Bad Seed/Canada mouthpiece for Monsanto?

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ubject: GMW: Bad Seed/Canada mouthpiece for Monsanto?

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Sat, 12 Feb 2005 09:32:49 GMT

 

 

Bad Seed/Canada mouthpiece for Monsanto?

http://www.gmwatch.org

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....world leaders, including the leaders of Canada, need to make it

clear that Order 81 goes directly against what the world said it was

willing to do for developing nations at the United Nations Millennium

Forum.

It is time that the world, including Canada, stood up and does what is

has previously said is the right thing to do. (item 2)

 

The Canadian government initiated the move to lift the de-facto

moratorium and allow testing and commercialisation of the genetically

engineered technology that makes seeds sterile.

 

" Canada's proposal could easily have been mistaken for one written by

(agribusiness giant) Monsanto, " Jim Thomas told IPS from Bangkok. (item

1)

 

1.Ban Endures on Terminator Seeds

2.Bad Seed

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1.Ban Endures on Terminator Seeds

Stephen Leahy

http://www.ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27410

 

BROOKLIN, Canada, Feb 11 (IPS) - An international moratorium on the use

of controversial " terminator technology " in genetically engineered

crops survived efforts to overturn it at a United Nations interim meeting

on the Convention on Biological Diversity in Bangkok Friday.

 

The Canadian government initiated the move to lift the de-facto

moratorium and allow testing and commercialisation of the genetically

engineered technology that makes seeds sterile.

 

" It was a complete surprise to see this coming from Canada, " said Jim

Thomas of the ETC Group, a Canadian-based NGO.

 

" Canada's proposal could easily have been mistaken for one written by

(agribusiness giant) Monsanto, " Thomas told IPS from Bangkok.

 

Leaked Canadian government documents obtained by ETC Group state that

negotiators were instructed to " block consensus " on any other option.

 

However, African countries, Austria, Switzerland, Peru and the

Philippines strongly objected to Canada's proposal, and on the final

day of

meetings Friday were successful in keeping the moratorium in place, he

says.

 

The precautionary moratorium was first instituted at a Convention on

Biological Diversity (CBD) conference in 1998 over fears about the

technology's impact on agricultural biodiversity, farmers' ability to

save

seeds, and the risk of " sterilisation genes " ending up in wild plants.

 

" Terminator " , a term coined by activists for a specific technology

developed in the late 1990s and now owned by Monsanto and the U.S.

government, is just one type of genetic trait control technology. The

official

CBD term is genetic use restriction technologies (GURTs). Several other

seed sterilisation or trait controls are in development.

 

" There's no scientific reason why GURTs should be banned before we've

been able to evaluate them in field trials, " says Stephen Yarrow,

national manager of the Plant Biosafety Office at the Canadian Food

Inspection Agency.

 

" The Canadian government supports farmers and seed saving, " Yarrow told

IPS. " However GURTs are a whole class of new technologies that offer a

number of potential advantages. "

 

" We're not pushing this technology. And we're quite upset at being

characterised (by activists) that way. "

 

Others believe that GURTs would be useful in non-food crops that are

genetically engineered to produce pharmaceutical products to prevent

formation of seeds.

 

" Used correctly GURTs can be a benefit to society, " says Manjit Misra,

director of the Seed Science Centre at Iowa State University in the

United States.

 

The technology could have prevented the ProdiGene incident where an

unwanted second generation of experimental maize plants containing a

protein for a pig vaccine grew in a field of soy in the U.S. Midwest. The

contamination was discovered post-harvest and resulted in about 14

million kilogrammes of soybeans being destroyed.

 

" This technology is also very important for the protection of

intellectual property, " he said. In preventing the re-use of seeds, seed

companies can get a better return on their research and development costs.

 

" Without intellectual property protection, private companies won't make

those investments. This is something developing countries don't

appreciate, " he said.

 

There are lots of uses for GURTs and intellectual property protection

is one of them, agrees Dick Crowder of the American Seed Trade

Association. Crowder couldn't say what his association's position is

on the

moratorium. However, the U.S. is not a signatory to the CBD.

 

" I'm aware it's a controversial issue, " he said.

 

Canada's National Farmer's Union (NFU) was upset to learn that their

country wanted to overturn the moratorium. In a letter to the country's

prime minister, they said the terminator technology is " the most

controversial and immoral agricultural application of genetic

engineering to

date " . They asked Canada to support the moratorium.

