[shmerl]

> I don’t want people to not eat a great-tasting tomato because they’re scared of it

And we also don't want anyone to claim exclusive rights on producing such tomatoes, because some moron came up with the idea to patent genes.

[rch]

Exactly, and there are plenty of existing varieties that taste as they should. The random colors and shapes are part of the fun.

I'd much rather have one heirloom than 4 identical red tomatoes still on a vine sold in a plastic box.

[foxhop]

A heirloom has nothing to do with it, that just means its seeds create fruit true to the parent fruit.

I have taken some really tasty hybrids and grew them back down into a heirloom of sorts. I've started to grow tomatoes 5 years ago. http://unturf2.tumblr.com

That said, yeah we don't need to engineer the flavor back into tomatoes, we need people to vote with their wallets.

[Obi_Juan_Kenobi]

Uh, plant patents are one of only a handful of patent varieties (in the US), and they exist specifically to cover new breeds. This is very much a patent-able breed, and much more easily enforced because it's a well characterized bit of law, whereas the 'gene patents' only got by on a technicality of requiring cDNA intermediates.

[shmerl]

Patents on living beings in general are as ridiculous as patents on genes.