http://www.boston.com/dailynews/184/world/U_N_says_more_than_100_countri:.shtml

U.N. says more than 100 countries agree to protect crop diversity

By Associated Press, 7/3/2001 05:10

ROME (AP) More than 100 countries have agreed to measures to protect the world's agricultural crop diversity, but differences on patenting of food and seeds by multinational companies remain unresolved, officials from a U.N. food agency said.

The accord, reached Sunday, followed weeklong negotiations by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization's Commission on Genetic Resources, its secretary, Jose Esquinas-Alcazar, said Monday.

Countries including the United States, participating for the first time to a FAO forum on the issue agreed to mandatory payments by plant breeders and geneticists developing new crop varieties in return for access to genetic resources.

''A moral obligation will now become a legal obligation,'' Esquinas-Alcazar said.

The agreement obliges users of genetic resources usually from developed countries who derive commercial benefits to share cash earned and to transfer technology with producers usually from developing countries while it protects farmers' rights to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed.

The agreement will have to be approved at a Food and Agriculture Organization meeting in November and then ratified by the parliaments of at least 40 countries before going into effect, Esquinas-Alcazar said.

The agency hopes a solution to the patents issue, which some countries see as an infringement of intellectual property rights, will be reached at the November meeting, he said.

On the Net:

http://www.fao.org

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001