 

" We're very concerned. It's just another way to keep farmers from

saving seed, " said Terry Pugh, NFU executive secretary.

 

" It would give seed corporations tremendous amounts of power, " he told

IPS.

 

Pugh rejects the notion that GURTs could prevent GE pollen and seeds

from contaminating fields or breeding with wild plants. " First they

unleash this contamination problem on us and then they say this

(GURTs) is

the solution? "

 

Compounding the problem is the consolidation within the seed industry.

Monsanto is buying up all sorts of smaller seed companies, said Pugh,

citing the 1.4-billion-dollar purchase of Seminis, Inc., a

California-based seed company in January.

 

As for the future of the CBD moratorium, ETC Group's Thomas says the

consensus is very fragile. It will be debated at future meetings and

there is continuing pressure to allow field trials of GURTs and then

commercialisation.

 

Permanently terminating the terminator technology will be difficult, he

said.

 

*Adds response from Canadian government. (END/2005)

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2.Bad Seed

Rev Blair, 11 Feb 2005

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20050209202055239

 

Between 9,000 and 10,000 BCE small groups of hunter-gatherers living in

the fertile crescent that is now Iraq began saving seeds from wild

grains and planting them. People began domesticating dogs and sheep in

the

region at approximately the same time. It was the beginning of

agriculture and the single development that allowed modern society to

form.

 

The saving and sharing of seeds in Iraq has, as in other places, always

been a largely informal matter. Local varieties of grain and legumes

have been adapted to local conditions over the millennia. These strains

of plant, developed by traditional methods, are resistant to desert

conditions. They are not only a national treasure for Iraq but could well

hold the genetic key to agriculture in other areas as global warming

shifts our climate.

 

Before the US invasion of Iraq many of these seeds were being kept at a

seed bank in the Abu Ghraib suburb of Baghdad. The facility was

destroyed during the invasion, but Iraqi scientists had sent the heritage

seeds to International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas

(ICARDA) in Aleppo, Syria.

 

According to Fred Pearce in an article in New Scientist, Adel

El-Beltagy, director-general of ICARDA, described the importance of

that single

box like this. " When the time is right, its contents will form the

basis for plant breeding to restore Iraqi agriculture and end the

country's

reliance on food aid. The box also has a global importance, as among

the seeds are varieties of crops with inbuilt resistance to extreme heat,

drought and salinity. These could be invaluable for plant breeding

programmes worldwide in the coming century. "

 

That may be overly optimistic. Although heritage seeds can address many

issues exceedingly well, they tend to become extremely rare or extinct

when varieties from elsewhere are introduced. This is a lesson that was

learned all to harshly in Cambodia during the rule of Pol Pot and the

Khmer Rouge. Cambodia lost most of its native species of rice when Pol

Pot insisted on bringing in Chinese varieties. Those varieties were

ill-suited to Cambodian conditions and the result was famine. While

returning refugees did bring some of the traditional varieties of rice

back

with them, many species have been lost forever.

 

The lessons of history are lost on the Bush government and their former

Coalition Provisional Authority administrator in Iraq though. On April

26, 2004 Paul Bremer issued Order 81, Patent, Industrial Design,

Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law

into Iraqi

law.

 

Order 81 makes a very basic change to Iraqi patent law. It allows the

patenting of biologic material, opening the way for genetically modified

crops to be introduced into the country. This isn't surprising

considering the massive political contributions companies like Monsanto

contribute to political parties. The inclusion of plant materials into

Iraqi

patent law is little more than a blatant political favour in return for

campaign contributions.

 

Order 81 very much goes against the United Nations Millennium Forum

Declaration which states the goals of governments involved in the project

being, among other things, " To move towards economic reforms aimed at

equity, in particular to construct macroeconomic policies that combine

growth with the goal of human development and social justice; to prevent

the impoverishment of groups that have emerged from poverty but are

still vulnerable to social risks and exclusion; to improve legislation on

labour standards, including the provision of a minimum legal wage and

an effective social system; and to restore people's control over primary

productive resources as a key strategy for poverty eradication. "

 

The declaration goes on to say, " To promote the use of indigenous crops

and traditional production skills to produce goods and services. " Then

later, " To exempt developing countries from implementing the WTO

Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement and to take these

rights

out of any new rounds of negotiations, ensuring that no such new issues

are introduced, " and, " To examine and regulate transnational

corporations and the increasingly negative influence of their trade on

the

environment. The attempt by companies to patent life is ethically

unacceptable. "

 

That all seems fairly clear. The international community very much

wants to protect the right of farmers in developing nations to continue

planting crops that they have developed to grow in the climate and soil

conditions of the area they live in.

