Zambian cotton grower sitting on his bales. Some African governments and local cotton producers have high hopes that GM technology will boost African competitiveness in the dog-eat-dog world that characterises the global cotton market. Credit: Nebert Mulenga/IPS

By Haidee Swanby
MELVILLE, South Africa, Jun 15 2015 (IPS)

Genetically modified (GM) cotton has been produced globally for almost two decades, yet to date only three African countries have grown GM cotton on a commercial basis – South Africa, Burkina Faso and Sudan.

African governments have been sceptical of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for decades and have played a key role historically in ensuring that international law – the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety – takes a precautionary stance towards genetic engineering in food and agriculture.

They have also imposed various restrictions and bans on the cultivation and importation of GMOs, including on genetically modified (GM) food aid.

But now resistance to GM cultivation is crumbling as a number of other African countries such as Malawi, Ghana, Swaziland and Cameroon appear to be on the verge of allowing their first cultivation of GM cotton, with Nigeria and Ethiopia planning to follow suit in the next two to three years.“Scrutiny of actual experiences [with GM cotton] reveals a tragic tale of crippling debt, appalling market prices and a technology prone to failure in the absence of very specific and onerous management techniques, which are not suited to smallholder production”

Some African governments and local cotton producers have high hopes that GM technology will boost African competitiveness in the dog-eat-dog world that characterises the global cotton market.

At the moment African cotton productivity is declining – it now stands at only half the world average – while global productivity is increasing. The promise of improving productivity and reducing pesticide use through the adoption of GM cotton is thus compelling.

However, African leaders and cotton producers need to take a close look at how GM cotton has fared in South Africa and Burkina Faso to date, particularly its socioeconomic impact on smallholder farmers.

Scrutiny of actual experiences reveals a tragic tale of crippling debt, appalling market prices and a technology prone to failure in the absence of very specific and onerous management techniques, which are not suited to smallholder production.

As stated by a farmer during a Malian public consultation on GMOs, “What’s the point of encouraging us to increase yields with GMOs when we can’t get a decent price for what we already produce?”

In Burkina Faso, the tide turned against GM cotton after just five seasons as low yields and low quality fibres persisted. In South Africa, GM cotton brought devastating debts to smallholders and the local credit institution went bust. Last season, smallholders contributed to less than three percent of South Africa’s total production.

In Malawi, Monsanto has already applied to the government for a permit to commercialise Bollgard II, its GM pest resistant cotton, to which there has been a strong reaction from civil society and an alliance of organisations has submitted substantive objections.

Even Malawi’s cotton industry, the Cotton Development Trust (CDT), has publically voiced its concerns over a number of issues, including inadequate field trials, the high cost of GM seed and related inputs, and blurred intellectual property arrangements.

In addition, CDT has expressed unease over the potential development of pest resistance and the inevitable applications of herbicide chemicals.

Regional economic communities (RECs), such as the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), are also key players in readying their member states for the commercialisation of and trade in GM cotton, through harmonised biosafety policies. Together COMESA and ECOWAS incorporate 34 countries in Africa.

The COMESA Policy on Biotechnology and Biosafety was adopted in February 2014 and member states validated the implementation plan in March 2015.

The ECOWAS Biosafety Policy has been through an arduous process for more than a decade now and pronounced conflicts between trade imperatives and safety checks have stalled agreement between stakeholders. However, recent reports indicate that agreement between member states and donor parties has been reached and a final draft of the Biosafety Policy will soon be published.

Experiments and open field trials with GM cotton have been running for many years in a number of African countries and are increasingly at a stage where applications for commercial release are imminent.

However, there are many obstacles to the birth of a new GM era in Africa, chief among them the fact that this high-end technology is simply not appropriate to resource-poor farmers operating on tiny pieces of land, together with fierce opposition from civil society and sometimes also from governments.

Attempts by the biotech industry to impose policies that pander to investors’ desires at the expense of environmental and human safety may be easier to realise at the regional level, through the trade-friendly RECs. This is where many biotech industry resources and efforts are currently being channelled.

Despite whatever legal environments may be implemented to enable the introduction of GM cotton regionally or nationally, the fact remains that Africa’s cotton farmers are operating in a difficult global sector – prices are erratic and distorted by unfair subsidies in the North, institutional support for their activities is often lacking, and high input costs are already annihilating profit margins.

Fighting for the introduction of more expensive technologies that have already proven themselves technologically unsound in a smallholder environment is deeply irresponsible and short-sighted.

It is time that African governments turn their resources to improving the local environments in which cotton producers operate, including institutional and infrastructural support that can bring long-term sustainability to the sector, without placing further burdens and vulnerability on some of the most marginalised people in the world.

Civil society actions will continue to vehemently oppose and challenge the false solutions promised by GM cotton and will insist on just trading environments and true and sustainable upliftment for African cotton producers.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

* This opinion piece is based on the author’s more extensive paper titled Cottoning on to the Lie, published by the African Centre for Biodiversity, June 2015

Excerpt:

Some 60 major U.S. food retailers have already pledged not to sell GE salmon. Credit: Kevin Galens/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Oct 29 2014 (IPS)

Officials in Panama have fined the local facility of a U.S. biotechnology company for a series of permitting and regulatory failures around a pioneering attempt to create genetically modified salmon.

The experiments are being carried out by researchers for AquaBounty Technologies, which currently has an application with the U.S. government to sell genetically modified (GM) salmon filets in this country. If regulators approve that application, AquaBounty’s salmon would be the first genetically modified meat sold for human consumption anywhere in the world."There are about 35 other genetically modified species in the development pipelines in other companies." -- Dana Perls of Friends of the Earth

Further, companies in the United States and around the globe are said to be actively watching U.S. regulators’ response to AquaBounty’s application as a critical indication of whether to proceed with other GM meat projects.

“AquaBounty is really out front on this – the current case will set an important precedent,” Dana Perls, a food and technology campaigner at Friends of the Earth, a watchdog group, told IPS.

“From what we know, there are about 35 other genetically modified species in the development pipelines in other companies. So depending on what happens in this case, we’ll likely either see a flow of other permits or this will demonstrate that there isn’t room on the market for GM meat or seafood.”

AquaBounty’s application with the U.S. government would involve getting filets of the new GM salmon from the company’s breeding facility in Panama and into the U.S. market. Advocates are now pointing to the Panamanian authorities’ findings of regulations violations as an indication that the U.S. regulatory process is proceeding too quickly in considering the salmon application.

“The impacts GM foods will have on health and the environment have not been sufficiently assessed to approve human consumption of this salmon,” Luisa Arauz Arredondo, an attorney with the Panama Centre for Environmental Advocacy, which filed the administrative complaint against AquaBounty, told IPS.

She notes that while AquaBounty’s facilities in Panama have permission to run experiments on the salmon, the country has not approved anything further.

“The salmon would not be sold to Panamanian consumers,” she says, “since the human consumption of GM salmon has not been approved by Panama or the U.S.”

Repeat violations

The Panamanian regulatory decision, which was made public on Tuesday, actually stems from a 2012 investigation of AquaBounty’s facilities and was decided in July of this year. It found that the company had failed to secure necessary permits, particularly around its use of water and pollution of the local environment – potentially important, advocates say, given the possibility of contamination of natural systems.

The authorities noted their view that the company had “repeatedly violated” these regulations, and stated that these problems persisted into 2013. They deemed the transgressions significant enough to levy almost the maximum fine allowable against the company.

AquaBounty Technologies suggests that the concerns outlined by Panama’s government were largely administrative in nature and notes that any problems have all been dealt with already.

“It is important to emphasize that none of the issues in the Resolution questioned the containment, health of the fish, or the environmental safety of the facility,” the company said in a statement sent to IPS.

“When AquaBounty was informed of issues at our Panama facility, we immediately contacted ANAM, the Panamanian agency for the environment. We initiated a program to remedy the deficiencies and the issues were formally resolved in August of 2014.”

The company notes that its Panama facility “continues to operate with no sanctions or restrictions.”

Whether the actions on the part of Panama’s government will impact on the ongoing consideration of AquaBounty’s application by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) remains to be seen.

A spokesperson for the FDA likewise pointed out that AquaBounty’s violations were based on a 2012 inspection, but also said the agency would “consider all relevant information as part of the decision-making process.”

The spokesperson noted that the agency is in the process of completing its review of the company’s application, but declined to provide a timeline on what that decision will be made.

Shoehorning regulation

For environmentalists, public interest groups and anti-GMO advocates, the Panama findings underscore a potential weakness in the FDA’s regulatory process.

“This decision is also even further proof that FDA is dangerously out of touch with the facts on the ground, advancing AquaBounty’s application based on its promises, not reality,” George Kimbrell, a senior attorney with the Center for Food Safety, a Washington-based advocacy group, said Tuesday.

Friends of the Earth’s Perls says that the FDA’s current regulatory review of the GM salmon application is based solely on the single AquaBounty facility in Panama.

“The FDA is going forward with its review based on the premise that this facility will be in compliance with regulations, yet now we’re seeing it’s not,” she says. “It is increasingly clear that there is inadequate regulation: the FDA is trying to shoehorn this new genetically engineered animal into a completely ill-fitting regulatory process.”

Much of the concern here revolves around the potential for genetically modified hybrids to escape into the wild, potentially outcompeting wild populations or introducing new diseases. Yet the issue also runs up against the scepticism that continues to colour consumer response to genetically modified foods – and the sense that regulators are moving too quickly to approve these products.

When the FDA in 2012 asked the public to weigh in on the AquaBounty salmon application, it received some 1.8 million comments expressing overwhelming opposition. Members of the U.S. Congress have likewise expressed their concern, and legislation has been proposed that would require the labelling of genetically modified fish.

As yet, there is no legal requirement in the United States to label any genetically modified food or ingredient, though the state of Vermont could soon impose such a mandate. According to a media poll conducted last year, some 93 percent of people in the U.S. support the labelling of genetically modified foods, and three-quarters said they would not eat GM fish.

Yet perhaps the most significant indication of public sentiment on this issue has come from the retailers that have pre-emptively stated that they would not sell genetically modified fish and seafood – regardless of whether the FDA approves its sale. According to data compiled by Friends of the Earth, some 60 major U.S. food retailers have already pledged to do so, including several of the country’s largest grocery chains.

“Should GE salmon come to market, we are not considering nor do we have any plans to carry GE salmon,” Safeway, the second-largest grocer in the United States, said in a policy statement released in February. “Safeway’s [policy] calls for all of our fresh and frozen seafood to be responsibly sourced and traceable or be in a time-bound improvement process by the end of 2015.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

Monsanto’s plant in Malvinas Argentinas, seen from the camp set up by local protestors blocking access to the works in construction. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
CORDOBA, Argentina, Jan 25 2014 (IPS)

Residents of a town in Argentina have won the first victory in their fight against biotech giant Monsanto, but they are still at battle stations, aware that winning the war is still a long way off.

For four months activists in Malvinas Argentinas, a town in the central province of Cordoba, have maintained a blockade of the construction site where the U.S. transnational company is building the world’s biggest maize seed treatment plant.

In this previously peaceful town, protestors continue to camp in front of the construction site and to block access to it, even after a provincial court order this month put a halt to the works.

The campaign against the plant, led by Asamblea Malvinas Lucha por la Vida (Malvinas Assembly Fighting for Life) and other social organisations, began Sept. 18 in this town 17 kilometres from the capital of Cordoba.

Tense situations ensued, with attempts by the provincial police to disperse the demonstrators and provocations by construction union envoys, but a provincial labour court ruling on Jan. 8 upheld the activists’ cause.

“The ruling shows that the residents’ arguments are just, because they are claiming basic rights that are recognised and established in the constitution and federal legislation,” Federico Macciocchi, the lawyer representing opponents of the plant, told IPS.

The court ruled that the municipal ordinance authorising construction of the plant in this mostly working class town of 15,000 people was unconstitutional.

It ordered a halt to construction work and banned the Malvinas Argentinas municipality from authorising the construction until two legal requirements are fulfilled: carrying out an environmental impact assessment and a public hearing.

“This is a big step forward in the struggle, achieved by working together on institutional demands, along with social activism on the streets,” Matías Marizza, a member of the Malvinas Assembly, told IPS.

“This struggle has resulted in guaranteeing respect for the law,” the activist said.

The Malvinas Assembly and other organisations have decided to continue to camp out at the site and block access until the project is abandoned for good.

Monsanto replied to IPS’s request for comment with a statement that describes local activists as “extremists” who are preventing their contractors and employees from “exercising the right to work.”

The court ruling arose from a legal appeal lodged by local residents and the Club de Derecho (Cordoba Law Club), presided by Macciocchi.

The labour court has ordered an environmental impact study and a public hearing, he emphasised.

The views expressed in the public hearing will be “highly relevant,” he said, although under the General Environment Law, participants’ objections and opinions “are not binding.”

However, the law does stipulate that if the opinions of the convening authorities differ from the results of the public hearing, “they must justify them and make them public,” he said.

Now the Malvinas Assembly also wants a public consultation with a secret ballot.

Such a ballot would comply with the environmental law and “guarantee citizens’ full rights to decide on which model of local development and what kind of social and economic activities they want for their daily life, and what environmental risks they are prepared to take,” Víctor Mazzalay, another resident, told IPS.

“It is the people who should have that information and decide whether or not to accept the costs and risks involved,” said Mazzalay, a social researcher funded by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) at the University of Cordoba.

“An environmental impact assessment should include a public consultation so that citizens can provide the ‘social licence’ necessary for developing any social, economic and productive activity that may affect their environment and health,” he said.

Monsanto’s statement said the company does not agree with the court ruling, but respects judicial decisions and will abide by the verdict.

The company stated that it had already conducted an environmental assessment, which is currently under review by the provincial Secretary of the Environment.

In Macciocchi’s view, the court’s ruling is definitive and “brings the legal conflict to an end.”

“The ruling arose from a legal appeal, so there is no further recourse in ordinary law,” he said.

Monsanto can still appeal to have the decision overturned by the provincial High Court (Tribunal Superior de Justicia, TSJ).

The company has already said that it will appeal. “We consider our right to build legitimate since we have complied with all legal requirements and have obtained authorization to build according to the regulations, as confirmed by the ruling of the Court of First Instance of Oct. 7, 2013,” their statement said.

However, in Macciocchi’s view “this appeal will not overturn the labour court ruling.”

“If we consider how long the TSJ takes to process an appeal, by the time there is a decision, the Malvinas municipality and the Environment Secretariat will have complied with the laws they previously violated,” he said.

According to the lawyer, the high court takes up to two and a half years for appeals lodged by individuals under sentence, and five to seven years in labour or civil cases.

“It would create a real institutional scandal if the TSJ were to deal with this case by leap-frogging all the other cases that have lain dormant in its offices for years,” he said.

The Jan. 8 ruling cannot prevent the definitive installation of the plant, which Monsanto plans should become operational during 2014.

“But if the citizens’ demonstrations against the plant and the environmental impact assessment are unfavourable to the company, Monsanto will not be able to instal the plant in Malvinas Argentinas,” Macciocchi predicted.

Mazzalay emphasised that the “substance” of the arguments of opponents to Monsanto’s plant was “the defence of the people’s right to decide on the kind of productive activities and the type of environmental risks they wish to undertake.”

The company announced it was planning to build more than 200 maize silos, and to use agrochemical products to treat the seeds. Monsanto is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of herbicides and genetically modified seeds, and has operated in Argentina since 1956 when it established a plastics factory.

“It is frequently argued that there is a reasonable doubt that this productive activity is harmless to human health,” Mazzalay said.

In his view, “a multiplicity of scientific studies have shown negative effects on health from both seed transportation and handling of and exposure to different agrochemical products.”

“When there is a health risk related to environmental issues, reasonable doubt should bring the precautionary principle into play, that is, an activity should not be developed until it has definitely been proved to be harmless,” he said.

Native varieties of maize, like these drying in San Cristóbal de las Casas, in the southern state of Chiapas, are key to preserving crop diversity. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 8 2013 (IPS)

In the 2011 action-thriller “Unknown”, scientists are persecuted by the biotech industry because they plan the open release of a drought- and pest-resistant strain of maize that could help eradicate world hunger.

