In an interesting move in the wholesale garden seed supply industry, Siegers Seed Company in Holland, Michigan has been quietly pushing an all-encompassing patent application through the system that would essentially allow them to own a piece of genetic history in the pumpkin and squash families.

Have you ever seen a pumpkin, squash, or gourd with a lumpy, warty texture to its skin? I’m guessing you probably have, especially around Halloween when gourds and such are to be found in large numbers and varieties at every grocery store in America. Well, Siegers Seed Company has a patent pending on the gene that causes those lumpy, bumpy warts. Not a patent pending on a specific hybrid they have created that consistently gives fruit with warts. No, they want to patent the very wart gene itself … something that has, in fact, been around forever! They are naturally occurring … all on their own!

This doesn’t just extend to monolithic seed companies either. While I will always be a somewhat small-time grower of edibles, I will be growing squash, pumpkins, and gourds either this year or at some point in the future. Some of them will naturally display the wart gene. I may even specifically save the seeds of warty plants, because I happen to like the funny and bumpy look of them. Therein lies the rub. Even if I never sell or share any of these seeds and only plant them for my own entertainment and eating, this patent would make me a criminal just for growing something in my own yard without doing any special genetic manipulations of my own, and sharing any of the seeds from these plants would be disallowed.

This is, in a single word, bullshit. It’d be like applying for a patent for green eyes in humans. There have always been green eyes in humans. It happens naturally, and will continue to do so. No special genetic manipulation is required to achieve green eyes, nor is any special hybrid human required to produce a new human with green eyes. So, sound ludicrous to apply for a patent for the gene for green eyes for humans doesn’t it? Yup, just as ludicrous as trying to patent all warts on all curcubits.

More information here, here, and here.

And I thought Monsanto was evil? At least they create whole new plant varieties to patent and don’t try to patent specific genes that have been expressed naturally in plants since the dawn of time!