 

The Bush administration, as usual, has put the profits of multinational

corporations ahead of the needs and rights of people. Order 81 not only

prohibits the practice of saving patented seeds brought into the

country, but allows the patenting of new varieties developed from

existing

seeds through scientific plant breeding or genetic modification. To

achieve a patent on a new plant, that plant must meet stringent standards

that farmers' seeds cannot meet, so only corporate-owned seed strains can

be patented.

 

Since it is almost impossible to prevent genetic pollution once a

variety of seeds is released into the environment, it is likely that any

crops grown in Iraq alongside genetically modified or scientifically bred

and patented varieties will pick up part of patented genetic codes

within a decade. This is even more probable given the record of illegal

releases of such materials in places like India. Once a plant is found to

have patented genetic material it belongs to the company that developed

that particular material. If an Iraq farmer saves traditional seeds and

his crops have been cross-pollinating with a neighbour's patented

variety, then the seed-saving farmer no longer owns his crop or anything

made from it.

 

According to Order 81, " The court may order the confiscation of the

infringing variety as well as the materials and tools substantially used

in the infringement of the protected variety. The court may also decide

to destroy the infringing variety as well as the materials and tools or

to dispose of them in any noncommercial purpose. "

 

In other words a farmer who has done nothing but to follow traditional

farming methods that go back to the very dawn of human civilisation can

lose not only his crop and the bread made from it, but may also lose

his tractor, plough, and storage facilities. That seems a rather unfair

price for an Iraqi farmer to pay for George Bush's campaign

contributions, but Paul Bremer's edicts rarely have the best interests

of the Iraqi

people in mind and the bio-tech companies need new markets.

 

In the end the Iraqi farmer will have two choices. To try to grow crops

from seeds of existing crops that have become rare during decades of

war and sanctions or to buy seeds from companies like Monsanto, Dow,

Syngenta and Bayer. If they choose the first option they risk

accidentally

running afoul of a law imposed on them by the US government. If they

choose the second option they risk poverty and future food shortages.

Quite the choice to have to make.

 

While Iraq does represent a lucrative market for the patented seed

companies, there is a longer-term goal being sought by the Bush

administration and its friends in the business of genetically

modifying crops. By

introducing more and more genetically modified plant varieties into the

world market, the world's supplies of non-patented, non-genetically

modified crops slowly become contaminated. Eventually those governments

that have resisted allowing genetically modified crops into their markets

will have little choice but to capitulate to demands that they allow

genetically modified materials. Iraq and other nations that can be forced

to accede to the demands of the US government represent a beachhead, a

foothold to force the will of George Bush's campaign contributors onto

the rest of the world.

 

The leaders of the world need to talk to the new Iraqi government about

Paul Bremer's orders. Many are extremely detrimental to the Iraqi

people and some contravene international laws and agreements. In the

case of

Order 81, world leaders, including the leaders of Canada, need to make

it clear that Order 81 goes directly against what the world said it was

willing to do for developing nations at the United Nations Millennium

Forum.

 

It is time that the world, including Canada, stood up and does what is

has previously said is the right thing to do. We need to help the Iraqi

government to overcome pressure from the United States so they can

repeal laws like Order 81.

 

Further links: Iraq's new patent law: A declaration of war against

farmers, Contamination advancing the GM industry's agenda, Veg Source,

Seeds of Change, The History of Gardening: A Timeline From Ancient

Times to

1600

 

" The word " material " wherever mentioned in paragraph (A) of this

Article shall mean the propagation material of any kind, harvested

material,

including entire plants and parts of plants, and any product made

directly from the harvested material. " -- COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY

ORDER NUMBER 81 PATENT, INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, UNDISCLOSED

INFORMATION,INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND PLANT VARIETY LAW

 

 

 

 

 

 

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