There are certain parallels with the situation today in Mexico, the birthplace of maize, which is at the centre of the global fight to protect the crop’s diversity from the onslaught of genetically modified varieties.

“It’s the first time in history that one of the most important harvests in the world is threatened in its centre of diversity,” Pat Mooney, the head of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), an international NGO, told IPS.

“If we let the companies win, there will be no chance to defend them in other parts. What is happening here is of key importance for the rest of the world.”

Civil society organisations are raising their guard against the possibility that the government of conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) may approve commercial cultivation of transgenic maize, a move widely condemned by environmentalists and other activists, academics, and small and medium producers due to the risks it poses.

In September, the U.S. corporations Monsanto, Pioneer and Dow Agrosciences presented six applications for commercial plantations of transgenic maize on more than two million hectares in the northwestern state of Sinaloa and the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.

Moreover, in January these companies and Syngenta presented 11 applications for pilot and experimental plots to grow transgenic corn on 622 hectares in the northern states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Sinaloa and Baja California. And Monsanto has applied for an additional plantation in an unspecified area in the north of the country.

Since 2009, the Mexican government has issued 177 permits for experimental plots of transgenic maize covering an area of 2,664 hectares, according to the latest figures provided by the authorities.

But large-scale commercial release of GM maize has not yet been authorised.

“They are going to serve up transgenic maize on every table in spite of the fact that food sovereignty depends on growing native corn,” said Evangelina Robles, a member of Red en Defensa del Maíz (Maize Defence Network) which campaigns against GM corn. “As a result, we have to demand its prohibition by the state,” she told IPS.

Mexico produces 22 million tonnes of maize a year, and imports 10 million tonnes, according to the agriculture ministry. The country purchased about two million tonnes of GM maize from South Africa over the last two years, and is set to import another 150,000 tonnes.

Three million maize farmers cultivate about eight million hectares in Mexico, two million of which are devoted to family farming. White maize is the main crop for human consumption, while yellow maize, for animal feed, is largely imported.

The National Council for the Evaluation of Social Policy (CONEVAL) estimates the country’s annual consumption of maize at 123 kg per person, compared to a world average of 16.8 kg.

The historical link with pre-Columbian indigenous cultures gives maize a strong symbolic and cultural significance throughout Mesoamerica, the area comprising southern Mexico and Central America, where it was domesticated, producing 59 landraces or native strains and 209 varieties.

In the state of Mexico, adjacent to the capital city’s Federal District, small farmers have found their native maize to be contaminated with GM maize, according to tests carried out by students at the state Autonomous Metropolitan University.

“We swapped seeds and decided to do some tests. Now we are more careful when exchanging, and over who participates in the fair, although we still have to carry out confirmation tests,” activist Sara López, of the Red Origen Volcanes (Volcanoes Origins Network), an association of small farmers that has been organising producers’ fairs since 2010, told IPS.

Environmental, scientific and small farmers’ organisations have discovered GM contamination of native maize in Chihuahua, Hidalgo, Puebla and Oaxaca.

Contamination is “a carefully and perversely planned strategy,” according to Camila Montecinos, from the Chile office of GRAIN, an international NGO that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

Transnational food companies “chose maize, soy and canola because of their enormous potential for contamination (by wind-pollination),” said Montecinos, one of the experts participating in the preliminary hearing on transgenic contamination of native maize at the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, an international opinion tribunal which opened its Mexican chapter in 2012 and will conclude with a non-binding ruling in 2014.

“When contamination spreads, the companies claim that the presence of transgenic crops must be recognised and legalised,” in order to pave the way for marketing the GM seeds, to which they own the patents, she said.

Mexico’s environment minister, Juan Guerra, has said that all available scientific information will be examined before a decision is made.

But that will not be easy. The National Confederation of Campesinos (Small Farmers), one of the main internal movements in the ruling PRI, has had an agreement with Monsanto since 2007 under which the company is to “conserve” native varieties.

Meanwhile, the Peña Nieto government still has not approved regulations for the format and contents of reports on the results of releasing GM organisms, and the possible threats to the environment, biodiversity, and the health of animals, plants and fish.

“For 18 years, corporations have been unsuccessful in convincing the people that their products are good. Maize is being used as a means of political and economic control. People need maize to be alive,” the ETC Group’s Mooney said.

The transgenic seeds on the market are herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready and Bt (for the Bacillus thuringiensis gene they carry for pest resistance) versions of cotton, maize, soy and canola. While they are legally grown in Canada, the United States, Argentina, Brazil and Spain, they are banned for example in China, Russia and the majority of the EU countries.

Recent studies published in the United States show that transgenic crops do not significantly increase yield per hectare, do not reduce herbicide use, and do not increase resistance to pests, in contrast to biotech industry claims.

“We are analysing what legal action to take against the new applications (to plant GM maize),” said Robles, of the Maize Defence Network.

The EU logo for organic food, which became obligatory in 2009. Credit: Simon Leufstedt/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 24 2013 (IPS)

A decades-long push to require the labelling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients in the United States received a significant boost Wednesday, when bipartisan bills on the issue were simultaneously proposed in the House and Senate.

Advocates of such measures are reacting with excitement, noting that the new bills appear to be far better positioned than previous such attempts, in terms of both public and Congressional support. If the bills pass, the United States would join 64 other countries that have already put in place similar laws or regulations.“The fact of the matter is that, for far too long, the FDA has been playing politics over science.” -- Colin O’Neil of CFS

The legislative moves mark the first time that such a bill has been proposed in the U.S. Senate in more than a dozen years, a period during which the use of genetically modified crops has expanded exponentially.

Further, while that earlier iteration, from 2000, was the work of just a single Democratic senator and was unable to attract any additional co-sponsors, the new bill has already received official support from nine senators and 21 representatives, including two Republicans.

“Americans have the right to know what is in the food they eat so they can make the best choices for their families,” Senator Barbara Boxer, a key sponsor of the new bill and author of the 2000 proposal, said Wednesday.

“This legislation is supported by a broad coalition of consumer groups, businesses, farmers, fishermen and parents who all agree that consumers deserve more – not less – information about the food they buy.”

Indeed, public opinion on the matter appears to be overwhelmingly on the side of the new proposal, which would direct the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the main government regulator on food-related issues, to require food producers to clearly label their products if they contain genetically engineered (GE) components.

According to multiple polls in recent years (including here and here), more than 90 percent of people in the United States favour the FDA requiring the labelling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients.

Yet for years, the FDA has pushed back against such requests, despite having the legal authority to mandate such a change. Rather, today’s policy continues to be informed by 1992 guidance in which FDA administrators stated that GE foods were not “materially” different from conventional foods.

The rationale for this stance was simply that consumers were unable to physically sense the difference between conventional and genetically modified foods.

“Unfortunately, the FDA’s antiquated labelling policy has not kept pace with 21st century food technologies that allow for a wide array of genetic and molecular changes to food that can’t be detected by human senses,” according to a press release put out by the bill’s main sponsors, Senator Boxer and Representative Peter DeFazio.

Further, such a test appears inconsistent with regard to the 3,000 other substances for which the FDA does require labelling.

“The fact of the matter is that, for far too long, the FDA has been playing politics over science,” Colin O’Neil, the director of government affairs at the Center for Food Safety, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS.

“Corn that produces its own insecticide, or a fish that grows twice as fast as normal, or an apple that doesn’t turn brown for 30 days – we know these are material changes and that those are novel foods.”

Choice, not science

Over the past decade and a half, consumers in the United States have been eating more and more GE foods, almost always unlabelled. According to some estimates, nearly two-thirds of processed foods sold in the U.S. today contain genetically modified grains, particularly corn or soybeans.

And although the use of these materials started in the United States, they have since spread throughout the world, with genetically modified crops now covering more than 10 percent of all farmland. In 2010, more than 80 percent of all soybeans were reportedly grown from modified seed.

Even as public concern has spiked on the issue in recent years, the debate over genetic modification has often become bogged down in discussions of what the science has or hasn’t found. Due in part to the need for long-term studies and the relative newness of this widespread use, findings are available to back up both advocates and opponents of genetic modification.

The new U.S. legislative proposal, however, sidesteps the science entirely, to hinge solely on issues of public information and consumer choice.

“The government doesn’t label dangerous foods – they take them off market,” O’Neil notes.

“Food doesn’t have to be dangerous to be labelled. When the FDA required that irradiated foods be labelled, for instance, it explained its reasoning based not on the ‘material change’ to the food but simply on whether consumers felt that the absence of that knowledge would deceive them.”

As for the new bill, O’Neil says it marks a “very significant step forward” for the labelling movement.

“Given the number of original, bipartisan co-sponsors, there is very good indication that this bill could have legs,” he notes.

“There was a lot of fear-mongering by industry when Senator Boxer introduced her first bill [in 2000], but the dialogue has changed dramatically since then. It’s no longer a matter of if but when labelling will be required.”

Groundswell

The new proposal was almost certainly helped along not only by widespread public backing but also by growing support from corporations and state-level governments. Just this year, over 50 bills in 26 states have introduced proposals on GE food labelling.

In addition, more than 100 companies have already publicly backed the new federal bill. Others have moved unilaterally – for instance, the grocery chain Whole Foods pledged earlier this month to label all GE foods it carries by 2018.

Farmers unions too have expressed support, highlighting in part the export obstacles that have cropped up as the United States has fallen behind the international curve on labelling. In fact, if it passes, the new bill would simply require food producers to do for U.S. consumers what they’re already doing for many export markets.

“Pepsi, Kraft – major producers have already been labelling U.S. products in accordance with foreign laws,” O’Neil says. “This experience has shown that doing so is not a barrier to trade, does not increase costs for consumers – and those in the U.S. would no longer have to live in the dark over what’s in their food.”

Genetically modified corn in Spain. Credit: Friends of the Earth

By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain, Mar 27 2013 (IPS)

Spain has more large-scale plantations of genetically modified seeds than any other country in the European Union (EU).

Based on the number of trials conducted and the area of land planted, Spain accounts for 42 percent of all field trials of genetically modified crops in the EU, according to figures from the European Commission Joint Research Centre.

“Experimentation is being carried out on a wide scale with no knowledge of its consequences for human health, the environment and the future of agriculture,” environmentalist Liliane Spendeler, director of Friends of the Earth Spain, told Tierramérica*.

Her organisation has launched a campaign, “Únicos en Europa”, to inform the public about these crops.

Genetically modified organisms or GMOs, also known as transgenic organisms, are the result of a laboratory process of taking genes from one species of plant or animal and inserting them into another species in an attempt to obtain a desired trait or characteristic, such as resistance to pests or adverse weather conditions like drought.

There is no conclusive evidence that GMOs are harmless to human health and the environment, which has led the World Health Organization to recommend that they be studied on a case-by-case basis.

In 2012, more than 116,300 hectares of land in Spain were planted with MON810 corn, produced by the U.S.-based biotech transnational Monsanto. This was 20 percent more than in 2011, according to figures from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment calculated on the basis of seed sales.

Environmentalists are critical of the fact that these figures are imprecise estimates, and that there is no public registry specifying the location of these transgenic corn fields.

When certified organic crops are contaminated by genetically modified crops, the farmers lose their organic certification, but cannot sue the owners of the transgenic crops because of the lack of a registry. They cannot demand compensation for losses and damages, either, because there is no provision for this in Spanish or European legislation, explained Spendeler.

In Spain, as in the rest of the EU, only transgenic corn is authorised. Genetically modified soy and cotton are imported from Argentina, Brazil, Canada and the United States.

“Transgenic crops produced in developing countries are filling the bellies of cows and pigs in industrialised countries,” Luís Ferreirim, the head of Greenpeace Spain’s anti-GMO campaign, told Tierramérica.

According to a report from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), published Feb. 20, “From 1996 to 2011, biotech crops contributed to food security, sustainability and climate change” (sic).

A record 170.3 million hectares of transgenic crops were grown globally in 2012, up six percent from 2011, the ISAAA reports. The United States is the biggest producer, followed by Brazil.

But despite the benefits touted by their promoters, such as increased productivity and efficiency and decreased pesticide use, genetically modified seeds have been banned by a significant number of European countries, noted Ferreirim.

In Europe there are 11 countries that prohibit the use of genetically modified seeds, eight of them in the EU, following the addition of Poland in 2013. And in 2012, only Portugal, Spain, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic planted transgenic crops, he added.

A whopping 95 percent of these crops in the EU are concentrated in Spain (88 percent) and Portugal (seven percent).

The bulk of this transgenic corn is used to produce animal feed. “Given that the food pyramid has been turned upside down and there is an ever greater demand for animal protein, it ends up right on our plates,” said Ferreirim.

European legislation requires that food products be labelled if they contain GMOs, unless these account for 0.9 percent or less of the total ingredients.

The animal feed sold in Spain is a mixture of transgenic and conventional corn, which represents a serious violation of cattle farmers’ right to choose non-GMO feed for their livestock, said Spendeler.

Environmental activist Carmela San Segundo, a member of Ecologists in Action in the southern Spanish city of Málaga, stressed the “great power” wielded by the agrochemical corporations that sell genetically modified seeds.

Through the efforts of the non-governmental organisation she works with, a dozen towns in the province of Málaga have declared themselves Transgenic-Free Zones, a legal status recognised by the EU.

“It takes a lot of work, talking with community associations, farmers’ associations, members of local governments. It’s not a problem that people worry about much, because they know very little about it,” she told Tierramérica.

In Spain, the planting of transgenic corn began in 1998 as a means of confronting the economic consequences of insect invasions, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

But today there are no figures on the real incidence of the European corn borer, the crop’s main insect enemy.

“Can the use of this technology be justified without concrete figures on the losses caused by pests?” asked Ferreirim.

He explained that Monsanto’s genetically modified Bt corn does away with the need to use pesticides because its flowers produce a bacterium that is toxic to these insects.

But even though there is not always a threat of insect infestation, the corn constantly releases this gene, and after harvesting, it remains in the soil, decreasing its fertility, Ferreirim said.

“It has been shown in transgenic crops in various countries that over the long term, secondary pests appear, leading to the need to use other pesticides,” he added.

In addition, GMO field trials are not subjected to any safety controls in Spain, Ferreirem stressed.

According to a survey published in 2010 by the EU, 53 percent of Spaniards were against the splicing of genes from other species into food crops, while only 27 percent were in favour.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Food safety advocates, environmentalists and health professionals here are engaging in a fervent last-minute campaign to highlight a controversial legislative amendment they say would gut the ability of both the judiciary and the federal government to regulate genetically modified agricultural products.

The U.S. Senate is slated to vote early this week on amendments to a massive, “must pass” bill that would fund the U.S. government’s operations beyond Mar. 27 to the end of this fiscal year. That bill – a piece of stopgap legislation known as a continuing resolution – is so important that leaders in the U.S. Senate had previously suggested that they would not include any potentially controversial amendments.These provisions are giveaways worth millions of dollars to a handful of the biggest corporations in this country.

Yet late last week, reports arose that a legislative “rider” had been anonymously proposed that would allow the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to overrule a judge’s decision to outlaw a genetically modified product. (The amendment can be found here, on page 80.)

As such, even if the courts were to rule that the USDA had illegally approved a particular genetically modified crop, the agency would be allowed to continue telling farmers to use the seed in question. Yet while this would seem to maintain at least the government’s oversight responsibilities, critics say the rider’s impact would go still farther.

“This provision also forces the hand of the USDA, forcing the agency to immediately approve any permits for deregulation of these crops,” Colin O’Neil, a researcher with the Center for Food Safety, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS. “Basically, it takes these oversight responsibilities away from the courts and government and gives them directly to the biotech companies themselves.”

In fact, almost identical language was used in an amendment proposed last year in the House of Representatives, likewise attached to a large, unrelated bill. That attempt, dubbed the “biotech rider”, failed at the time.

“Those behind these provisions have the interests of short-term profits at heart,” O’Neil continues. “We feel that based on the federal court decisions and government reports that have criticised the USDA’s approval of certain biotech products, we need to think long term about better safeguards that will adequately protect all farmers and the environment.”

