TWN
Info Service on Intellectual Property Issues (Oct14/05)
8
October 2014
Third
World Network
Mardi Gras Misappropriation: Sri
Lankan Purple Rice Served up at Louisiana Celebration
By
Edward Hammond
Every year, usually in February but sometimes in March, the celebration
of Mardi Gras (Carnival) reaches its crescendo. Especially popular
in the Americas, huge Mardi Gras celebrations take place every year
in places ranging from Brazil to Colombia, Trinidad, Mexico, and the
US.
The largest Mardi Gras in the United States of America is in New Orleans,
Louisiana where, since 1872, the official colors have been purple,
gold, and green.[1]And for more than 120 years, following an 1892
decision by organizers, purple has officially symbolized justice at
the Louisiana Mardi Gras, which is widely known for its charming and
quirky local traditions.
Each year when Carnival comes, the city of New Orleans fills with
people quite likely to be wearing purple. Party goers don purple masks,
exchange purple beads, toss purple confetti, quaff purple drinks,
taste purple sweets and, thanks to farmers a half a world away, now
have the chance to eat purple rice.
The fact that purple symbolizes justice at Mardi Gras will surely
seem ironic to Sri Lankan rice farmers, whose dark colored grains
have given rise to a “new” purple rice grown and sold in Louisiana,
and which has been placed under intellectual property claim, incongruously,
with a Spanish name.
Rush Rice Products of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a small but growing
company, markets the purple rice, variety name Blanca Isabel, under
plant breeder’s rights protection.[2]It especially targets fans of
Louisiana State University, which adopted the Mardi Gras color signifying
justice for the uniforms of its sporting teams, named the Tigers.
In addition to capitalizing on the regional popularity of the color
purple, Rush Rice Products touts Blanca Isabel as offering a variety
of health benefits, all related to its pigmentation, [3]including
the claim that it can help prevent “a number of long-term illnesses
such as heart disease, cancer, and an eye disorder called macular
degeneration.”[4]
Dubiously asserting that Blanca Isabel’s health benefits are “unique”
– perhaps it is true in Louisiana but certainly not more widely in
other societies – the company claims that Blanca Isabel “is unique
in that it has health compounds that are not reported from any other
rice compounds in the world. Compounds that are found in green tea
where there are known to be health compounds, and also resveratrol
which is health compound found red wine and red grapes and no other
rice has had this reported."[5]
Of course, in some areas of the world, especially parts of rural Asia,
people are accustomed to rice varieties with wide variation in color
and other traits. Diverse rice varieties, with different uses according
to local tastes, grain characteristics, culture and religion, have
been developed by and kept in the field by generations of small farmers.
In other regions, including rice farming areas in Louisiana, long
grain varieties milled bright white, indistinguishable from one another
by the consumer, are typically the only locally-produced rice to be
found. Unlike areas where diverse rice types have been cultivated
for many centuries, in these areas of industrial production, rice
is typically perceived as a source of carbohydrates with few other
intrinsic health benefits.
Thus, a colored rice in Louisiana has significant potential market
appeal both for the local novelty of its color and associated health
claims.
Milton Rush, a former Louisiana State University (LSU) professor was
the breeder of Blanca Isabel. Rush, who passed away in 2013, founded
Rush Rice Products and stated in research publications that the variety
owes its color and other characteristics to “Hitan Kitan”, which Rush
said is a Sri Lankan farmers’ variety.
Unfortunately, research references on “Hitan Kitan” are extremely
thin. Black, red, and other rice types are familiar to many farmers
and breeders, but a rice variety named Hitan Kitan appears to be unknown
to genebanks and absent from scientific publications, except those
linked to Rush himself.
No variety named Hitan Kitan, from Sri Lanka or any other country,
is listed in the collection of the International Rice Research Institute
(IRRI) in the Philippines. Nor can it be found in the US national
collection. Research articles mentioning Hitan Kitan are very limited
and all linked to Rush’s development of “Blanca Isabel”.
The earliest citation for the variety, that referenced the application
for plant breeder’s rights, is an obscure 1998 research update that
appeared in the annual report of LSU’s rice breeding center, where
Rush was a specialist in plant disease. This report lists Hitan Kitan
among a number of varieties used in experiments to identify disease
resistance. The article[6]contains no information on where and when
Hitan Kitan was collected or how it arrived in Louisiana. In fact,
it contains no real information about Hitan Kitan at all.
An LSU PhD dissertation by one of Rush’s students is similarly unhelpful.
Its citation on the origin of Hitan Kitan is a link to general information
about rice diversity at IRRI. At another point in the dissertation,
Hitan Kitan’s Sri Lankan origin is attributed to a personal communication
with Rush.[7]
It is possible that “Hitan Kitan” has another name, used in research
and/or genebanks, and that it has been incorrectly or unusually transcribed
in Louisiana. With Rush’s death, however, the details may never be
known.
The breeding of Blanca Isabel was a straightforward affair.
It began with the cross between Hitan Kitan, which may have been a
black rice, and Cypress, a local white long grain variety, in 1998
(made for disease resistance research). From there, Rush simply
selected plants for purple color, grain length, and height, replanting
them and quickly arriving at what would become Blanca Isabel by 2003.
While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with an American company
producing and selling colored rice, particularly if it in fact delivers
health benefits, what is troubling in the case of Blanca Isabel is
lack of credit and benefit sharing with Sri Lankan farmers as well
as the granting of intellectual property rights over a rice variety
derived from a source that has not been disclosed and described, and
which remains essentially unknown.
In the case of Blanca Isabel, the willingness of the US Plant Variety
Protection Office, certainly not alone among its peers in other countries,
to grant intellectual property (plant breeder’s rights in this case)
over a seed whose salable traits are of an essentially unknown origin
has led to biopiracy. Blanca Isabel thereby illustrates the
importance of requiring disclosure of origin of genetic resources
in plant breeder’s rights applications.
Such disclosure and benefit sharing is how the symbolism of Mardi
Gras can be fulfilled, rather than inverted, and justice achieved
for the Sri Lankan and other farmers who developed richly colored
and healthy rice varieties.
[1]French
for “Fat Tuesday”, Mardi Gras is the day in the western Christian
liturgical calendar that precedes the beginning of Lent (Ash Wednesday).
Mardi Gras is the final day of the week of Carnival, a time in which
Christians traditionally feasted before Lent, a season of fasting.
In contemporary times, the religious significance of Mardi Gras in
Louisiana (and some other places) has diminished, as it and Carnival
have come to be known much more by tourism, parades and public intoxication
than religious observance.
[2]US
Plant Variety Protection Certificate 201100262, granted 30 April 2013.
[3]Pigment
in rice varieties comes from the plant’s bran. Commercial colored
rice varieties are typically partially milled in order to leave the
coloration intact.
[4]Rush
Rice Products (2013). Health Benefits (web page). URL: http://purpleblackrice.com/health-benifits/
[sic] (accessed 12 November 2013).
[5]Albritton
S (2012). Purple Rice Being Grown in Louisiana (web page). KATV
Television, Lafayette. URL: http://www.katc.com/news/purple-rice-being-grown-in-louisiana/
(accessed 13 November 2013).
[6]Rush
MC et al (1998). Development of Sheath Blight Resistance in Rice.
90th Annual Research Report, Rice Research Station, Louisiana
State University Agricultural Center, Crowley, Louisiana.
[7]Schramm
R (2010). Value-added processing of rice and rice by-products. Phd
Diss. Louisiana State University, p. 4 and 37.
