Abstract

CORNEJO PLAZA, María Isabel  and  RODRIGUEZ YUNTA, Eduardo. ETHICAL AND LEGAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRANSGENIC BIOTECHNOLOGY: REFLECTIONS ON THE TRANSACTION OF THE LAW OF VEGETABLE BREEDERS IN CHILE. rev.latinoam.bioet. [online]. 2015, vol.15, n.2, pp.132-143. ISSN 1657-4702.

Recently, the Congress Chamber in Chile has approved the legal procedure for the law of protection of new varieties of plants, colloquially named Monsanto Law. The rights of plant breeders are a system of intellectual property for specific protection of new varieties of plants. For a variety to be protected, it must be new, different, uniform and stable. The rights of breeders are ruled under the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). Chile has adhered to UPOV act 1978 in 1996 and has been implemented by the law of New Plant Varieties Breeders Nº 19.342 of 1994. Nevertheless, Chile signed a free-trade agreement with the United States since January 1, 2004 compromising to incorporate UPOV 1991. This legal initiative has caused some fear in Chilean civil society and the political world. Great are also the ethical edges around this initiative, since the normative will privatize the seeds and concentrates the property in a few companies, assuming economic interests by Monsanto multinational. Furthermore, the project law would be violating the agreement 169 by the International Work Organization (IWO) about biodiversity. On the other hand, there is no adequate registry for "plant genetic" resources in Chile. Referring to ethical discussion, we can point put that this normative do not consider reflections about the principles of precaution, solidarity, responsibility and sustainability with the environment. Furthermore, an adequate legislation about transgenic organisms may without doubt help to progress with equity.

Keywords : Transgenic; protection of new varieties of plants; legislation; bioethics; intellectual property.

        · abstract in Spanish | Portuguese     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )