Much of the vanilla that flavors our ice cream today is artificial, derived from the genetic signature of a plant that hundreds of years ago was known only to an Indigenous Mexican tribe.
The plant’s sequenced genomic information, available on public databases, was used as the basis for a synthetic flavoring that today competes with vanilla grown in several countries, mainly by small-scale farmers.
Few, if any, benefits of the lucrative scientific advance have trickled down to the communities that gave us vanilla in the first place.
“Wild genetic resources and pharmaceuticals … are a multi-multi-billion dollar businesses. They clearly are profitable… that’s not in dispute,” Charles Barber of the World Resources Institute think tank told AFP.
“A great deal of really valuable information has fed into the system from research and utilization of wild genetic resources. And there is no mechanism currently to compensate the people where this information …