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A powerful Kenyan government agency is claiming that popular western "inventions", sold by a giant US biotech company around the world, originate with British bioprospectors who, they allege, took micro-organisms from lakes in the Rift Valley without permission and then patented some of the genes.

"Bioprospecting is being carried out across all forms of life". (item 2)

1.How Kenya's Biological Wealth Was Taken Away
2.Kenya fights back against British biopirates.
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1.How Kenya's Biological Wealth Was Taken Away
by John Mbaria
The Nation (Nairobi)
September 9, 2004
http://allafrica.com/stories/200409090048.html

Scientists at Kenyatta University (KU) have been linked to an international deal leading to the extraction of biological wealth from lakes Bogoria and Nakuru in the early 1990s.

Prof Wanjiru Mwatha, chair of Kenyatta University's Botany Department, is claimed to have been party to the research expedition that resulted in Genencor International Inc - a US-based biotechnology company - scooping samples of extremophiles from the two lakes and developing the industrial enzymes it has been selling for millions of dollars.

A section of Lake Bogoria in Rift Valley Province where Kenya's biological wealth was extracted and exported abroad.

Prof Mwatha was mentioned last week by Genencor's vice-president for communication and public affairs, Mr Jack Huttner.

"Genencor has been conducting research expeditions in partnership with Britain's Leicester University and Kenyatta University, and specifically with (Prof) Wanjiru Mwatha," said Mr Huttner.

However, efforts to reach Prof Mwatha have failed. Besides frequent telephone calls to her KU office, the Nation subsequently sought the intervention of Vice-Chancellor Everett Standa, who declined to reveal the nature of the scientific liaison between Kenyan and UK universities and, by extension, Genencor.

"We have no comments and advise that you direct any inquiries to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) director," Prof Standa said.

When the Nation contacted KWS director Evans Mukolwe, he said Prof Mwatha had recently briefed KWS lawyers investigating the matter on her role.

"At one stage, scientists from Leicester and Genencor accompanied her and took the samples away," he said.

However, Mr Mukolwe said he was not convinced that Prof Mwatha had revealed all she knows.

"I have instructed KWS lawyers to interview her some more," he said.

But he was also suspicious that officials manning the Lake Bogoria National Reserve could have had a role to play in the matter. The reserve is jointly managed by Baringo and Koibatek county councils.

In a report carried in this week's issue of The EastAfrican, Huttner reveals that once Genencor shipped the materials out of Kenya, the company developed - after "considerable investment" - two industrial enzymes.

It later sold one to unnamed detergent manufactures and the other to global firms making chemicals that "stonewash" jeans. "Faded" jeans is universally popular.

What is apparent is that, though Genencor has admitted getting millions of dollars by selling the two enzymes, Kenya - and, particularly, the marginalised people around Lake Bogoria - have not received a single cent. Owing to this, KWS is planning legal action.

Conservationists say Genencor's action is contrary to the spirit of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which KWS is banking on to get a share of the proceeds generated so far.

Ratified by more than 180 countries since its declaration in 1992, the convention recognises the rights of countries to benefit from any commercialisation of their biological resources.

But Genencor - which is based in California and has offices in New York and the Netherlands - has denied any wrongdoing.

It has also denied that it has sold any such enzyme to its principal business partner - the US multi-billion-dollar giant, Procter & Gamble. It has also disputed claims that it contravened the CBD provisions.

Huttner is reported in The EastAfrican as having suggested that, by the time (1992), his company scooped the samples from Kenya, the CBD had not come into effect.

He also said that the research expeditions in which the samples were taken out of Kenya had the blessings of the National Council for Sciences and Technology (NCST).

However, NCST has since denied this. The council's head of research, Mr Owate Wambai, has expressed doubts that the Genencor team made "full disclosure" of the nature of their research.

Its director for research and development, Mr John Onyango, is quoted as saying the council only vets research applications before forwarding to the Ministry of Education for permits.

What remains a mystery, though, is who - KWS or the Government - gave Genencor's scientists protection as they shipped the relevant material from Kenya and whether any money changed hands to "smoothen" the process.
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2.Out of Africa
Kenya fights back against British biopirates.
John Vidal reports
The Guardian, September 8, 2004
http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,7843,1298975,00.html

Officially, they are called Puradax cellulase and IndiAge Neutra. Unofficially, they are small revolutions for the fashion conscious and environmentally aware - two new enzymes that can whiten and brighten fabrics without using bleach, and that can soften denim and give it that stonewashed look. But a powerful Kenyan government agency is claiming that these popular western "inventions", sold by a giant US biotech company to clothing and detergent companies around the world, in fact originate with British academic bioprospectors who, they allege, took micro-organisms from lakes in the Rift Valley without permission and then patented some of the genes.

Last week, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), which usually tries to protect mega-fauna such as elephants and lions, said that it was looking for international lawyers to help it claim royalties from companies who have profited from some of the world's smallest organisms.

The dispute revolves around genes extracted from extremophiles - minute organisms capable of surviving in extreme environmental conditions - discovered in the 1990s in highly alkaline lakes in the Rift Valley by a group of British academics led by William Grant, a professor at the department of microbiology and immunology at the University of Leicester. Grant has declined to talk, but Genencor International, the world's largest industrial biotech company, said this week that one of its employees was also on the expedition to the Rift Valley lakes and shares a patent on one of the enzymes with the Leicester academic.

"We did do some bioprospecting in the soda lakes of the Rift Valley with Leicester University, but it was all above board," says Jack Huttner, a spokesman for Genencor in Rochester, New York. He was unable to say exactly when the expedition took place. None the less, "we had all the appropriate research permits. It was an academic expedition. All that was taken was a test tube in which was all the DNA of the environment.

"Leicester University was the official prospector. A contract was negotiated with them and we did a lot of advanced technology to make the "enzymes" commercially viable."

Hutton denies that the two enzymes were blockbusters. "They have been on the market for four years," he says. "We have sold them to lots of different companies, but the figure is single digit millions, not more."

He says the biotech company did not pay the Kenyan government or agree to share the financial benefits because it was not the practice at the time. "It was an in-kind exchange. A woman from Kenyatta University was also on the expedition and we provided the university with some computer and sampling equipment. We helped set up a microbiology department. We did what was customary at the time and what was asked of us by the authorities", says Huttner.

However, under the international Convention on Biological Diversity, governments and companies are committed to a "fair, equitable sharing of the benefits accruing from ... genetic resources". The US, which has not signed up to the treaty that came out of the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, is under increasing pressure to sign.

There is anger in many developing countries that genetic material is being taken by companies and academics without compensation. "People come here masquerading as tourists, only to end up taking away some of our valuable resources," says Richard Bagine, deputy director of the UN-funded International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology, which is working with the KWS to try to claim money from Genencor and other companies. "We do not have records showing that the scientists had notified KWS, nor any indication that they had acquired a research permit."

The research organisation has asked the New York-based Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors to help find lawyers to represent Kenya.

"Bioprospecting is being carried out across all forms of life," says Patrick Mulvany, policy adviser with the Intermediate Technology Development Group. "Micro-organisms are as valuable, if not more so, than plant genetic resources. It's crucial that there is a fair and equitable sharing of the benefits."