there is some good news for
Indian Basmati rice growers, reported
in the Hindustan Times, New Delhi,
India on 27 September 2000:
“In a major success for India’s effort
to retain its commercial interest on
Basmati rice exports, Ricetec Inc, a
Texan-based US company, which had
obtained a patent for ‘Basmati rice
lines and grains’, has been forced to
withdraw certain claims in its US
patent.”..... “Ricetec Inc has now
withdrawn the claims, which could
have adversely affected the commercial
interests of Basmati rice exporters.”
And Mr Tjahjadi adds, “Biopiracy
is already happening everywhere,
not just here .... why should we
have to pay for using our own
traditional herbs?” Southern and
indigenous groups, he hopes, will
be able to defend themselves
against biopiracy and GM. But on
the other hand TNCs would not
feed the world; bring safe food to
the marketplace; pay restitution for
reducing biodiversity and fertility
by 50 per cent; 14 or compensate
p o i s o n e d p e o p l e ’s f a m i l i e s o r
infertile couples. That is why
billions of global citizens care
about the ravages of biopiracy and
the TRIPS legislation, and some
are brave enough to mobilise
against economic fascism.
New World (dis)Order
The New World Order was mentioned
in a CNN sound-byte by President
Bush, during the Gulf War (1991)
when he stated that the NWO would
use the Rule of Law to enforce
international peace. The US
government speech writers/PR spindoctors must have realised this gaffe
had antagonised the public who should
remain ignorant of their government’s
hidden agendas, and that was the last
we officially heard of NWO. The
secret government is part of the NWO,
but many people still believe the NWO
is a wacky conspiracy theory ...... and
now that Mr Bush Jnr is President of
the US, we can expect the Republican
Party to push ahead with their
globalisation plans. To protect our own
interests, people should rally against
globalisation because it is being used
to destroy much that we hold sacred.
However, a word of warning - do not
believe any of the ‘spin’.
Bibliography/Information
1. Interview, 5 February 2001: Neil Lopez,
NZ Jamu importer distributor.
2. Pesticide Action Network (PAN), a global
network, researching, documenting and
lobbying against the use of agri-chemicals,
more recently GE, biotechnology and
patenting technologies. You can make a
difference by joining PAN (New Zealand).
Contact Alison White re membership/
campaigns.Phone: (04) 476 8607.
Email:alisonmwhitenz@yahoo.co.uk
Write (including NZ$10 cheque for annual
membership) to: Alison White, Pesticide
Action Network, PO Box 43199,
Wainuiomata, Wellington, 6008.
3. Lobby Shiseido: Mr Gemma CEO,
Shiseido Corporation, International
Business Department, 3rd Floor, Asahi
Building, Ginza 6-6-7 Chuo Ku, Tokyo,
104-0061, Japan.
4. Paul Kingsnorth, Seeds of The New in the
Prague Autumn, The Ecologist, Volume 30
no 8, November 2000.
5. Simon Retallack, After Seattle: Where Next
for the WTO?, The Ecologist, Volume 30
no 2, April 2000. Website: www.the
ecologist.com For more information on
post-Seattle events: www.tradewatch.org;
www.50years.org; www.ifg.org
6. Interview, September 2000: Peter
Ungphakorn, Public Information Unit,
WTO,
Geneva,
Switzerland.
Email:peter.ungphakorn@wto.org
7. MASIPAG publishing, Biopiracy TRIPS
and the Patenting of Asia’s Rice Bowl,
May
1998.
Email:
masipag@mozcom.com
8. Maude Barlow, The Last Frontier, The
Ecologist, Volume 31 no 1, February
2001.
9. Interview, September 2000: Felix Raeber,
Corporate Communications director,
Syngenta, Basel, Switzerland. Email:
raeber@group.syngenta.com
Website:www.syngenta.com
10. Standard equivalence: term used by the
GM industry to assume that a GM produce
has the same properties for example as a
conventional tomato, so the GM tomato
is equivalent to its counterpart. Standard
equivalence is an industry norm in the US,
the method by which biotech corporations
bypass food safety issues and release GM
food without adequate scientific testing.
11. Graham Harvey, The Killing of the
Countryside, Jonathan Cape, London,
1997.
12. WHO figures, 1992. No more recent
statistics are yet available.
13. Lasanda Kurukulasuriya, New
Internationalist, no 331, Jan/Feb 2001.
Website: www.newint.org
14. Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and
John Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future,
Dutton, New York, USA, 1996.
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