Good thing Monsanto came out with those “terminator seeds”
Terminator Technology is the colloquial name given to proposed methods for restricting the use of genetically modified plants by causing second generation seeds to be sterile. The technology was under development by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pine Land company in the 1990s and is not yet commercially available. Because some stakeholders expressed concerns that this technology might lead to dependence for poor smallholder farmers, Monsanto, an agricultural products company and the world’s biggest seed supplier, pledged not to commercialize the technology[1], though it acquired Delta and Pine Land company in late 2006[2].
The technology was discussed during the 8th Conference of the Parties to the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity in Curitiba, Brazil, March 20-31, 2006.
Terminator Technology is one form of Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURT). There are conceptually two types of GURT.