This time around, critics were tipped off when Jon Tester, a Democratic senator, sounded an alarm on the floor of the Senate, strongly denouncing what he called a “corporate giveaway”.

“Its supporters are calling it the ‘farmer assurance’ provision, but all it really assures is a lack of corporate liability,” Tester stated.

“The provision says that when a judge finds that the USDA approved a crop illegally, the department must re-approve the crop and allow it to continue to be planted – regardless of what the judge says. Think about that.”

Tester is an organic farmer, described as one of the few in the U.S. Congress who continues to farm. He has now sponsored a counter-amendment that would strip away the “biotech rider”.

“These provisions are giveaways worth millions of dollars to a handful of the biggest corporations in this country and deserve no place in this bill,” he added.

“Not only does this ignore the Constitution’s idea of separation of powers, but it also lets genetically modified crops take hold across the country – even when a judge finds it violates the law … the ultimate loser will be our family farmers going about their business and feeding America the right way.”

Herbicide drift

The new rider could also harm U.S. farmers’ attempts to sell their products abroad. In January, for instance, the European Union temporarily froze the approvals process for new genetically modified foods, and dozens of other countries have similarly moved to more tightly regulate their markets.

Yet if the current legislation were to pass, the USDA would be hamstrung from preventing “contamination” of U.S. foodstocks by genetically modified products.

The continued appearance of the “biotech rider” is most likely a reaction to scepticism that has repeatedly been voiced by the federal courts over approval of genetically engineer crops, in addition to the prospect of a new, “next generation” of biotech crops.

The industry has experienced a number of setbacks, including findings that the use of genetically modified crops has increased the use of pesticides, as well as accusations that these crops pose an economic threat to organic and even conventional farmers.

Further, it has become increasingly apparent that genetically modified agricultural material does not necessarily stay on the farms where it is used. In this regard, environmentalists have expressed particular concern over genetically modified crops engineered to withstand stronger and stronger herbicides.

“‘Herbicide drift’ is one of many harms from industrial agriculture – farmers are experiencing economic loss when their crops are killed or damaged when herbicides become volatile and drift in from neighbouring farms,” the Center for Food Safety’s O’Neil says.

“We already have around 64 million acres infested with herbicide-resistant weeds in this country. Yet the next generation of these products appears to be simply moving towards genetically modified crops that are resistant to the older herbicides – what we call the ‘pesticide treadmill’.”

The federal government, he says, has been unable to make headway on the issue.

“So far, the USDA has failed to address issues like the proliferation of herbicide-resistant weeds,” O’Neil says. “We now worry that herbicide drift could be the next issue that the USDA fails to adequately address.”

Amendments to the continuing resolution were to be accepted until late Tuesday, with a vote on all riders expected thereafter. Senate leaders have said a vote would be held on the full bill by the end of the week.

A court-appointed committee in India has called for a ten-year moratorium on field trials of GM crops. Credit: F Delventhal/CC-BY-2.0

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI , Oct 27 2012 (IPS)

Environmental activists are cautiously optimistic that a call by a court-appointed technical committee for a ten-year moratorium on open field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops will shelve plans to introduce bio-engineered foods in this largely agricultural country.

“We are now waiting to see whether the Supreme Court will accept the recommendations of its own committee at the next hearing on Oct. 29,” said Devinder Sharma, chairman of the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, a collective of agriculture scientists, economists, biotechnologists, farmers and environmentalists.

The committee – appointed in May to examine questions of safety raised in a petition filed by environmental activist Aruna Rodrigues – pointed to serious gaps in India’s present regulatory framework for GM crops in an interim report released on Oct. 18.

In particular, the committee was asked to look at open field trials of food crops spliced with genes taken from the soil bacterium Bacillus thurigiensis (Bt), an insecticide whose impact on human health is unknown.

Noting that there “have been several cases of ignoring problematic aspects of the data in the safety dossiers”, the committee suggested reexamination “by international experts who have the necessary experience”.

In February 2010, the then Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had ordered a moratorium on Bt brinjal (also called aubergine or eggplant), based on a series of public hearings on the issue – though this was not extended to field trials of other Bt food crops.

A parliamentary standing committee on GM crops appeared to reflect the public mood when it recommended in August that GM crop trials be banned and future research conducted only under tight regulation.

“The government should see the writing on the wall. It is now amply clear that this country of 1.2 billion people, 70 percent of whom are dependent on agriculture, is strongly against the introduction of GM crops,” said Sharma.

According to Sharma wide publicity given to a recent study by French scientists led by Gilles-Eric Seralini at the University of Caen, which showed rats fed with GM corn developing tumours, has had an impact on the Indian public as well as scientists and experts.

In fact, the court’s committee has recommended that long-term and inter-generational studies on rodents be added to tests to be performed on all GM crops in India, whether approved or pending approval.

Sharma said the Supreme Court’s decision is bound to have a bearing on resistance in Europe to GM food crops, because of safety concerns. Spain is currently the only country in the European Union that grows a GM food crop and this is limited to GM corn to be used as animal feed.

Kavita Kuruganti, a consultant with the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, a Hyderabad-based organisation working on sustainable agriculture in partnership with non-government organisations, said it is significant that the court’s committee had called for reexamination of all biosafety data for approved and pipeline GM products.

The committee’s report contradicts advice from the prime minister’s scientific advisory council (SAC) on biotechnology and agriculture, which complained in an Oct. 9 release, “A science-informed, evidence-based approach is lacking in the current debate on biotechnologies for agriculture.”

But Kuruganti told IPS that the Supreme Court’s committee consisted entirely of distinguished scientists and that their opinions “cannot be dismissed as unscientific as they (have) rationalised each of their recommendations.”

Arguing in favour of introducing GM food crops in India, the SAC statement claimed:  “Land availability and quality, water, low productivity, drought and salinity, biotic stresses, post-harvest losses are all serious concerns that will endanger our food and nutrition security with potentially serious additional affects as a result of climate change.”

However, the SAC acknowledged, “There is concern about the costs at which seeds (from multinational companies that have patents on GM) are available to our farmers, particularly poor farmers.”

”The experience with non-food GM crops, particularly Bt cotton, has been that ordinary farmers do not benefit because of the high costs of seeds and inputs,” said Ramachandra Pillai, president of the Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha (All India Farmers Forum) that has 14 million members and is affiliated with the Marxist Communist Party of India.

Pillai told IPS that his party was not opposed to modern agricultural biotechnology, but wanted public-sector involvement because “right now the main driving force behind GM crops seems to be the profit motive, which may bypass such burning issues as food security, malnutrition, poverty alleviation and unemployment.”

Pillai said it was especially important to have government oversight in the case of GM food crops to dispel fears that the private sector was ignoring concerns around public safety.

The court-appointed committee has called for specifically designated and certified field trial sites, adequate preliminary testing and the creation of an independent panel of scientists to evaluate biosafety data on each GM crop in the pipeline.

Suman Sahai who leads Gene Campaign, a Delhi-based NGO, said the report has brought home the fact that the “existing regulatory system for introducing GM crops into the country was hugely compromised.”

Sahai told IPS that the regulatory authorities had, for example, ignored the interests of organic farmers who stand to be ruined if their crops are contaminated by GM crops, several of which are currently under development in India.

Based on India being a signatory to the Cartagena Protocol that recognises biodiversity as a long-term resource, the committee recommended a complete ban on field trials of crops for which India is a centre of origin or diversity, “as transgenics can contaminate and adversely affect biodiversity.”

“For the first time, there is potential legal backing to recommendations that other inquiries have thrown up, including those made by the parliamentary standing committee,” Kuruganti said.

“There is now a chance for monitoring to become a reality rather than just an existence on paper,” she said. “This will also make the deployment of technology into a credible, confidence-inspiring process – that is, once the Supreme Court accepts the recommendations of its committee and passes suitable orders.”

(END)

By Julia Kallas
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 20 2012 (IPS)

In 1994, genetically modified produce, in the form of tomatoes, first appeared in grocery stores in the United States. Numerous other types of produce have been genetically modified since, and consuming them has become common practise. But because the phenomenon is so recent, the long-term effects of eating such foods remain unknown.

A range of issues surround genetically modified food in the United States, including overconsumption, a lack of long-term health studies and government intervention, and lax labelling laws, said Renee Sharp, California director and senior scientist for Environmental Working Group, in a new study entitled ”Americans Eat Their Weight in Genetically Engineered Food”.

In the study, the Environmental Working Group analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). It found that every American eats an estimated 193 pounds of genetically engineered food annually. By comparison, the typical adult in the United States weighs 179 pounds.

Renee Sharp is the California director and senior scientist for Environmental Working Group. Credit: Julia Kallas/IPS

IPS correspondent Julia Kallas spoke with Sharp spoke about the study’s findings, the rapid growth of genetically modified foods in the United States, and the role of the government in labelling these products.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Can you briefly talk about the report ”Americans Eat Their Weight in Genetically Engineered Food”? Now that the report is out, what you expect the government to do?

A: Americans are eating their weight in genetically engineered (GE) food each year. Environmental Working Group’s calculations show that, on average, people eat an estimated 193 pounds of genetically engineered food annually. Yet the typical adult weighs 179 pounds.

These figures beg the question, if you were planning on eating your body weight of anything every year, wouldn’t you want to make sure it was safe to eat?

Shockingly, there are virtually no long-term health studies that have been conducted on the consumption of genetically engineered food. We want to see the government conduct these tests, and allow independent scientists the power to do the same – power they don’t have now because the companies making the genetically engineered seeds control what studies are conducted.

So what can consumers do in the meantime? Not much – unless they demand GE food to be labelled. At least then consumers will know whether or not their food contains genetically engineered ingredients and can decide for themselves if this is what they want to buy for themselves and their families.

This basic right-to-know issue is only going to become more important in the future, as consumption of GE food is expected to grow substantially over time.

We are urging Californians to vote YES on Proposition 37 – the Mandatory Labelling of Genetically Engineered Food Initiative – so they can decide for themselves whether they want to buy GE food.

Q: Why does the United States lag so far behind the rest of the world on the labelling question? And what actions must the government and policymakers take to change this?

A: Monsanto, Dow and other companies that make and sell GE seeds have an incredible amount of power and influence in the U.S. government.

Government and policy makers need to listen to the millions of citizens who have petitioned to label genetically engineered foods and give people the right to know what they are eating.

Q: Why has the genetically engineered food industry emerged so quickly in the past decade?

A: The makers of GE seeds have made a lot of false promises – that they are going to feed the world, decrease pesticide use, save farmers money – but they have failed to do any of these things. There is not any more food, pesticide use has actually increased, and they are ruining small farmers while fostering the growth of super weeds, which make traditional farming practices impossible.

Since there isn’t any mandatory testing (no federal testing, no long term studies, the companies who are making the profits off of the seeds only have to test) it has been relatively fast to get these seeds to market.

Q: Can you briefly talk about Proposition 37 in California, which will be voted on in November? What would it mean for the rest of the country if it passes?

A: It would mean that people in California would have the right to know what is in their foods and make a choice if they want to feed their families food that have genetically engineered ingredients.

If Proposition 37 were passed, it would also help the rest of the country because California represents about 12 percent of the country’s food market and it is unlikely that companies will create one label for California and a different label for the rest of the country.

Q: Do you think there is growing momentum for a genuine national movement to more seriously consider where our food comes from, as illustrated by the recent “pink slime” scandal, in which Beef Products, Inc.  filed a lawsuit against those who labelled an additive in its ground beef as “pink slime”?

A: Yes! Absolutely. The fact that this proposition is on the ballot is proof of that.

Excerpt:

The White House on Thursday announced the formulation of the National Bioeconomy Blueprint, aimed at shoring up the U.S. commitment to bioscience-related research.

A recent study found that "zero percent" of federal funding of synthetic biology was going into risk assessment. Credit: Horia Varlan/CC By 2.0

But critics warn that the new programme focuses too much on economic concerns, placing too little emphasis on either social issues or on the environment itself.

“We’re disappointed to see what finally came out,” Eric Hoffman, a Washington-based campaigner with Friends of the Earth, an international NGO, told IPS. “This report largely seems to be an endorsement for the biotechnology industry to rush ahead without any real oversight.”

The biotechnology industry “says that it has been calling for this type of legislation for long time,” Hoffman notes. “That makes sense, given that the industry stands to gain the most from the types of policies laid out in the Blueprint.”

Hoffman says that the biotechnology industry includes many of the largest oil and petrochemical producers – ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Monsanto, Dow. The lack of plans for government regulation apparent in the Blueprint leaves him pessimistic that much “clean, green” technology will come out of the new effort.

He also points to a recent study by the Woodrow Wilson Center, based here, that found that “zero percent” of federal funding of synthetic biology was going into risk assessment. “That’s not how you have an honest policy debate,” he says.

The government itself defines the bioeconomy as “economic activity powered by research and innovation in the biosciences”. In the Blueprint, the issue of environmental concerns is dealt with only tangentially, although the general push is to phase out fossil fuels and industrial materials in favour of organically based compounds and “green” approaches.

Of the five strategic objectives laid out in the Blueprint, only one specifically mentions the environment. Even then, it arises only in a call to “Develop and reform regulations to reduce barriers, increase the speed and predictability of regulatory processes, and reduce costs while protecting human and environmental health.”

The bioeconomy has increasingly emerged as a priority for the Barack Obama administration. Thursday’s announcement followed on initial plans announced by the U.S. government in September 2011, building on legislation passed in 2000 called the Biomass Research and Development Act.

Other developed countries are also increasing their focus on aspects of their nascent bioeconomies, particularly in moving beyond fossil fuels. In February, the European Commission publicised a new strategy to ramp up related efforts. The “green economy” is also a central theme at the upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro.

While many such efforts are to be lauded individually, there is growing understanding of the dangers of state-backed moves towards relying on ecosystem-based products.

“While the idea of using renewable resources instead of fossil fuels is a good idea in theory, the way in which the bio-economy approach proposes to achieve this goal is at best deeply flawed and inequitable, and at worst downright dangerous,” states a new report released on Thursday by the Global Forest Coalition, an international umbrella group.

The report, “Bio-economy Versus Biodiversity”, notes the spiking demand for land across the world for both food production and human habitat. This has not only led to increased land-based conflict, the report suggests, but has also increased global hunger.

“Without reducing consumption and demand for energy and products, the sheer scale on which biomass would have to produced to meet the demands of a global bio-economy would severely exacerbate these problems,” the report states.

Those technologies currently being lauded in the attempt to move beyond fossil fuels – such as the use of algae in creating electricity – are risky or as yet untested on a wide scale, warns the report. As such, the technologies that would undoubtedly be used in the immediate future – and almost certainly beyond – would be relatively dirty and wasteful, such as burning biomass.

“The bio-economy approach offers politicians in industrialized countries an opportunity to be seen to be doing something about meeting ill-defined ‘renewable energy targets’, while maximizing opportunities for economic growth and securing a constant supply of energy,” the report warns. “There is precious little concern about the environment, or about impacts in other countries, apart from the usual platitudes about providing jobs.”

Concerns over this new push towards the bioeconomy coincide with high levels of international anxiety over food security.

“The current U.S. mandate prescribes a huge increase in the generation of energy from land,” Ujjayant Chakravorty, a professor at the Alberta School of Economics, told IPS. “Forty percent of U.S. corn is already used for energy rather than food, and that number will go up in the next 10 years.”

In the U.S. in particular, any major new push towards mass reliance on biofuels would almost certainly have a direct impact on wellbeing in other parts of the world.

For instance, Chakravorty says that rice, wheat and sugar constitute around two-thirds of daily calories for many people in India, as they do for much of the developing world. If more land in India were to be sown for non-edible biofuels, prices for these necessities would almost certainly rise.

“The U.S. has a quarter of the world’s vehicles,” Chakravorty says. “In India alone, the U.S. biofuel policy could directly result in 15 to 40 million people dropping below the poverty line.”

