Last week the European Parliament voted to back a ban on patenting crop varieties bred using conventional techniques.

MEPs said that keeping conventional breeding free from patenting “Is essential to sustain innovation, food security and small businesses.” ahead of the vote, on Thursday 17th December, EU farmers’ union Copa Cogeca had warned that the patenting of conventionally bred crops posed a “major threat” to EU agriculture.

In a letter sent to the President of the European Parliament’s political group last week, Copa Copeca’s secretary general Pekka Pesonen said, “All genes known by nature and which nature creates cannot be considered as inventions. Patents in fact hinder the work of farmers and breeders who have had free access to the gene pools of previous generations under the EU plant variety rights convention.”

He added, “Patenting seeds will cause fewer varieties to be on the market and create extra costs. It threatens biodiversity by limiting the number of breeders and breeding programmes.”

The vote was called in response to a decision by the European Patent Office (EPO), announced in March, to allow patents on conventionally bred tomato and broccoli varieties. MEPs called on the EU Commission to clarify existing EU rules as a matter of urgency and protect plant breeders’ access to biological material. They argued that access to biological plant material is vital to encourage innovation and the development of new varieties to ensure global food security, tackle climate change and to prevent monopolies developing.

The vote, which passed with a huge majority of 413 votes to 86 (with 28 abstentions) saw MEPs agree that, “Products obtained from essentially biological processes, such as plants, seeds, native traits or genes, should… be excluded from patentability.”

The resolution echoes a similar agreement reached in May 2012.

Although not legally binding, the No Patents On Seeds! campaign group said the MEPs’ vote sends a clear message. The coalition, comprised of various food and farming NGOs from across Europe, said that the EPO had granted several patents on tomatoes, pepper and broccoli derived from crossing and selection, but welcomed the Parliament for demanding that safeguards against patenting conventionally bred crops are not undermined by “The kind of false interpretation currently followed by the European Patent Office.”

Christoph Then, a spokesperson for the coalition, said, “The resolution very much comes down on the side of civil society organisations, who are demanding the exclusion of all breeding processes and breeding material, plant and animal characteristics, genes, plants and animals, as well as food derived thereof from patentability. Now it is up to the EU Commission and the European Governments to make sure the EPO acts accordingly.”