Corteva

At first glance, this finding may seem surprising. Only three GMOs obtained through new techniques of genetic modification are currently being cultivated and their harvest commercialised. The many promises of their benefits for health, the environment, and “competitiveness”, as well as the argument that they are already deregulated in many countries around the world, would suggest that these “miracle” products would have been more widely adopted. Clearly, this is not the case.

For many years now, multinationals have been collecting an increasing amount of genetic, proteic sequences and epigenetic informations. They are reducing living organisms to data compiled in digital databases. Using “artificial intelligence” algorithms, they claim to have the tools to determine which genetic modifications will produce a given new characteristic. In a society where genetic modification techniques and patents are intimately linked, these algorithms will above all accelerate the claim to own living organisms.