Maize drying in San Cristóbal de las Casas, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Apr 17 2012 (IPS)

Biodiversity and small and medium farms are threatened in Mexico by the looming approval of a reform of the law on plant varieties that will extend patent rights over seeds, activists and experts warn.

The amendment, of the federal law on plant varieties in effect since 1996, was approved by the Senate in November and is now making its way through the lower house of Congress.

“They are trying to expand privatisation in this important sector, as part of an offensive backed by transnational corporations to give more rights to breeders (of plant varieties), which are mainly these big companies,” Adela San Vicente, the head of Semillas de Vida (Seeds of Life), a local NGO, told IPS.

The reform, defended by the government of conservative President Felipe Calderón, would cover all plant material, including harvest products, and would introduce the definition of “essentially derived varieties”, used to protect genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

In addition, it extends the period of protection for breeders of plant varieties from 15 to 25 years.

One of the risks posed by the reform is that small farmers who receive and grow hybrid seeds without authorisation could face legal action.

“They are paving the way for the industry to charge patent rights if, for example, native maize is contaminated by transgenic crops, because the native maize would contain the genes of the GMO,” Alejandro Espinosa, a researcher in the maize programme at Mexico’s National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research (INIFAP), told IPS.

“It would be the last nail in the coffin for the Mexican countryside,” complained the scientist, who has developed more than 30 hybrid species at INIFAP and at least a dozen at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, for production by small companies and distribution at the local level.

The amendment would bring Mexico’s legislation into line with the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, as revised in 1991.

The Convention, which is monitored by the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), was adopted in 1961 and revised in 1972, 1978 and 1991. Mexico, which joined UPOV in 1978, currently follows the standards outlined by the Convention in that year’s revision.

The UPOV system of plant variety protection provides international recognition of the rights of breeders of new varieties that are distinct, sufficiently homogeneous and stable, according to the criteria outlined by the intergovernmental accord.

It also provides double protection, for both patents and plant variety rights.

The Geneva-based UPOV’s mission is “to provide and promote an effective system of plant variety protection, with the aim of encouraging the development of new varieties of plants, for the benefit of society,” according to its web site.

The 1991 revision of the Convention, which entered into force in 1998, protects Canadian, U.S. and EU property rights, and introduced the novel feature of recognising rights over new genetic traits – an open concession to GMOs.

More than 250,000 tonnes of seeds are produced annually in Mexico, according to the National Service of Seed Inspection and Certification (SNICS), the government agency that oversees some 55,000 hectares of land where seeds for about two dozen crops are produced.

A collective of researchers and NGOs has urged legislators to halt the reform, and to subject it to an open debate with all concerned sectors, including small and medium farmers, who it will affect the most.

“Native seeds are the only input used by peasant farmers, who are left without any rights,” San Vicente said. “And with the problems posed by climate change, they lose seeds or reuse them. Seeds have been a common good of humanity. And (with this amendment, companies) can even go after researchers who use those seeds.”

In this country of 112 million people, Latin America’s second-largest economy, there are approximately five million peasant farmer families, according to official figures.

With the projected reform, SNICS would have the authority to impose fines or even block land use for infractions of patents and plant breeders’ rights.

SNICS has already registered more than 150 breeders from over 20 countries, involving at least 100 plant species. Of that total, 26 percent are ornamental plants, and the rest are agricultural or forestry species.

The countries of Latin America have filed fewer than 1,000 applications for plant breeders’ rights with UPOV.

Meanwhile, the No Patents on Seeds global coalition of NGOs reports that since 1996, farm-saved or “informal seeds” have been on the decline, while industrial seeds are expanding.

“Hundreds and hundreds of varieties are needed to ensure the sustainability of improved and native seeds,” INIFAP’s Espinosa said. “Advances in their yields are environmentally-friendly, because they are genes from the species themselves.

“The improvements are made with the best plants, according to the environment. It’s what farmers have done for decades,” he said.

But Mexico is increasingly lax in protecting that system. The government-run national seed production company, PRONASE, has been in the process of liquidation since the early 2000s, which has left the sector in the hands of private Mexican and foreign companies.

In addition, the 2005 Genetically Modified Organisms Biosafety Law and the 2007 Law on the Production, Certification and Trade of Seeds have given industry more and more maneuvering room.

The National Catalogue of Plant Varieties, updated by SNICS in December, contains 1,827 species, most of which are different kinds of maize, beans, sorghum, wheat and potatoes.

Public research institutes and food corporations like the U.S.-based Monsanto and Pioneer have registered their varieties in the catalogue.

Inclusion in that list is the first requisite for registration in a seed production programme.

There are at least 180 commonly used plant varieties in Mexico, such as the nopal cactus fruit, güisquil or pear squash, avocado, and tomato.

SNICS defends patents on seeds, arguing that they protect the genetic patrimony and facilitate access to plant material, which depends on the fair distribution of economic benefits, while respecting special rules for endemic species, preventing the plunder of resources and biopiracy, and strengthening institutional capacity.

Catalina Salvador, an 87-year-old peasant farmer who grows pumpkins, beans, and above all corn on her small plot of land, was one of the opponents of transgenic crops who took part in the traditional corn festival in San Juan Ixtenco in the central Mexican state of Tlaxcala.

María Solís grows several different colours of native corn. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

“We just planted, and we hope the September harvest will be a good one,” Salvador told IPS at the second “Ngo r’e dethä” (in the Ñahñú language) corn festival, held Sunday Apr. 1 in this town 188 km southeast of the capital.

“We don’t want to lose our native corn; we don’t want transgenic corn because ours is better,” she said.

Dozens of peasant farmers, academics and activists, along with members of the general public, attended the festival, one of the 150 that take place in Mexico every year to celebrate corn, which has strong symbolic value from Mexico to Nicaragua.

Visitors could taste a wide array of dishes prepared with corn, from the omnipresent tortilla to regional varieties of sauces like “mole prieto”, a stew that is highly seasoned with chilli.

There were also rugs made entirely of white, yellow, red and blue kernels that showed off the diversity of corn in this Latin American country, which has at least 75 varieties of the crop – a unique genetic treasure.

“The decision to introduce transgenic crops was reached at high levels of the national government, independently of whether it destroys the natural balance of the most important crop for humanity,” Alejandro Espinosa, a researcher at Mexico’s National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research (INIFAP), complained to IPS.

“It was a political decision,” said Espinosa, who has developed more than 30 hybrid species at INIFAP and more than 12 at the public National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), for production by small companies and distribution at the local level.

Espinosa attended the “Let’s Talk about Corn” First National Symposium last week, where farmers and academics opposed to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) debated with representatives of the biotech industry.

In February, a group of scientists met with Francisco Mayorga, the minister of agriculture, to express concern over the introduction of transgenic crops.

But the government has turned a deaf ear to such concerns.

The ministry of agriculture has issued at least 140 permits for experimental cultivation of transgenic corn and three pilot projects, the stage previous to commercial-scale planting.

Similar trials are being carried out with wheat and soy, while transgenic cotton has been planted commercially since 2009.

Experience with GMOs in other parts of the world, like the United States or Europe, could provide useful lessons for Mexico.

In a letter sent in early March to Steven Bradbury, deputy director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s office of pesticide programmes, 22 U.S. experts on corn pests pointed out that the western corn rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera) was growing resistant to Bt corn.

This transgenic corn, which contains a naturally occurring soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, that kills rootworm larvae, was developed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto.

“We are troubled about the immediate implications of these observations for the durability of pyramid toxin rootworm-protected corn, as well as their potential long-term impact on corn production,” the seven-page letter says.

And in the study “A controversy re-visited: Is the coccinellid Adalia bipunctata adversely affected by Bt toxins?” published Feb. 15 by the journal Environmental Sciences Europe, a team of six Swiss researchers concluded that the toxin in Bt corn kills the larvae of the ladybug (Adalia bipunctata L), an insect that is beneficial for crops because it eats pests.

Mexico produces some 22 million tonnes a year of white corn on 7.5 million hectares of land, and imports 10 million tonnes, according to the ministry of agriculture.

Corn is also the chief crop of another elderly peasant farmer from Ixtenco, 76-year-old María Solís.

“That’s how we were raised, and we have to continue this tradition. The best corn for planting is white corn, but I grow that one year and plant another colour the next year,” Solís, who also plants beans and chilacayote squash on her three-hectare farm, told IPS.

In Ixtenco – which means “on the shore” in the Náhuatl tongue – farmers save seeds, swap them with other growers, and sell them in the local markets. As in the rest of the state of Tlaxcala, widely considered the birthplace of corn, farmers are getting ready to resist the introduction of transgenic seeds.

This indigenous town and its surrounding fields represent the diversity of corn in Mexico, because 18 varieties are planted here, two of which are endemic, according to a study by Narciso Barrera, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Tlaxcala, and Cristina Sánchez, at the Colegio de Tlaxcala.

In their 2011 study “La variabilidad de semillas de maíz nativas como expresión de la diversidad biocultural en Ixtenco, Tlaxcala” (The Variability of Seeds of Native Corn as an Expression of Biocultural Diversity in Ixtenco, Tlaxcala), they concluded that the broad variety of corn and its uses was the result of a complex body of knowledge, agricultural practices and worldviews.

The permits granted to grow GMOs “are not only illegal in a number of ways, but ignore international commitments and obligations,” said Lizy Peralta with the Grupo de Estudios Ambientales (GEA – Environmental Studies Group).

“Based on international law, the cultivation of transgenic crops should be restricted, because they have not been proven to be harmless,” she told IPS.

“Corn has many cultural and dietary meanings, and this cannot be ignored. It maintains a social structure and sense of community in farming areas,” said Peralta, who was also at the Ixtenco festival.

The Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad (UCCS – Union of Scientists Committed to Society) is preparing a report on biological, agricultural, economic, cultural, ethical and legal aspects of transgenic corn, and will propose alternatives to GMOs.

“We would love to carry out serious research that would help determine whether or not there is a tolerance threshold beyond which native species of corn reach a level where they cannot survive. But industry will never be interested in that,” Espinosa said.

Typical drylands scenery in northwest Argentina, in Tilcara, province of Jujuy. Credit: Juan Moseinco/IPS

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Mar 14 2012 (IPS)

Researchers in Argentina have isolated a sunflower gene and implanted it into corn, wheat and soybean seeds to make them more resistant to drought and soil salinity, problems increasingly faced by this South American agricultural powerhouse as a result of global warming.

The discovery was made by a team of researchers led by molecular biologist Raquel Chan of the Agrobiotechnology Institute of the Littoral, created by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and the public National University of the Littoral, in the northeastern Argentine province of Santa Fe.

The researchers isolated one of the 50,000 genes that make up the structure of the sunflower, known as HAHB4, which helps it to endure water shortages. They introduced the gene into wheat, corn and soybean species, then carried out three years of field testing in different regions of the country with varying climates and soils.

Chan pointed out that the genetic trait introduced in the laboratory can be combined with others, such as the resistance to herbicides already programmed into numerous genetically modified crops.

There are other benefits as well. “Not only are the improved plants drought-resistant and salt-resistant, but their productivity is significantly increased,” which is the most novel feature of the discovery, Chan told Tierramérica.

Yields are between 15 and 100 percent higher, depending on the quality of the crop, the region where it is planted and the climatic conditions. In no cases did yields decrease.

Although there are other examples in the scientific literature of plant species that are improved to better tolerate water stress, there have been no drought-resistant seeds on the market up until now, said Chan.

This is because the test results published by scientific institutions reveal that other drought-resistant plant varieties provide smaller yields when rainfall occurs. They are only productive when there is a shortage or lack of water, explained Chan.

But the new seeds do not suffer from this shortcoming, she stressed. “The plants demonstrated that productivity increases even in normal climate conditions, with more frequent rains.”

HAHB4, patented on behalf of the university and CONICET, was presented in late February, and its use and exploitation have been licensed for 20 years to the Argentine company Bioceres, which is co-owned by more than 230 agricultural producers.

Bioceres formed a partnership with the U.S. company Arcadia Biosciences to create Verdeca, the brand under which the new seeds will be sold on the international market.

Before they are released on the market, however, the seeds must still undergo a series of tests to determine their effects on the environment and nutritional value, as well as their levels of toxicity. This process will take between two and three years.

HAHB4 is an important discovery because it will help the agricultural sector in Argentina confront some of the most detrimental impacts of climate change, commented Graciela Magrin, a leading specialist in agriculture and climate change from the Climate and Water Institute.

As a result of global warming, experts predict “an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events like droughts,” Magrin told Tierramérica.

The institute where she works forms part of the National Agricultural Technology Institute (INTA), a government agency that studies the impact of climate conditions on agricultural production and means of adaptation.

Climate scenarios for Argentina foresee periods of heavy precipitation concentrated in short periods of time, and longer lapses of water shortages, said Magrin.

The lack of rain during this Southern hemisphere summer, now drawing to an end, heavily impacted the cereals harvest, which was expected to total some 111 million tons, but will likely not reach 100 million tons. Losses were especially marked in corn production.

The 2008-2009 drought, the most severe in 100 years, led agricultural production to shrink by 37 percent.

Natural climate variability and extreme events – shortages or excesses of water, frosts, severe storms, hail – have been observed with greater frequency and intensity in recent years, according to INTA studies.

In addition, there are recurring periods of insufficient or excess rainfall associated with the cold phases (La Niña) and warm phases (El Niño) of the Southern Oscillation, a global climate phenomenon marked by changes in Pacific Ocean surface temperatures and air pressure.

This is why the experts at INTA recommend crop management strategies that address these challenges and the development of more resilient species and varieties.

Magrin noted that when water becomes more scarce, the salinity of soils can increase, which makes the salt-resistant quality of HAHB4 especially welcome.

In fact, 75 percent of Argentina’s territory is drylands, with arid, semi-arid or dry sub-humid soils that are more prone to degradation and, eventually, desertification.

INTA warns of growing desertification in the southern region of Patagonia and serious threats to the southwest area of the western province of Buenos Aires.

But drylands are not barren. Half of the country’s crops are produced in these ecosystems, according to the Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA) study conducted in Argentina and published in late 2011. Nevertheless, careful management is needed.

Improved seed varieties can help agriculture better adapt to this scenario. Testing in dryland areas in the provinces of Chaco, in northeast Argentina, and San Luis, in the midwest, resulted in good yields, said Chan.

Environmental organisations are not as enthusiastic about these genetically modified seeds. The Argentine branch of Greenpeace is worried that they could fuel a new advance by agroindustry on the country’s forests. Argentina has already lost 70 percent of its original forest cover.

“Unless a policy is adopted to completely prohibit forest clearing, these transgenic seeds could mean the end of the last native forests,” Hernán Giardini, coordinator of the Greenpeace Argentina forests campaign, warns in a press release.

For the leader of the research team that developed the seeds, protection of the environment is an admirable pursuit, but it must be combined with the increase in food production needed in the world today.

“We are molecular biologists and our challenge is to produce more on fewer hectares of land,” said Chan. “It is not up to us to decide how far the planting of these crops should expand. That is up to the government,” she added.

For her part, Magrin stressed that this new development will require “very strict land zoning regulations that define where crops can be expanded and where they pose a risk.”

* This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network. It was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

Argentina’s soy boom has been a major source of foreign exchange. But the other side of the coin is the toxic effects among the rural population, from spraying agrochemicals.

Studies show that people in rural areas in Argentina face risks from glyphosate spraying. Credit: Courtesy of Estudios y Proyectos

Research by the National University of Río Cuarto in the northwestern province of Córdoba demonstrated that glyphosate, the herbicide used on transgenic soy crops, causes genetic damage in mice and amphibians, like frogs.

Two years ago, another research study by Andrés Carrasco, a professor at the Molecular Embryology Laboratory of the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine and principal researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), also demonstrated damage in amphibians.

Genetically modified (GM) soy seeds, approved amid controversy in the 1990s for use in Argentina, were developed by the U.S.-based multinational biotechnology corporation Monsanto to be resistant to glyphosate, the active principle in the “Roundup” herbicide sold by the company.

Introduction of the GM seeds launched an expansion of soy cultivation and increased use of glyphosate. Today, 18 million hectares are planted to soy, out of a total of nearly 30 million hectares of all kinds of grain crops.

