Acai has been a tasty staple in the Amazon for centuries, and is eaten as a thick paste along with fish and cassava flour.
The deep purple berry went global in the early 2000s after it was reinvented as a sweet sorbet, often topped with granola and fruit, and marketed for its antioxidant-rich properties.
Acai’s active ingredients sparked the interest of food and cosmetic companies around the world.
In one case cited in parliamentary debates, a Japanese company registered use of the name acai in 2003. It took Brazil four years to cancel the registration.
Cases like these prompted the law declaring acai a national fruit, first introduced in 2011 and signed earlier this month.
Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry told AFP the move helps showcase acai as a “genuinely Brazilian product” that generates income for thousands of Amazonian families.
However, experts say the law is largely symbolic and aims to highlight the challenge of growing international interest in a wide range of fruits native to the Amazon.
Brazil is one of several countries increasingly concerned about so-called “biopiracy,” the use of genetic resources without permission or benefit sharing.
The law “helps prioritize the issue on the public agenda,” said Bruno Kato, founder of Horta da Terra, a company that develops and markets Amazonian ingredients.
– ‘Enormous’ risk –
Sheila de Souza Correa de Melo, an intellectual property analyst at Brazil’s Agricultural Research Corporation, Embrapa, who works in the Amazon, told AFP the law was “mainly symbolic and culturally affirming.”
Brazil is one of the most biodiverse nations in the world and a wide range of fruits with unique properties run an “enormous” risk of being used in new products developed and patented abroad, de Melo said.
Kato cited the “emblematic” case of the creamy cupuacu fruit, related to cocoa and used in desserts and cosmetics.
Cupuacu was registered as a trademark by another Japanese company in the late 1990s, which required payment of $10,000 in royalties for any product that mentioned “cupuacu” on the label.
It took two decades to cancel the trademark.
Several patents have been filed abroad for specifically developed uses of acai’s active ingredients in foods and cosmetics, de Melo said.
– ‘Clear rules’ –
Ana Costa, vice president of sustainability at Brazilian cosmetics giant Natura, known for its use of Amazonian ingredients such as acai, told AFP that the law shows the need for “clear rules that guarantee the fair distribution of benefits.”
Brazil is a signatory to the 2014 Nagoya Protocol, an international treaty on benefit-sharing of genetic resources.
The treaty has hit a major loophole as genetic data has been digitized and researchers can now simply download a DNA sequence and use it to develop drugs or cosmetics, without physically collecting plants or seeds.
De Melo said the main challenge for Brazil was that raw materials such as acai pulp were often exported to countries that then carried out the research needed to create high-value products.
He said Brazil should focus on investing in technological research and development in the Amazon to generate wealth locally.