Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 23, Number 3, 1 Malaki 2006 — Patents pounding [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Patents pounding

UH kalo patenting araws protests

By Sterling Kini Weng Publicatiūns Editor The University of Hawai'i has onee again found itself at the center of another kalo controversy, after Native Hawaiians recently learned that the school patented three new varieties of the traditionally sacred plant. Longtime Hawaiian activist Walter Ritte said he has asked the university to drop its patents on three kalo varieties, called Pa'alehua, Pa'akala and Pauakea. He said that if the university does not relinquish its kalo patents, he and other Hawaiians may file a lawsuit against UH. Some Native Hawaiians have heen very critical of scientific research of kalo, the staple of their traditional diet. Oral traditions hold that the first kalo plant, named Hāloanakalaukapalili, is the elder sibling of the Hawaiian people, the first child of the sky god Wākea and his daughter Ho'ohōkūkalani. "When you talk about taro, you're talking about us, Hawaiians," Ritte said. "There's no sacredness with these guys [scientists]. They have a different mindset from us. For them, everything is fair game." Ritte said that kalo is heeoming a window through whieh Hawaiians ean see how the state's burgeoning biotech industry may

affect other Hawaiian plants and animals. "This is Hāloa telling us, 'Look at me, this is what's going to happen to the rest of our culture's biodiversity,"' he said. "Are Hawaiians going to be the losers again?" The university first drew criticism over its kalo research last year, after it was discovered that UH scientists had added diseaseresistant genes from rice into the Hawaiian Maui Lehua variety, whieh is commonly grown for the coimnercial production of poi. The dean of UH's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) agreed to halt all genetic modification research on Hawaiian kalo, until it discusses the implications of such experiments with Native Hawaiians. In 2002, the university obtained the last of three separate patents from the U.S. government for its new varieties of kalo, whieh are the progeny of crossbreeding between a Palauan variety and the Maui Lehua variety. The new varieties are supposed to be more resistant to diseases, such as pocket rot and leaf blight, that have contributed to the staggering decline of the poi industry. Only four million pounds of taro was produced in Hawai'i in 2005, the lowest output since taro production statistics were first recorded in 1946.

The university licensed the new varieties out to about a dozen fanners, with the condition that it would not collect royalties on the licenses for three years. The threeyear trial period for some farmers will be up at the end of this year. Hawaiian opponents of the patents are upset for several reasons. First, they view the patents as an infringement on their collective intellectual property rights because their ancestors created the Maui Lehua variety. Second, they don't believe they should have to pay to use a product that was funded by their own tax dollars. Finally, they onee again feel left out of the deci-sion-making on scientific research conducted on one of their most sacred plants. But Hawaiians aren't the only ones complaining about the kalo patents. Some kalo farmers just don't think they're that good. Ernest Tottori, owner of HPC

Foods Ltd., the producer of Taro Brand poi, said that he tried growing the patented varieties but stopped because they didn't match up well to the Hawaiian varieties. "Taste-wise, it was like night and day," he said. "Nothing even comes close to the Hawaiian varieties." He added that Hawaiian kalo varieties may be less resistant to diseases because the strains are getting weaker after so many generations of use. He said he has been trying to find out how Hawaiians created their kalo varieties, so he ean recreate the original stock. Danny Bishop, a Hawaiian kalo farmer in Waiāhole, has a different take. He said that commercial kalo farmers seem to be having more problems with leaf blight and pocket rot than subsistence farmers. He said a reason for that could be that conunercial farmers use heavy doses of fertilizers, most

of whieh washes out of wetland taro patches, and they don't let their lo'i lay fallow as Hawaiians did traditionally. "It's not the kalo that's broken," he said. "It's the environment." C.Y. Hu, an associate dean of research at CTAHR, defended the patents, saying that the university's goal is to help kalo farmers, and that the school deserves to receive a profit from an invention created by one of its scientists. "We understand that it's a eulturally sensitive issue," Hu said. "But from the inventor's point of view, he improved [the kalo variety], so it's a different story. If you want to use the old one, you ean. But if you want to use the new one, you gotta pay." Meanwhile, Walter Ritte said he's planning a series of events in response to the kalo patents including a march to the UH president's office on March 2. S

MO'OMEHEU • CULĪURE

Some HūWūiians hove been critical of UH for obtaining patents for three kalo varieties. - Photo: KW0Archive