Sales of “Roundup” herbicide, which contains glyphosate and other ingredients that aid its absorption by plants, soared dramatically from one million litres a year in the 1990s to nearly 300 million litres a year today, according to official figures.

In 2006, a group of NGOs with access to medical reports from provinces where soy cultivation was expanding, launched the “Stop the Spraying” (“Paren de Fumigar”) campaign, which managed to get an official commission created to look into the reports of health damages.

But the commission produced no results, and Monsanto insists that, with proper precautions, the herbicide is not toxic.

Delia Aiassa, a biologist in the Genetics and Environmental Mutagenesis group at the Natural Sciences Department of the University of Río Cuarto, leads a research team studying the impact of glyphosate on health.

The expert explained that exposure to glyphosate can cause asthma, chronic bronchitis, skin and eye irritation, damage to the kidneys, liver and nervous system, cancer, developmental problems in children and birth defects.

She also said that pregnant women are at greater risk of miscarriage, and in men fertility problems are more frequent, if they are exposed to the chemical.

Recently Aiassa published the results of her experiments in mice and amphibians, and her research team has carried out surveys in repeatedly sprayed areas which demonstrated the impact the herbicide has on human health.

Aiassa told IPS that mice and amphibians treated with glyphosate, in its pure form or as the commercial herbicide, mixed with additives, “had increased genetic damage to blood cells, bone marrow and liver.” At higher doses, the animals died.

At the request of small towns in Córdoba that are surrounded by soy plantations, the multidisciplinary team carried out “human monitoring” to study the use of herbicides and pesticides from the vantage point of those directly involved.

In Rincón de los Sauces, in Córdoba, where 34 families are surrounded by large soy fields, 34 percent of respondents said that the area round their homes was repeatedly sprayed.

Fifty-three percent of those interviewed said they had never received any information about risks posed by the misuse of agrochemicals, and 35 percent reported symptoms of poisoning (of whom 83 percent worked as sprayers in the fields).

Similar results were obtained by the team in other small towns like Las Vertientes, Marcos Juárez and Saria in the same province. The experts also found “a lack of medical records reflecting the ailments experienced by local residents.”

This shortcoming was highlighted by Dr Damián Verzeñassi, academic under-secretary of the School of Medical Sciences at the National University of Rosario, in the northeastern province of Santa Fe.

Aiassa and Verzeñassi gave a talk for health workers Dec. 6 at the Juan Garrahan Paediatric Hospital in Buenos Aires, where severely ill children from all over the country are treated.

“One cannot keep thinking about human health as though it were unconnected with the health of ecosystems,” Verzeñassi said in his talk, warning of the health effects of a model of production based on large-scale production of transgenic soy.

Verzeñassi told IPS that because some health impacts only appear a considerable time after exposure to an agricultural chemical, it as essential for doctors in affected areas – and at the Garrahan hospital – to keep patient records.

“Case-based reasoning is a key tool in these situations, but it requires reliable case histories from which to gather data to visibilise the problem,” the doctor from Rosario told his colleagues.

IPS asked him about the trial to be held next year in Córdoba province against two agribusiness producers and the pilot of a crop duster plane, for illegal spraying of glyphosate in the vicinity of the village of Ituzaingó and for damages caused to the local population.

In Verzeñassi’s view, the trial is “very important” to establish criminal responsibility in the case. He regretted that a group of women from Ituzaingó had to push hard for prosecution to go ahead, instead of the public health system performing that duty.

In spite of loud demands, there is no national law to regulate agricultural chemicals in Argentina. There are regulations in the provinces and in some municipalities, which are permissive to different degrees and are not always enforced.

Among the doctors attending the talk was the head of Oncology at the Garrahan hospital, Pedro Zubizarreta. He told IPS that one-third of the country’s child cancer cases – usually the most severe – come for treatment to the Garrahan.

“We can’t prove an increase in cancer cases associated with glyphosate use, because we don’t have enough detailed records, but what matters is that an agricultural chemical that causes harm is being used on a massive scale,” he said.

“We might not be able to demonstrate today that this causes more child cancer, but we do know it is bad for our health and that of our children, and it has an enormous effect on biodiversity and the variety of our foods,” he stressed.

The concern expressed by doctors and scientists echoed those of people in Chaco province in the northeast, where IPS covered a debate among the participants at a Women’s Hearing for Climate Justice, held in October, which focused on agricultural chemicals.

“They ruin the earth; people around here can’t plant any crops because they all wither. They spray toxic chemicals alongside our crops, and the wind burns them all up,” Juana Ozuna of the small farmers’ organisation in Colonias Unidas, Chaco province, told IPS at that event.

“We don’t have much education, but we can see that it does harm, because we can’t keep animals or have a vegetable garden, the water is polluted and there are pitiful cases of deformed babies,” she concluded.

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 20 2011 (IPS)

Wild cotton in Mexico has been contaminated with genetically modified material, posing a risk to biodiversity, experts say.

This worrying conclusion was reached by six scientists at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) in a research study published this month in Molecular Ecology, an international journal.

In their article “Recent long-distance transgene flow into wild populations conforms to historical patterns of gene flow in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) at its centre of origin”, the experts showed that cotton genes and transgenes can be transferred between populations thousands of kilometres apart by seed dispersal.

They also found that varieties of Mexican wild cotton that harbour transgenes (genes from one species introduced artificially into another) undergo rapid evolution, with unpredictable consequences.

“The genetic diversity of wild populations is very high, and that of cultivated cotton is very low. Gene flow can reduce the differentiation between populations, but we have no idea what impact that might have,” the head of the research project, Ana Wegier of UNAM’s Ecology Institute and the National Institute of Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock Research (INIFAP) told IPS.

“What we are seeing is the effect on biodiversity of 15 years of growing transgenic crops under permits,” she said.

In order to boost cotton cultivation, in decline because of the collapse of international prices and the growing dominance of synthetic fibres, in 1996 the Mexican government authorised experimental planting of genetically modified cotton, without paying heed to studies of its biological interactions in the country.

Since 2009, transgenic cotton has been grown on a commercial scale on an area of over 100,000 hectares, producing harvests of 500,000 tonnes, according to the Mexican agriculture ministry.

Cottonseed is used mainly for oil and meal for animal feed, and transport of animal feed products might explain how transgenic seeds arrived in wild cotton populations.

The six authors collected 336 plants from 36 populations between 2002 and 2008. They also analysed seeds from three Mexican locations, the U.S. states of Texas and Virginia, and from Argentina, Brazil, India and Egypt. Of the 270 samples analysed, 66 were positive for transgenes.

The scientists found that 1.4 percent of 5,985 permits to plant genetically modified cotton issued by the Mexican authorities between 1996 and the beginning of 2008 fell within the area of distribution of two wild cotton metapopulations, as collections of interacting populations of the same species are called.

A further 4.2 percent of the authorised transgenic crops were within a 300-km radius from three metapopulations. The remaining 94.4 percent were over 300 km away from all wild cotton metapopulations.

As has already happened with native maize, contamination of wild strains could occur with other transgenic crops, which are slowly spreading in this Latin American country.

This concern is shared by 16,000 beekeepers in the southeastern state of Yucatán, where U.S. agribusiness giant Monsanto has a pilot plantation of genetically modified soy covering 30,000 hectares.

Monsanto’s soy has been genetically modified to confer resistance to an herbicide, glyphosate, which is sprayed on the crop to kill off non-resistant weeds.

“In the soyfields, the bees turn very aggressive and instead of returning to the hive, they die on the way back, as the glyphosate applied to the crops damages their intestines,” the local coordinator of the National Union of Autonomous Regional Campesino Organisations, Pablo Duarte, told IPS.

“Our fear is that not only will the bees die, but we will not be able to sell our honey,” he said.

In Mexico, some 45,000 beekeepers collect approximately 56,000 tons of honey a year. Their main market is the European Union, followed by the United States and Canada.

But the EU Court of Justice has already banned the sale of honey containing pollen contaminated by unauthorised transgenes.

The first plots of genetically modified soy were evaluated in 2008. Currently 60,000 hectares of Mexican soil are producing transgenic soy.

The government received 110 applications to grow transgenic maize on an experimental basis, and 11 applications since 2009 for pilot-scale projects, the stage before commercial cultivation. The agriculture ministry authorised 67 experimental fields covering 70 hectares in the north of the country, and at least 12 experimental transgenic wheat fields.

The 2005 Biosecurity Law for Genetically Modified Organisms states that the centres of origin of seeds must be defined before any permission can be given for transgenic crops.

The environmental watchdog Greenpeace reported the presence of transgenic maize in six out of Mexico’s 32 states, as well as imports of genetically modified seeds of this staple food, which is profoundly symbolic in Mesoamerican cultures from central Mexico to Costa Rica.

“Each case needs to be analysed separately, to the highest scientific standards,” said Wegier, who is also a member of the Union of Socially Committed Scientists (UCCS) and is currently working on the genetics of avocados and green tomatoes.

“So far, decisions have been made without the benefit of scientific research done in Mexico, but now we have the opportunity to take decisions based on the precautionary principle (that activities that present an uncertain potential for significant harm should be avoided until they are proved to be harmless),” said the head of research.

Although seed migration out of fields of genetically modified crops may be low, the study warns that once a single or a few transgenic individuals are dispersed into particular wild populations, they produce pollen that may fertilise local wild plants.

“Since transgenes are inserted within the nuclear genome, they can be dispersed both via pollen or seed,” the document says.

Genetically modified organisms “are going to contaminate all the varieties we have, and then we will have to depend on seeds from the big companies,” Duarte warned.

“If we lose our native seeds, we won’t have seeds to plant. That’s why we are asking the government to stop the sowing of transgenic maize and soy,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 4 2011 (IPS)

Critics complain that a genetically modified bean developed in Brazil, resistant to one of the country’s most damaging agricultural pests, was approved without enough debate or guarantees that the crop will not affect human health or the environment.

The GM bean, named 5.1, was developed by Embrapa, the government’s agricultural research agency, to resist the bean golden yellow mosaic virus (BGYMV), whose main symptom is a bright yellow or golden mosaic on the leaves, as well as leaf wrinkling and rolling. The seeds and plants are also stunted, malformed and discoloured, and flowers are aborted, leading to the loss of between 40 and 100 percent of the beans.

According to Embrapa, the virus transmitted by the whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) causes annual losses of between 90,000 and 280,000 tons of beans – enough to feed six to 20 million more adults in this country of 192 million people.

The transgenic bean, which is to be on Brazilian tables in three years, promises to benefit small and large-scale agriculture alike, and will increase crop safety, Francisco Aragao, one of the project’s lead researchers, told IPS.

While producers who can afford to do so use pesticides as often as once a week to control the whitefly, “all small-scale farmers can do is pray that they won’t suffer significant losses,” said Aragao.

The researcher said that since no pesticides are needed to grow the GM bean, production costs are cut, which in turn will bring down the price of one of the staples of the Brazilian diet.

Combating BGYMV requires the use of increasing amounts of pesticide, because the whitefly is developing resistance, said Aragao.

Sales of 5.1, the first genetically modified organism produced in Brazil, were approved in mid-September by the Ministry of Science and Technology’s National Technical Commission on Biosafety (CTNBio) by 15 votes in favour and two abstentions, while five members called for more study into the matter.

To justify sales of the GM bean, Embrapa argues that the biosafety tests carried out from 2004 to 2010 followed the CTNBio’s recommendations.

“The 5.1 bean plant shows no phenotypic alteration compared to the non-genetically modified parent plant,” Embrapa technical experts stated.

“We consider it totally safe for human consumption,” said Aragao, who described claims that the transgenic bean is less nutritional as “totally absurd.”

“It is as nutritional as any other bean in Brazil,” he said. Any differences, he added, even among the traditional varieties, are regional.

Aragao told IPS that Embrapa is in negotiations with the University of Honduras to carry out in situ testing on controlled plots in that Central American country.

The researcher said he has no doubts that the technology developed in Brazil will also work in Argentina and Bolivia, but that he is not sure about what will happen in Mexico and Central America.

No consensus in Brazil

Responding to questions from IPS, Renato Maluf, president of the Brazilian National Council for Food Security and Nutrition (CONSEA), questioned the quick approval of sales of the beans, citing the precautionary principle, which gives governments the right to suspend production or trade of transgenic crops until there is proof that they are harmless to the environment and human health.

He stressed that only two of the 22 tests carried out did not fail, and that not all of Brazil’s different climates and ecosystems were taken into account in the evaluation process.

“We believe the rush to approve a product consumed by the entire population, and about which we have no food and nutritional guarantees, was rash,” said the head of CONSEA.

“We believe Embrapa, as a highly prestigious public company, should adopt exemplary behaviour with respect to the precautionary principle,” Maluf added.

Ana Carolina Brolo, legal adviser to Terra de Direitos, a human rights group, concurred with Maluf, saying approval of sales of the GM bean “failed to respect national and international biosafety laws.”

Brolo said there was too much secrecy surrounding information that should be available, in order for the scientific community and society at large to evaluate the risks presented by the GM bean.

Policies, not GM bean, needed to fight hunger

But the criticism goes beyond the fields of science and technology. One major question is whether a transgenic crop is necessary in a country like Brazil, where 3.5 million tons a year of common beans are produced, making it the world’s leading producer.

Maluf said the current production of beans is sufficient to meet domestic demand, and argued that it is a “fallacy” to claim that increased output of beans or other crops is necessary “to fight hunger.”

“History has already shown that this isn’t true. Brazil is one of the world’s top producers and exporters of food, and until recently it had unjustifiable levels of hunger,” the head of CONSEA said.

From the point of view of food security, Maluf said there are several risks, “starting with the known environmental impacts, and the undermining of the common practice among family farms involving the saving and exchange of seeds – as well as the dominant role that the providers of GM seeds gain.”

It has not yet been determined whether Embrapa will charge royalties for the seeds. Bean production is a key activity of family farms, which produce 70 percent of the food consumed in Brazil.

Lawyer Leonardo Ribas, a researcher at the UNIABEU University Centre human rights and food reference centre, asked “who is going to pay the bill for the transgenic bean?”

“We’re talking about the approval of the genetic modification of a living organism, whose patent will be put at the disposal of companies that, paying royalties, will be able to sell the product to Brazil’s potential consumer market,” said Ribas, who is also an adviser on food security for the state of Rio de Janeiro.

If the 5.1 bean is widely grown and consumed because of the supposed “advantages” it offers, “it will be family farms that ultimately pay the costs of this product, and thus, the majority of the Brazilian population,” he told IPS.

Ribas argued that “the solution to food insecurity in Brazil does not depend on the will of God – the justification given in the past – nor on reductionist, piecemeal scientific solutions,” but on political will.

“Brazil doesn’t need transgenic beans; it needs public policies that guarantee food and nutritional security by means of measures that respect the biological, sanitary, nutritional and technological quality of the products,” he said.

“Socially just and ecologically sustainable measures must be respected and encouraged,” Ribas said.

Excerpt:

Home to a fast-growing network of farmers’ markets, cooperatives and organic farms, but also the breeding ground for mammoth for-profit corporations that now hold patents to over 50 percent of the world’s seeds, the United States is weathering a battle between Big Agro and a ripening movement for food justice and security.

From seven percent of soybean acres and one percent of corn in 1996, GE acreage in the U.S. is now 94 percent of soybean and 88 percent of corn. Credit: Public domain

Conflicting ideologies about agriculture have become ground zero for this war over the production, distribution and consumption of the world’s food.

One camp – led by agro giants like Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta – define successful agriculture and hunger alleviation as the use of advanced technologies to stimulate yields of mono-crops.

The other side argues that industrial agriculture pollutes, destroys and disrupts nature by dismissing the importance of relationships necessary for any ecosystem to thrive.

At the heart of this struggle is the debate about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which were given the green light in 1990 when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stated, “(We) are not aware of any information showing that GMO foods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way.”

“Genetically Engineered Food: An Overview” details how the genetic engineering of seeds, crops and animals for human consumption is not the foolproof answer long championed by agribusiness and biotechnology industries to feeding the world.

