FWD: Maintaining tradition

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This article is from The Star Online

URL:

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2004/2/10/features/2004021011071\

1 & sec=features

 

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Tuesday February 10, 2004

Maintaining tradition

By Hilary Chiew

 

GOVERNMENTS must take firmer action to prevent the commercial introduction of

genetic use restriction technology (GURT),

better known as terminator technology,

to protect biodiversity and the rights of farmers to maintain traditional

farming practices.

 

International civil society organisation ETC Group said the technology developed

by the

multinational seed companies is a

biological mechanism to prevent farmers from re-using their harvested seed and

to maximise

profits. “Genetic seed sterilisation is a threat to world food security because

it is a technology that offers the potential to restrict the food producing

capacity of farmers.

 

“Over 1.4 billion or three quarters of the world’s farmers, primarily poor

farmers in the developing world depend on farmsaved

seed as their primary seed source but GURT will extinguish the age-old practice

of farmer selection and breeding,” said its

research director Hope Shand.

 

Although GURT has been on the agenda of the CBD that recommended a moratorium

since

1998 pending further studies of its impact, the group urged individual countries

to develop national regulatory frameworks

to prohibit the field-testing and commercial sale of any terminator technology

before it is too late. “COP7 will have an opportunity

to unambiguously advise the international community that genetic seed sterility

is a dangerous, anti-farmer technology that

threatens biodiversity, poor farmers

and global food security,” said Shand.

 

Parties to CBD will deliberate on the issue of bio-safety at the first Meeting

of Parties on the Cartagena Protocol from Feb 23.

 

She warned that it was a misconception

that the industry has abandoned its quest to commercialise terminator seeds in

response

to widespread public protest because as recent as last August , an agrochemical

giant

(Syngenta) applied for its most recent US patent.

 

“The seed industry is now waging an aggressive ‘greenwashing’ campaign to

promote the technology as a bio-safety tool for containing unwanted gene flow

from genetically modified (GM) plants. However, there is growing evidence that

escaped genes from GM plants are causing genetic contamination and posing

threats to agricultural biodiversity,” added Shand, citing the case of the

contamination of traditional maize grown by indigenous farmers

in Mexico.<p>

 

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