Biotech Values

[poorgradstudent]

>If purchased seed contains a license for one growing season only, why do you consider it Ok for a grower to reuse it the next season?<


I accept (and do not dispute) the fact that it is illegal under the license stipulation. However, I think the practice is unseemly and crossing into a dangerous place with respect to individual liberties. In this particular case, applying the law almost requires an element of surveillance of what an individual is doing on his/her own property. How do you think Monsanto knows from year to year if a farmer has re-used seeds?

How far can or should we allow this to go? What if we allowed Gillette to lobby for a law that forbids users to store blades in ethanol to improve their longevity, basically limiting how much use a consumer can get out of a purchased product? There is an encroachment factor here that I'm uncomfortable with.

I want these scenarios deliberated, explained and disseminated as a condition to approval so that individuals can exercise legal rights that protect them as they participate (or expressly choose not to participate) in activities related to these proprietary foods. I don't think that we, as a society, have properly defined these conditions. Rather, they're being defined through the large legal budgets of companies like Monsanto at the expense of individual farmers.