To the contrary, the study found that genetically engineered/modified (GE/M) organisms do not out-perform their natural counterparts, and their proliferation into vast tracts of cropland have caused a slew of environmental and health crises, and actually increased poverty by forcing millions of farmers to “buy” patented seeds at exorbitant prices.

The report also says that three U.S. federal agencies – the FDA, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – are complicit in these crises due to shoddy oversight, weak enforcement of regulations and a complete absence of coordination.

It found that Big Agro spent half a billion dollars between 1999 and 2009 on lobbying to ease GE regulatory oversight, push GE approvals and prevent GE labeling.

This, after attorney Steven Druker in 1999 obtained 40,000 pages of FDA files containing “memorandum after memorandum warning about the hazards of (GE) food,” including the likelihood that they contained, “toxins, carcinogens or allergens” and testified that GE foods violated “sound science and U.S. law”.

Ceci King, a member of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, told IPS that in 2011, an estimated “60 to 70 percent of all processed foods in the U.S. contain at least one GE element.”

Unstoppable proliferation?

According to the report, over 365 million acres of GE crops were cultivated in 29 countries in 2010 alone, representing 10 percent of global cropland.

“The United States is the world leader in GE crop production, with 165 million acres, or nearly half of global production,” Patty Lovera, assistant director of FWW, told IPS.

“From only seven percent of soybean acres and one percent of corn acres in 1996, GE cultivation in the U.S. shot up to 94 percent of soybean and 88 percent of corn acres in 2011,” she added.

The bulk of these crops came from seeds owned by Monsanto.

“Eighty-four percent of GM crops in the world today are herbicide- resistant soybeans, corn, cotton or canola, predominantly Monsanto’s ‘Roundup Ready’ varieties that withstand dousing with herbicide,” Bill Frees, science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and author of ‘Why GM Crops Will Not Feed the World’, told IPS.

“Pesticide and chemical companies like Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Dow and Bayer have bought up many of the world’s largest seed companies, and now call themselves biotech companies – this represents a historic merger of the pesticide and seed industries, which allows them to profit twice by developing expensive GM seeds that increase use of the company’s herbicide products,” he added.

Seed patents, an off-shoot of the “agro-biotech revolution” that also spawned GE/M, have had two negative consequences since their original issuance by the U.S. Patent Office in the mid-1990s, Frees told IPS: “They enticed pesticide companies to buy up seed firms; and they led to criminalisation of seed-saving.”

“Farmers have saved seeds from their harvest to replant the next year for millennia,” he added. “Monsanto is changing that. The company has already sued thousands of farmers in the U.S. for saving and replanting its patented seeds and won an estimated 85 to 160 million dollars from farmers, in lawsuits that have ruined farmers’ lives, and (partially explains) why we have ever fewer farmers in America.”

The pushback

Ray Tricomo, a mentor at the Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity in Minnesota, told IPS, “People of colour must re-radicalise themselves and go on the offensive including the return to land bases, from Turtle Island to Africa and Asia.”

“Ancient knowledge systems are to be painstakingly recovered, even if it takes centuries,” he added.

And this is exactly what is happening.

Despite the deep pockets and aggressive efforts of Big Agro, a major pushback from a broad coalition of forces has limited 80 percent of GE/M planting to just three export-oriented countries: the U.S., Brazil and Argentina.

Nearly two dozen other countries, including the European Union and China, have passed mandatory GE/M labeling, and millions around the world are refusing seed patenting and developing seed banks to protect, share and preserve their seeds.

In Florida, the 4,000-strong Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is organising to resist farm wage-slavery and “seed-servitude”. The Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil has organised 400,000 peasants to join forces with the nearly half-billion farms around the world that are responsible for producing 70 percent of the world’s food.

Navdanya, an organisation in the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh, has united 500,000 farmers in their struggle to fight chemical dependency and save indigenous seeds, including preserving over 3,000 varieties of rice.

“For five years, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (CSD) had indigenous farmers from all over the globe come to speak against destructive farm practices and GMOs,” King told IPS.

“During the Indigenous People’s Permanent Forum, there were complaints about the harm caused by industrial agriculture and the acts in the name of agribusinesses. Farm workers like the (CIW) are protesting their fate,” she added.

“They are picketing companies like Trader Joes and Whole Foods, letting the public know that their tomatoes were picked from workers who are basically slave labour.”

“Third World Network is fighting back by exploring the problem of GMOs and publishing findings that scientists working on GMOs are capitalists using humans as guinea pigs in a global lab experiment,” she added.

“[Numerous] deaths and disabilities have been traced back to a GM product emulating tryptophan. It took nearly 20 years to find the source of the problem,” King told IPS.

“GM technology is antithetical to an agroecological approach to agriculture, our only hope for truly sustainable food production,” Frees told IPS.

“Without radical change we will continue to have famines,” he added. “Haiti is a good example of what happens when a country’s farmers are put out of business by cheap, subsidised imports from a rich producer nation (here the U.S.).”

By Amanda Wilson
WASHINGTON, Sep 30 2011 (IPS)

Imagine a class of 24 children, three of whom take performance enhancing medicines that increase their chances of scoring high on standardized tests. Now quadruple that number, with one half of the pupils popping pills and the other pushing their pencils med free.

Arizona State University (ASU) professors Braden Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz, co-authors of the book “The Techno-Human Condition”, use this hypothetical scenario to illustrate the implications of enhancing, or the practice of interfacing humans and technologies to augment human capacities. Though the classroom example is just one hypothetical scenario, enhancement technologies are already very real, the authors said, arguing that the human body is a “design space for bioscience” in a society already engaging technology on a highly personal level.

“How many of you outsource your memory to Google?” they posed, referring to relying on a search engine to retrieve forgotten information.

New technologies, they said, are “changing the ethical space” of society and presenting new questions about right and wrong, ethical and unethical, and natural and unnatural. Furthermore, the choice to enhance matters on a social scale much broader than individual choice

“These technologies all have ripple effects… If one person in my SAT class enhances, that’s one thing, but if it is 25 percent, it begins to skew the curve,” Allenby said at the forum, “Is Our Techo-Human Marriage in Need of Counselling”, held in September at the New America Foundation and co-sponsored by Slate Magazine and ASU.

“Enhancements are not free of implications for everybody else in the society that is playing with enhancements.”

The authors pointed to new computer-human relationships, such as the use of Facebook and more extreme phenomena, such as ‘deaths by gaming’ caused by video-gaming so intense that gamers neglect to eat or drink and finally die. Other examples come from the field of biotechnology, such as life-extending treatments.

“Everyone wants to live to be 150, but what (would) a world where everyone can live to 150 be like?” Sarewitz asked. “We need to talk about what that would be like.”

The technologies the authors highlight hold overwhelming potential to improve human physical or mental capacities in the near future and promise breakthroughs that challenge long-held ideas of what is humanly possible.

Two main arguments currently dominate the discourse about enhancements, Allenby and Sarewitz said. The conservative approach to technology promotes state regulatory intervention, whereas the libertarian approach sees individuals as having free rein on how, when and if they choose to enhance.

After all, the authors argued, people like to enhance, especially if they believe they might give their children a “competitive advantage in life”.

On the other hand, “sometimes people rise up and reject certain technologies for certain reasons,” Sarewitz said, pointing out broad rejections of genetically modified foods in Europe and a push away from nuclear energy in the United States.

Either way, the authors suggested that technology is evolving faster than society’s ability to grapple with it. They say discussion should focus on which technologies society will have to deal with and which ones should be challenged.

Others disagreed. A broader discussion on technology and society should not only confront the “accept” or “reject” dilemma, according to Bill Freese, a science policy analyst with the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA, a non-profit that analyses technology’s impacts on society.

He said it should also examine the promises, hype, and sensationalism that accompany breakthroughs and advances. “What we are finding that with biotechnology is that there has been very little accomplished compared to the promises,” Freese told IPS.

While Freese said the biotech sector has successfully been able to engineer bacteria and cell cultures to produce drugs, other decades- long biotech research on gene therapy, which promises to cure rare diseases using genes inserted into the human body, has yet to produce a successful breakthrough.

“It is really important to understand that a lot of this is hype, and very carefully calibrated hype,” Freese said, pointing out that much of the publicity surrounding biotechnology in particular is strategically created to attract funding, with many start-ups ultimately going bankrupt without ever fulfilling their promises.

Freese suggested that a broader discussion on technology and society could start with greater transparency surrounding government institutions and their funding of private companies conducting medical research, such as in genetic engineering.

He questioned whether government institutions such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should give funding to biotech companies working on research in human genetic engineering.

“The NIH could throw open this whole issue to debate,” Freese said.

In addition to ICTA, which was formed after the U.S. Congress shut down the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) in 1995, another non-governmental organisation working in society and technology is the ETC Group, a group researching broader socio- economic issues related to new technologies.

Excerpt:

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Sep 8 2011 (IPS)

Maize, Mexico’s staple food as well as a symbol, has the potential to adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects without any need for genetically modified seeds, according to agricultural scientists.

Mexico has at least 59 landraces (traditional, locally-adapted strains that are rich in biodiversity) and 209 varieties of corn. White maize is the most commonly eaten variety, while yellow maize is used for animal feed or processed into cornflakes, starch and other products.

Maize is thought to have developed from an ancestor grain in four possible geographical locations in Mexico, according to the 2009 study “Origen y diversificación del maíz, una revisión analítica” (Origin and Diversification of Maize: An Analytical Review) by researchers at the state Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), the Autonomous University of Mexico City and the Postgraduate College.

“Climate change will have different impacts, because corn varieties are adapted to very specific conditions,” Carolina Ureta, a researcher at the UNAM Biology Institute, told IPS. “While some varieties will benefit, others will be harmed.”

“We can focus our attention on varieties that grow in adverse conditions, and see what genetic improvement is possible,” she said.

Ureta has been working since 2009 on a research project titled “Effects of Climate Change on the Distribution of Mexican Maize and its Wild Relatives”, due to be completed in 2012 as the final stage of her doctorate in biological sciences. Her research is to be published in a forthcoming issue of the U.S. journal Global Change Biology.

According to her results, the territorial distribution of maize is expected to shrink 15 percent by 2030, and 30 percent by 2050. The north of the country will be most affected because of its drier conditions.

Maize is a symbolic crop in Mesoamerica, the region covering southern Mexico and Central America, because of its vital importance in pre-Columbian culture.

Some 3.2 million Mexican farmers cultivate maize, and over two million of these producers use it for family consumption, according to official statistics.

Farm workers harvest white maize, in particular, for domestic consumption, while they import yellow corn for animal feed. The government projects white maize output of 23 million tonnes this year, and a further nine million tonnes of yellow maize will be purchased abroad.

“The potential to face up to climate change lies in producing seeds in situ, the way it has always been done in traditional environmentally-friendly agriculture,” Aleida Lara, coordinator of Greenpeace Mexico‘s sustainable agriculture and transgenics campaign, told IPS.

In fact, traditional farming systems are being studied by three scientists, from the NGO Biodiversity International, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), whose results were published in August in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The results suggest that “traditional seed systems may be able to provide farmers with landraces suitable for agro-ecological conditions under predicted climate change scenarios,” Mauricio Bellón, David Hodson and Jon Hellin concluded in their paper titled “Assessing the vulnerability of traditional maize seed systems in Mexico to climate change”.

The scientists studied the structure and spatial scope of traditional maize seed systems in 400 households from 20 communities in five states of eastern Mexico, at altitudes between 10 and 2,980 metres above sea level.

In the view of Urueta and Lara, given the expected changes in agriculture and climate, the introduction of genetically modified maize (engineered to contain genes from other species, such as bacteria, to confer resistance to insects or herbicides) represents a threat to native species.

“We have enough diversity to be able to introduce adaptation methods without the need for transgenics,” said UNAM’s Ureta, who belongs to the Union of Scientists Committed to Society (UCCS). “Very few landraces have been genetically characterised, and transgenics could contaminate the genotypes that have not been produced commercially. Therefore, we should develop our own technology, to meet our own needs,” she said.

Mexico’s agriculture ministry decided in March to approve a pilot study of genetically modified yellow maize resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, carried out by U.S. seed giant Monsanto on less than a hectare of land in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.

Since 2009, the government has received 110 applications for experimental cultivation of transgenic maize and 11 for pilot programmes. The ministry has granted 67 permits for experimental planting, on nearly 70 hectares of land in states in the north of the country.

Environmental organisations are accusing the government of conservative President Felipe Calderón of breaking the Biosecurity Law for Genetically Modified Organisms, in force since 2005, which stipulates that centres of origin of native seeds must be determined before any permission is granted for transgenic crops.

They want the government to reinstate the moratorium on transgenics that was in place from 1999 to March 2009.

The environmental watchdog Greenpeace reported the existence of transgenic maize in six of Mexico’s 32 states, as well as imports of genetically modified seeds.

“In 2009 we requested the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to grant precautionary measures against the sowing of transgenic seeds, because of the delay by the Mexican justice system in enforcing the law in an issue of national security,” said Greenpeace Mexico’s Lara.

CIMMYT, founded by U.S. scientist Norman Borlaug (1914-2009), the “father” of the Green Revolution that spread chemical fertilisers on fields all over the world, has determined that transgenes – genetic material transferred from one species to another – may affect the environment and farmers’ welfare, and have commercial costs, such as licences and distribution fees.

“Maize landraces in Mexico show remarkable diversity and climatic adaptability, growing in environments ranging from arid to humid and from temperate to very hot. This diversity raises the possibility that Mexico already has maize germplasm suitable for the ‘novel’ crop environments predicted for 2050,” says the paper by Bellón, Hodson, and Hellin, who works at CIMMYT.

CIMMYT maintains a germplasm bank containing at least 25,000 maize seeds, while Mexico’s National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research (INIFAP) runs a similar bank of 11,000 seeds. But these stored seeds may not be fully suited to future climate conditions.

National Maize Day will be celebrated in Mexico Sept. 29, organised by the “Sin Maíz No Hay País” (Without Corn There is No Country) campaign undertaken by a coalition of NGOs to protect native maize from genetically modified seeds.

/*Attention editors: The attribution in paragraph 15 has been corrected./

Excerpt:

By Pamela Sepulveda
SANTIAGO, Jul 12 2011 (IPS)

Fear is growing among environmental and indigenous organisations in Chile over the possible appropriation of native seeds by foreign companies, opening the doors to transgenic crops and their negative impact on biodiversity.

Alarm arose because of several bills sponsored by the government of rightwing President Sebastián Piñera, especially after May 17 when Congress ratified the UPOV 91 Convention, which grants patent rights over new plant varieties to those who have discovered, developed or modified these varieties.

The convention of the intergovernmental International Union for the Protection of New Plant Varieties (UPOV) is a revised version of a 1978 pact that Chile had already signed. Ratification of UPOV 91 was a requirement of the free trade treaties Santiago has entered into with Australia, the United States and Japan.

Congress began debating a bill to adopt UPOV 91 in 2009, but little progress was made until Piñera intervened and declared it an urgent measure in March this year, to accelerate its passage.

Social and environmental organisations warn that it may lead to dispossession of small farmers, loss of biodiversity and the introduction of transgenic crops.

“We asked for it not to be brought to a vote, but the government piled on the pressure, and the right generally supported it, because big companies want the Convention now, they want to start protecting their investments as soon as possible,” Lucía Sepúlveda, representing the Alliance for a Better Quality of Life/Pesticide Action Network of Chile (RAP-AL Chile), told IPS.

“Our genetic heritage is threatened,” Francisca Rodríguez, head of the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (ANAMURI), told IPS. “Our seeds are once again in danger. Only a small amount of them will remain, not even enough for reproduction; they will be left behind like museum pieces, testifying to yesterday’s reality.”

On the contrary, the UPOV 91 convention is nothing but beneficial in the view of ChileBio, a biotechnology industry association made up of Monsanto, Bayer, Dow AgroSciences, Syngenta and Pioneer, companies that research, produce, develop and sell genetically modified crops.

