ENVIRONMENT: GM Firms ‘Must Pay for Damage’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Feb 23 2004 (IPS) - Companies producing GM crops must be held liable for any damage they cause, a leading environment group says.

"Current liability regimes are vastly insufficient," says the report ‘Genetically Modified crops: a decade of failure (1994-2004)’ released here Monday by Friends of the Earth International (FoEI).

"It is crucial that a fast-track process be initiated under the international Biosafety Protocol with the goal of putting in place an international legally binding instrument to protect citizens against potential future damages caused by genetically modified organisms," the report says.

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety seeks to protect biological diversity from potential risks GM organisms (GMOs) pose. It establishes a procedure to ensure that countries are given necessary information before agreeing to import GMOs.

The protocol named after the Colombian city where it was due to be agreed in February 1999 was finally adopted a year later in Montreal.

"Contrary to the promises made by the biotech corporations, the reality of the last ten years shows that the safety of GM crops cannot be ensured, that they are neither cheaper nor higher quality and that they are not the magical solution to solve world hunger," Juan Lopez from FoEI said at the launch of the report.

"The world urgently needs liability laws to make polluters pay for the genetic contamination they make," Lopez added.

FoEI says that ten years of experience with GM crops has shown that environmentalists’ fears through the 1980s and 1990s were valid.

The ‘Flavr Savr’ tomato was the first GM crop to be grown commercially. But the tomato produced in the United States in 1994 went down badly, and was eventually removed from the market.

Between 1996 and 1999 a significant number of GM crops were produced, primarily in the United States, Argentina and Canada. But concerns quickly arose about the health, environmental and socio-economic impacts of these new crops.

"Ten years later, it can be concluded that GM crops are leading us down a dangerous path to unsustainable agriculture," the report says.

FoEI says biotech companies had promised that GM crops were safe, that they would provide better quality and cheaper food, that they were environmentally sustainable, that they would improve agricultural production, and that they would feed the developing world. But after ten years companies have been unable to keep any of these promises, the report says.

The 51-page report says that GM crops not only have an adverse socio- economic impact, but they "directly threaten biodiversity" and have created "novel and alarming" environmental problems such as genetic contamination.

"Not a single GM food on the market is cheaper or better quality than its ‘natural’ counterpart," the report says. The large-scale release of GM crops that the GM industry wants "would further exacerbate the ecological vulnerability already associated with monoculture agriculture."

Developing countries are experiencing particularly serious problems with GM crops, the FoEI report says. "In several parts of India and Indonesia, farmers have complained that Monsanto’s GM cotton has not delivered on the company’s claims of higher yields and improvements in the livelihoods of farmers."

The report says Argentina is evidence that GM crops are "not the solution for feeding the world" that biotech companies promised. "Argentina is the second largest world producer of GM crops, but millions of Argentineans still face hunger and malnutrition."

Most consumers around the world are reluctant to eat GM foods, while many poor countries have rejected GM food aid, the report says.

The European Union (EU) adopted a moratorium on the commercial growing of genetically modified organisms in 1999. GM crops have been kept out of the EU market since then. Several Asian and Latin American countries have also banned GM crops.

FoEI says that GM food has been removed from most supermarket shelves in Europe, and the situation is "unlikely to change."

EU environment commissioner Margot Wallström said last week that the EU and the United States would "continue to disagree on genetically modified crops for years" and that the "debate will even intensify."

Biotech companies must shoulder blame for the way things have turned out in the international debate on GMOs, she said. "They have a responsibility to create some sort of ethical rules on how they are going to use this technology. Until they do this, things will be increasingly difficult."

EU representatives rejected a new offer for GM maize last week. The new organism known as NK603 is marketed by the U.S. firm Monsanto and used mainly in animal feed. The GM crop failed to win over the majority it needed in the committee set up to regulate new strains.

There are currently 24 genetically modified plants and products awaiting approval by the EU, half of which are Monsanto products. Monsanto said last week it remained optimistic that the EU would lower its barriers.

But the FoEI report calls for governments to examine "viable and practical alternatives to GM crops that are almost invariably cheaper, more accessible, more productive in marginal environments and more culturally and socially acceptable."

The report says that "the failure of biotech companies in the last decade and the growing global opposition should catalyze a shift of focus towards alternative, reliable agricultural techniques that are less costly than the multi- billion dollar modern biotechnology industry."