The following is an excerpt.
Imagine an African-American son or daughter of enslaved parents in the antebellum U.S. trying to argue that they were not private property because she or he had never been bought or sold. Just like Monsanto’s patents on living genes, the ownership of human beings under slavery extended to second, third and all generations. Monsanto is master of the seeds — and the farmers who have little choice but to buy them are rapidly becoming serfs, legally bound to the giant’s genetic fiefdom.
The problem before the U.S. Supreme court in Bowman v. Monsanto was not the cost-cutting strategies of a 75-year-old farmer. The problem is the law itself.
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View the original article here: Monsanto v. Bowman: The Master’s Law