“An already existing system is being perfected. No new system or farming method is being introduced in the country,” Miguel Ángel Sánchez, head of ChileBio, told IPS.

He added that no change would be made in the “system of protection of plant breeders, nor in farmers’ costs, nor in the opportunity to appropriate traditionally used seeds.”

However, concerned by the possible effects of adopting the UPOV 91 convention and the absence of consultation with indigenous peoples, a group of 17 senators brought a lawsuit for its annulment to the Constitutional Court.

In the senators’ view, the Convention reduces farmers’ rights, violates property rights and endangers the traditional knowledge held by communities.

According to the Convention, a plant that is not regularly traded in the market or does not appear in an official register may be considered novel or distinct. Therefore, a company could appropriate the knowledge and biodiversity that are the heritage of small farmer and indigenous communities, without the need for legal expropriation or any compensation whatsoever.

On Jun. 24 the Constitutional Court dismissed the annulment petition. Nevertheless, the ruling said it was up to the government, Congress, municipal governments and other autonomous state bodies to establish appropriate mechanisms for carrying out proper consultations to determine whether or not an administrative or legislative measure directly affects indigenous people, and to protect native communities “from possible abuse.”

Given this scenario, the main concern is that Chile lacks “a regulatory framework to prevent these laws from allowing the plunder of our resources, because only the big companies are protected,” said Sepúlveda, the author of the book “Chile: La semilla campesina en peligro” (Chile: Peasant Seeds in Danger).

Manuel Torok, an agronomist with the government’s agricultural and livestock service, told a university forum that “anyone who wants to produce, offer for sale, import or export reproductive material will have to have permission from the rights holder.”

According to Torok, only 20 percent of the fruit-producing trees sold in Chile are protected varieties, but if the trend seen in industrialised countries is followed, in 10 years’ time the proportion will be inverted: 80 percent of the varieties will be protected, that is, the breeders will have exclusive rights, and only 20 percent of seeds will be freely available.

Environmentalists and indigenous peoples are also afraid that UPOV 91 will open the door to transgenic crops. At present, genetically modified seeds are produced in Chile for export, but their use on national soil is not permitted.

“Chile is the top producer country of transgenic seeds in the southern hemisphere, but they cannot be used here. The paradox is that we import produce grown from those seeds,” which means Chilean farmers are at a disadvantage compared to foreign producers, according to ChileBio, which belongs to the international CropLife network.

But entering the global transgenics production chain and devoting certain regions of Chile to growing genetically modified crops is “to risk enormous and irreversible contamination,” said Sepúlveda.

Excerpt:

By David Njagi
NAIROBI, May 16 2011 (IPS)

Farming with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is becoming more widespread in Kenya due the promotion of biotechnology through clever schemes, exacerbated by the lack of a legal framework for the commercialisation of these controversial products.

The Kilimo Salama (Safe Farming) insurance scheme not only compensates farmers for losses incurred due to prolonged drought but also for destruction by excessive rains, according to Rose Goslinga, insurance coordinator at the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture.

The Syngenta Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation attached to the Syngenta Company that researches and produces GM seeds. The foundation is involved in the “Safe Biotechnology Management” (SABIMA) project aimed at promoting GM technology among small-scale farmers in Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi.

Goslinga explains the scheme in Kenya as follows: farmers that suffer crop losses are compensated through seed payouts. Initially, they purchase eight kg of seeds, which is the standardised measure for sowing one acre piece of land. The stockist issues the farmer with a code.

The farmer then sends the code to a fixed-line number through the mobile phone short messages service (SMS), which is then picked and registered at the UAP Insurance Company and the Sygenta Foundation databases.

Every crop season is monitored by a weather station fitted with solar technology to inform the insurance company of impending crop failure. Data is then processed to determine the compensation range, she says.

“If there has been crop failure, each farmer is informed through SMS about the payouts,” says Goslinga. “The automated weather stations keep the costs down by avoiding the need for expensive field visits to farms to ascertain risk and loss. This makes the insurance feasible both for the farmer and the insurance company.”

So far 12,000 Kenyan farmers have been enrolled in the scheme and, according to the Syngenta Foundation’s executive director, Marco Ferroni, some 50,000 others are expected to join.

“This initiative has grown from a small pilot programme in 2009 to become the largest insurance programme in Africa and the first to use mobile phone technology to speed up access and payouts to rural farmers,” says Ferroni.

The Kenya Biodiversity Coalition (KBioC) regards the scheme as part of seed-manufacturing multinational companies’ renewed appetite to use Kenya as a testing ground for GMOs by offering seeds to farmers.

Wanjiru Kamau, KBioC spokesperson, acknowledges that it is a noble idea to offer insurance to farmers who continually face crop failure but fidgets when she hears Syngenta is one of the organisations behind it.

“We doubt if it is in the interest of Kenyans because Syngenta is one of the leading multinational companies that manufacture GM seeds,” observes Kamau. “Pro-biotechnology groups resourced by seed-manufacturing multinationals are exerting a lot of pressure on Kenya’s policymakers to commercialise GMOs.”

GM technology has made inroads into agriculture in Kenya despite the legal framework not being in place yet.

As an example, the Bt cotton variety has been tested but Roy Mugiira, acting chief executive of the National Biosafety Authority (NBA), says his agency cannot yet sanction its release because regulations on commercialisation of GMOs have not been finalised.

According to Mugiira, three sets of regulations on contained use, environmental protection and export and import transit have been drafted and have to be scrutinised further before approval.

But an investigation by KBioC found that a seed variety had been planted by farmers in the Rift Valley region despite confirmation that it contained a GM strain. This, according to KBioC, happened before President Mwai Kibaki had assented to the Biosafety Act in February 2009.

“We suspected that a lot of GM seed, particularly for maize, was being imported from South Africa either as contaminated maize or plain GMOs,” recalls Kamau. “We went to the key maize-growing regions and did random sampling. We bought the seed and found it was laced with GM strains.”

After submitting the evidence to the agency in charge of seed imports, the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Services (KEPHIS), it emerged that there was no certificate of clearance to prove that the seeds were not GMOs.

“KEPHIS went public and denied the allegations but we knew from our networks in South Africa that the agency had not demanded a certificate which would have shown that the import was indeed GM maize seeds,” says Kamau.

“So even if Kenya has not commercialised GMOs, it is likely that farmers are planting GM seed without their knowledge,” says Kamau.

While GMO proponents deny that GM crops may already be growing on hundreds of Kenya’s small-scale farms, director of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) in Nairobi, Dr. Margaret Karembu, predicts that 10 African countries will have adopted the technology before 2015. ISAAA promotes the use of GM by poor farmers.

Excerpt:

Last year, tens of thousands of tonnes of tools, seeds and plant cuttings were distributed to almost 400,000 Haitian farming families, perhaps one-third to one-half of the country’s farming population.

Ambroise Pierre shows a reporter how strong and tall his corn, grown from his own seed, stands. Credit: Courtesy of Haiti Grassroots Watch

The 20-million-dollar programme – spearheaded by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and carried out by the FAO and large international non-governmental organisations or “INGOs” like Oxfam, USAID, Catholic Relief Services, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture – was kicked into action in the weeks following the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake.

Warning of a looming “food crisis”, the FAO and large INGOs urged funders to help them buy seed and tools to help the families hosting the over 500,000 refugees who had streamed out of the capital and other destroyed cities.

“The logic behind [the distribution] is that in the zones directly affected by the earthquake and in the zones that received a great number of displaced people, the peasants were decapitalised,” according to the FAO’s Francesco Del Re. “It wasn’t a general distribution. It was a well- targeted distribution, for the most vulnerable.”

Agribusiness behemoth Monsanto also offered 475 tonnes of hybrid maize and vegetable seeds to be distributed mostly by USAID’s flagship agriculture programme, WINNER (Watershed Initiative for National Environmental Resources).

(Despite repeated requests to WINNER, Haiti Grassroots Watch was denied an interview. It is unclear whether the entire 475 tonnes made it into Haiti, nor is it clear which communities received the seeds).

Most actors agree that in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the emergency distributions had some beneficial aspects, but Haiti Grassroots Watch decided to take a closer look.

During its three-month investigation, the Haiti Grassroots Watch partnership of community radio journalists and reporters from the Society for the Animation of Social Communications (SAKS) and the online news agency AlterPresse discovered environmental and health risks, failed harvests, the threat of dependency and other controversial aspects.

The findings were released in a nine-part series on Mar. 30. They are available in full at http://www.haitigrassrootswatch.org.

Independent study faults distribution strategy

Contrary to the cries of alarm over “farmers eating their seed”, a multi-agency seed security study shepherded by researcher Louise Sperling of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) determined that “[u]nlike nearly everywhere else in the world, ‘eating and selling one’s seed’ are not distress signals in Haiti: They are normal practices.”

The study said there was “no seed emergency” in Haiti and recommended, in June 2010, against distributions, saying that instead host families should have been given cash to buy local seed and take care of other urgent needs.

Even though the seed study also warned that “one should never introduce varieties in an emergency context which have not been tested in the given agro-ecological site and under farmers’ management conditions” – and in direct contradiction with Haitian law and international conventions which aim to protect the gene pool and the ecosystem in general – the Ministry of Agriculture approved Monsanto’s donation of 475 tonnes of hybrid seed varieties.

Although USAID/WINNER attempted to conceal its work behind contractual gag rules imposed on all staff, Haiti Grassroots Watch found out that at least 60 tonnes of Monsanto, Pioneer and other hybrid maize and vegetable seed varieties were distributed and were actively promoted.

In an internal report leaked to the investigating team, USAID/WINNER staff wrote: “Despite a whole media campaign against hybrids under the cover of GMO/Agent Orange/Round Up, the seeds were used almost everywhere, the true message got through, although not at the level hoped for,” and “[W]e are in the process of working as quickly as possible with farmers to increase as much as possible the use of hybrid seeds.”

Hooked on hybrids?

At least some of the peasant farmer groups receiving Monsanto and other hybrid maize and other cereal seeds have little understanding of the implications of getting “hooked” on hybrid seeds, since most Haitian farmers select seeds from their own harvests.

One of the USAID/WINNER trained extension agents told Haiti Grassroots Watch that in his region, farmers won’t need to save seeds anymore: “They don’t have to kill themselves like before. They can plant, harvest, sell or eat. They don’t have to save seeds anymore because they know they will get seeds from the [WINNER-subsidised] store.”

When it was pointed out that WINNER’s subsidies end when the project ends in four years, he had no logical response.

At least some of the farmer groups interviewed also don’t appear to understand the health and environmental risks involved with the fungicide- and herbicide-coated hybrids. In at least one location, farmers were planting seed without the use of recommended gloves, masks and other protections, and – until Haiti Grassroots Watch intervened – they were planning to grind up the toxic seed to use as chicken feed.

Fostering dependency

Even though most of the internally displaced people – 66 percent – had returned to cities by mid-June, seed distributions continued throughout 2010 and into 2011.

When CIAT researcher Sperling learned of this, she told Haiti Grassroots Watch, “Direct seed aid – when not needed , and given repetitively – does real harm. It undermines local systems, creates dependencies and stifles real commercial sector development.”

She added that some humanitarian actors “seem to see delivering seed aid as easy and they welcome the overhead (money) – even if their actions may hurt poor farmers.”

In at least several places around the country, donated seeds produced no or little yield.

“What I would like to tell the NGOs it that, just because we are the poorest country doesn’t mean they should give us whatever, whenever,” disgruntled Bainet farmer Jean Robert Cadichon told Haiti Grassroots Watch.

While projects attempting to improve Haiti’s seed system have been ongoing for at least the last few years, to date the Ministry of Agriculture’s National Seed Service (SNS) consists of only two staffers.

Most seed improvement projects, and the repeated seed distributions – which started after Haiti’s hurricane disasters in 2008 – are funded principally through, and carried out by, the FAO and INGOs rather than the Ministry of Agriculture.

SNS Director Emmanuel Prophete told Haiti Grassroots Watch that when peasants get improved seed varieties, production rises, but it also creates dependency.

“The system is based on a subsidy,” Prophete said. “You have to ask yourself about the sustainability because if the policy changes one day, where will peasants get seeds?… We’ll get to a point where, one day, we have a lot of seeds, and then suddenly, when all the NGOs are gone, we won’t have any.”

*To read the multi-article series in English and French, to watch an accompanying video or listen to the audio programme in Haitian Creole, visit http://www.haitigrassrootswatch.org.

The Haiti Grassroots Watch (Ayiti Kale Je) is a partnership of community radio journalists and reporters from the Society for the Animation of Social Communications (SAKS) and the AlterPresse online news agency.

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Mar 8 2011 (IPS)

Eco-farming could double food production in entire regions within 10 years while mitigating climate change, according to a new U.N. report released Tuesday in Geneva.

An urgent transformation to ‘eco-farming’ is the only way to end hunger and face the challenges of climate change and rural poverty, said Olivier De Schutter, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food, following the presentation of his annual report focusing on agro-ecology and the right to food to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“Agro-ecology mimics nature not industrial processes. It replaces the external inputs like fertiliser with knowledge of how a combination of plants, trees and animals can enhance productivity of the land,” De Schutter told IPS, stressing that, “Yields went up 214 percent in 44 projects in 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa using agro-ecological farming techniques over a period of 3 to 10 years… far more than any GM [genetically modified] crop has ever done.”

Other recent scientific assessments have shown that small farmers in 57 countries using agro-ecological techniques obtained average yield increases of 80 percent. Africans’ average increases were 116 percent.

“Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agro- ecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilisers in boosting food production in regions where the hungry live,” De Schutter said.

Agro-ecology applies ecological science to the design of agricultural systems. It enhances soil productivity and protects crops against pests by relying on the natural elements.

Eco-farming doesn’t require expensive inputs of fossil-fuel- based pesticides, fertilisers, machinery or hybrid seeds. It is ideally suited for poor smallholder farmers and herders who are the bulk of the one billion hungry people in the world. Efforts by governments and major donors such as the 400-million- dollar Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to subsidise fertilizer and hybrid seeds will produce quick boosts in yields but are not sustainable in the long term, De Schutter said.

Malawi is touted as an AGRA success story by funders such as the Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation who have massively subsidised fertilizer and created a corresponding improvement in food production. However the country simply cannot afford to continue those subsidies and is shifting its strategy to agro-ecology. “The [Malawi] government now subsidises farmers to plant nitrogen-fixing trees in their fields to ensure sustained growth in maize production,” he said.

De Shutter says AGRA is looking for quick results and is getting them. He has found it difficult to overcome AGRA proponents’ suspicions about the effectiveness of agro-ecology, despite the mounting evidence. “I expect countries to express scepticism towards these solutions because they are not in accord with the dominant paradigm,” De Schutter said.

The dominant view of agriculture is the industrial approach – of maximising efficiency and yield. However that system is utterly dependent on cheap fossil fuels and never having to be held accountable for environmental degradation and other impacts.

One the most under-acknowledged but astonishing impacts is on the global climate.

“It is fair to say that between 45 and 50 percent of all human emissions of global warming gases come from the current form of food production,” De Shutter says.

Climate-damaging emissions from industrial agriculture are more than just carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. They include massive amounts of the super-heating greenhouse gases like methane from animals and nitrous oxide from chemical fertiliser. Add in deforestation – which is mostly done to increase farmland or plantations – and that’s around a third of all emissions. Now add on the emissions from food processing and the long distance transport of foods around the world and it comes close to half of all human emissions.

The food system doesn’t have to be a major source of emissions, the problem is just the way we have designed it around cheap fossil fuel energy, he said. Eco-farming can produce more food for the world’s poorest people, while also resulting in a fraction of the emissions. It can even store carbon in the soil.

The international movement of millions of small-scale peasant farmers called La Via Campesina have been trying to make the same point since at least 2009. “Peasant farmers from La Via Campesina and others can help cool the planet,” Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, a Haitian farmer told IPS.

“The evidence is irrefutable. If we can change the way we farm and the way we produce and distribute food, then we have a powerful solution for combating the climate crisis,” said Henk Hobbelink, coordinator of GRAIN, an international non-governmental organisation that produced a report in 2009 showing that industrial agriculture was by far the biggest source of climate- disrupting emissions of greenhouse gases.

“There are no technical hurdles to achieving these results, it is only a matter of political will,” Hobbelink told IPS.

Trade, economic and agricultural policies are all skewed in favour of the current industrial food production system. And many of those policies are pushing small farmers – the ones who are by far the most efficient in terms of carbon emissions and energy use according to GRAIN – off the land.

De Shutter says the techniques and benefits of agro-ecology are now well established, so his role is to push governments to change policies and support the transformation of food production. His report offers policy- relevant recommendations for countries, such as increasing public funding for research and training.

Agro-ecology is knowledge-intensive and farmers don’t have access to training except in a few countries like Brazil and Benin.

“Private companies will not invest time and money in practices that cannot be rewarded by patents and which don’t open markets for chemical products or improved seeds,” De Shutter said.

“If we don’t radically transform the direction of the global food system we will never feed the billion who are hungry,” De Shutter warns. “Nor will we be able to feed ourselves in the future.”

Excerpt:

By Keya Acharya
BANGALORE, Feb 14 2011 (IPS)

Hundreds of patients are now streaming into stem cell therapy clinics all over India, despite the controversy surrounding stem cell research and even though, doctors say, no one has yet been cured by this technology.

With a 2 percent share of the 56-billion dollar world market, India enjoys one of the highest growth rates in stem cell treatment and is widely perceived to be a centre of stem cell work.

But scientists across the board say successful treatments are a long way away and ethical questions, apart from health and scientific ones, have yet to be fully addressed.

“It’s a rather uncritical explanation that we’re already there,” says Dr. Jyotsna Dhawan, Dean of the Bangalore-based Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. “There is a big gap between reality and potential in the field worldwide.”

One reason for the fuss surrounding stem cell therapy is its potential to address a plethora of medical conditions. Stem cells are cells capable of renewing themselves through cell division, with research now focused on those taken from human embryos and umbilical cord blood.

In India, 22 public and seven private research institutions are authorised to conduct stem cell research.

The only stem cell therapy treatment tried and tested so far is bone marrow transplantation, allowed by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Nevertheless, several hospitals and clinics across major cities in India have treatments for neurological, cardiological and reproductive areas of medicine, the largest number being in central nervous system diseases and in soft tissue repair.

In 2007, India brought out a set of guidelines on conducting stem cell research, but the guidelines are not legally binding and have no power to curb clinical implementation of stem cell therapy.

Only 15 clinical trials have been officially registered so far. Dhawan said several of these went well, such as stem cell research using corneal epithelium conducted by the LV Prasad Institute in Hyderabad.

But unregistered work and treatment are being conducted in various places in India.

The most prominent of these is in the New Delhi-based Nutech Mediworld clinic set up by Dr. Geeta Shroff which treats patients, many of them from abroad, through human embryonic stem cells.

Shroff’s brochure says she has not had a single patient showing any adverse side effects.

“I would have forgiven (stem cell therapy clinics) if their objective was to treat a patient,” says Dr. Pushpa Bhargav, senior scientist and former director of the Hyderabad-based Centre for Molecular Biology.

“But the patients are being used for money. How many in India have been cured? None that I know of.”

The low cost of operations and easy availability of target participants has made India a prime destination for clinical trials. India and China became centres for stem cell work after the U.S. voted down legislation on stem cell research in 2006.

But while clinical trials are under way, questions have been raised whether these are done using the proper procedures.

Dr. Vasantha Muthuswamy, former ICMR deputy director general and founder-secretary of the Asia Pacific Ethics Review Committee, posed some questions: What steps are being taken to ensure cells are not contaminated? Are patients’ scores being recorded? Do theory and methodology of treatment “make sense”?

Another critic is Dr. Maneesha Inamdar of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, one of only two scientists in India to have developed new lines from stem cells now being used in Indian and foreign laboratories. Inamdar bluntly termed as “dangerous” the commercial application of non-authorised therapy.

Several stem cell clinics contacted were wary of speaking to the media, revealing their awareness of the controversy surrounding their practice.

A staff member who answered a telephone call to a well-known stem cell treatment clinic in New Delhi refused to identify himself and said the number of cases treated in the clinic was proof enough of its efficacy.

ICMR director general Dr. V.M. Katoch told IPS he was “very concerned” that such cases were only “hearsay”.

Nevertheless, Katoch says control is now “building up”, with an ICMR clinical trial registry now online and awareness on setting up ethics committees improving “by the month.”

He says India’s guidelines have been unable to keep up with practice in the field due to the absence of a single agency responsible for stem cell matters.

That may change soon, with guidelines having taken the form of a bill pending before Parliament. The guidelines have also been amended to include clinical conduct and penalties for offenders.

“We are now moving towards a far more regulated regime capable of taking on offenders, while building up development in the field,” Katoch told IPS.

For patients with degenerative diseases, none of this matters. One such patient is 34-year-old Chandana Sen who is suffering from ankylosing spondylitis, a condition where the spinal joints get fused.

Her father, retired Air Marshall D.K. Sen, said Chandana “is willing to be a human guinea pig in stem cell treatment.”

The Sens are just typical of those now flocking to stem cell therapy clinics, too desperate to care about the controversy.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
WARSAW, Dec 19 2010 (IPS)

In the summer presidential campaign, fake posters of two leading candidates showed up on the streets of Polish cities. “United we stand, divided we fall”, the slogan of now president Bronislaw Komorowski, became “United we stand, modified we fall”. Equally bombastic “Poland is most important” by opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski turned into “Poland without GMO is most important”.

Greenpeace was trying to turn the attention of both politicians and their electorates to the danger of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Most political actors in Poland declare their opposition to GMO crops. The question is how an EU member can stand up to the more liberal position of Brussels, without breaking the law.

First, by September 2005, the campaign by the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside managed to galvanize the boards of all 16 provinces in Poland to declare themselves a “GMO Free Zone”. The Assembly of Marshals of the Polish Provinces said in a statement that “approval for cultivation of GMOs can damage the public image of the Polish countryside, which nowadays is considered as the source of healthy, ecological and high quality food.”

There was one problem: the declaration lacked any legal base. The European Commission’s (EC) position was clear: no local authorities could ban GMOs.

Then, in April 2007, came a more serious challenge: the Polish government notified the EC of its plan to prohibit the planting of genetically modified plants by law. Any cultivation would be obliged to take place within designated zones, with heavy restrictions.

As expected, the EC ruled that the Polish government would not be allowed to do this because “Poland did not present any new scientific evidence that would justify such a ban.”

Unfortunately for the Commission, it notified Warsaw two months after the deadline. This mistake allowed Poland to take the EC decision to the European Union Court of Justice in Luxembourg. On Dec. 9 the Court ruled in favour of Poland: the silence of the EC meant consent to the ban. The case may now go to the tribunal of appeal.

The importance of the verdict is disputable. “Poland is a GMO free country now,” Maciej Szpunar, Foreign Ministry undersecretary of state, who represented Poland in the EU Court of Justice, told IPS. “This is a big precedence.”

But anti-GMO groups claim this optimism is misleading. According to Roman Sniady of GMO Free Poland, the verdict refers to an old draft bill “that has nothing to do with the present situation in Poland.”

Joanna Mis, coordinator of the Polish Greenpeace anti-GMO campaign, agrees that the verdict “once introduced into the law, opens the way to GMO ban.” However, “even without this verdict the government could have implemented the ban of the two GM varieties authorized in Europe: MON810 corn and Amflora potato,” Mis told IPS.

That is what six governments – France, Austria, Greece, Germany, Hungary and Luxembourg – have already done. The EC failed in attempts to block their decisions.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace warns that GMOs could encroach into Poland through the back door. The current law forbids trade with modified seeds, but farmers are allowed to sow grain for their (supposedly) own needs. Because of this regulatory gap nobody knows the acreage of GMO crops: some estimates put it at 3,000 hectares, others say it is double this.

Anti-GMO sentiment is gaining ground not only in Poland, but across most of Europe, at least since the mid-1990s. The Euro-barometer opinion pool, carried out across Europe this year, found 61 percent of respondents believing the development of GM food should not be encouraged, with 23 percent in favour.

That only two GM crops had been authorized for commercial cultivation in EU in the last ten years (with 15 more awaiting approval) shows the level of resistance.

But it is not even. The Euro-barometer research showed significant variation between member states, with the UK, Ireland, Spain and Portugal being the biggest supporters of GM food. On the opposite pole are Greece, Cyprus, Lithuania and France.

Trying to exploit the divisions and to overcome the stalemate, the Commission recently proposed giving member states the ability to restrict or prohibit cultivation of GM crops on their territory on grounds other than those covered by EU health and environmental risk assessments. If implemented, this project, while authorizing GMO-free zones, would give a green light to modified crops in some other parts of Europe.

This, however, looks unlikely, since the proposal met with increased opposition by EU members, including Poland, and faces accusations over its legality.

The tug-of-war goes on. In November the restrictive provisions for the cultivation of GM crops in Germany have been upheld by the country’s Federal Constitutional Court. The court has also ruled that a farmer who grows GM plants will continue to be liable for any economic loss caused by contamination of conventional crops.

Earlier this month, Greenpeace and the environment group Avaaz handed the EU executives more than a million signatures on a petition calling to ban GM crops until a new independent, ethical, scientific body is set up to assess their impact. This is seen as a test case of the new “European citizen’s initiative”, which enables one million Europeans jointly to ask the EC to change legislation.

Not so fast. The Commission has said the petition could not officially be regarded as a European citizen’s initiative until the detailed rules for how this new mechanism would work were finalized by governments and lawmakers.

The petition may be a false start, but the contest over one of the most controversial pieces of EU policy is far from over.

Excerpt:

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 22 2010 (IPS)

South African retail giant Pick-‘n-Pay increased its stake from 25 to 49 percent in TM Supermarkets – Zimbabwe’s largest grocer – in October in a deal worth about 13 million dollars. But, while the champagne corks pop in the boardroom, employees are not upbeat.

A Shoprite store in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe: one among the many that the retail chain owns in some 15 African countries outside South Africa. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

While the Zimbabwean government welcomes South African retail giants’ investments as “employment creation vehicles”, shop assistants and floor managers working for these companies say these investments are tainted by unfair employment conditions and labour practices.

In 2009, Shoprite employees in Bulawayo – Zimbabwe’s second largest city and home to the only Shoprite outlet in the country – went on strike demanding salary increases.

Earlier in November a former manager at Makro retailers won a suit against his erstwhile employer for unfair dismissal dating back to 2005.

A retailer such as Shoprite, with stores in 15 African countries outside South Africa, has provided Zimbabwean consumers with fully stocked shelves and squeaky-clean aisles during the country’s slow economic recuperation.

However, its hiring of Zimbabwean workers has not been characterised by competitive salaries, workers who spoke to IPS say.

“Many of us imagined that working for a South African company would mean salaries better than workers in other supermarkets but we had to face the facts,” exclaims Duduzile Moyo*, a Shoprite shop assistant.

“It is difficult to live on this salary, especially when you know that a person doing the same job in South Africa can survive on their salary,” Moyo says, expressing a common sentiment here among employees working for South African firms based in Zimbabwe.

The average salary for a shop assistant in Zimbabwe is 150 dollars, while remuneration for the same job reportedly stands at about 500 dollars in South Africa.

This discrepancy has employees here pushing for salaries that meet regional standards, or at least those of the country from where these grocery retailers originate.

A shop assistant in Bulawayo needs about 100 dollars to cover transport and housing per month, compared with the 150 dollars they earn.

“There is no (adherence to) best practice here. We are happy to have jobs because of these South Africans, but that is where it ends for me because I still work long hours for low wages,” Gill Dube*, a shop assistant at TM, points out.

With Pick-‘n-Pay’s recent investment the company promised to inject new capital into TM Supermarkets and to do much needed refurbishment, including new fittings, generators and point of sale equipment.

Casual and permanent employees who spoke to IPS however noted that nothing was mentioned about improving their working conditions, ensuring fair labour practices and paying them a living wage.

It has been particularly tough for casual workers who complain they have little or no protection when facing dismissal. Their contracts can be terminated without warning and they also do not enjoy benefits such as medical aid.

“There is no pension for casual workers so, if your contract is terminated, that is it. You are just as good as someone who never worked,” Dube laments.

Economist Bernard Guruve says, “it is a difficult line that these South African investors have to walk as their employees expect to be paid the equivalent of what their colleagues are getting in South Africa but Zimbabwe offers a difficult and also different macro-economic interpretation.

“While the economy itself is stabilising, companies find they still cannot match salary demands that meet the poverty datum line — despite doing relatively well both here and in the countries where they are headquartered,” Guruve adds.

Many Zimbabwean consumers contend that the presence of South African grocery retailers has given them an opportunity to not only sample South African products that are cheaper, but that these retailers offer shoppers choices that had disappeared during the country’s recent past of price controls.

“We are happy these South Africans have been allowed to come in as things like chicken coming from South Africa are cheap,” insists Duke Banda, a secondary school teacher.

“We now get anything from shops like Shoprite that we cannot get in other supermarkets, which I think is a positive thing — for consumers who have the money,” Banda adds with some circumspection.

However, local poultry producers have complained, saying they are being pushed out of business by cheap South African imports. They continue to lobby the government to ban the importation of certain goods, which include genetically modified products.

*Names withheld due to fear of reprisal.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
WASHINGTON, Nov 19 2010 (IPS)

U.S. regulators are poised to decide as early as next week whether to approve a genetically modified salmon for human consumption.

It would be the first GM animal approved for human consumption, and there are fears that the review process is overlooking key ripple effects of approving the fish.

These ripple effects are both positive, such as public health benefits, and negative, such as environmental degradation, say researchers.

The debate over the salmon, which would be raised on fish farms and which contains inserted genes from two other species of fish that allow it to grow faster and require less feed than conventional salmon, has focused on whether the fish would pose a hazard to human health or, were it to escape into oceans or rivers, to wild salmon populations.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is charged with evaluating these risks, but critics say the agency is not prepared and does not have a broad enough mandate to fully examine all the implications of allowing this fish on grocery shelves.

And those implications – both positive and negative – could be vast.

“This is a major technological breakthrough that could lower the cost of production and continue to expand the salmon market,” says Martin Smith, an environmental economist at Duke University.

This, he says, follows a trend that has existed in salmon farming for the past couple decades: technological innovations have lowered the price to produce salmon. As a result, production of the fish has expanded so much that even with increased demand salmon prices have continued to decline.

“If you look at what is happening with the GM salmon, you expect you might see something similar,” he told IPS.

Smith was the lead author on a study published in this week’s issue of the journal Science. It concludes that the FDA’s analysis fails to acknowledge that the new, transgenic salmon might affect the total production and consumption of salmon.

On the one hand, lower salmon prices could have beneficial public health benefits, since eating salmon has been associated with improved heart and brain health.

More people would be able to eat salmon, including people with lower incomes who are more susceptible to dietary illnesses but who would now have access to fresh salmon that they could not previously afford, notes Smith.

But it would also likely exacerbate environmental impacts.

The ocean pens in which most farmed salmon are raised are notorious for allowing large quantities of antibiotics and additives to leak out and damage the surrounding environment, as well as leading to farmed salmon escaping and potentially spreading disease to and contaminating the gene pool of wild salmon.

So far, the debate has been dominated by the prospect of one of these GM salmon escaping into the wild, though the company developing the salmon, AquaBounty, says the vast majority of the fish will be sterile and they will be unlikely to survive in the warm waters of Panama, where they will be raised.

Of much greater concern, says the Science study, is the fact that producing more salmon in aquaculture facilities will require even more wild fish to be caught to feed the farmed fish.

Many environmental groups criticise salmon aquaculture as inherently unsustainable because it tries to raise a predator in captivity, which requires massive amounts of feed.

Typically, three pounds of feed fish is required to produce one pound of farmed salmon. The GM salmon, called AquAdvantage salmon, will grow faster and thus have shorter life spans, meaning it will require 10 percent less food per pound of salmon produced, according to AquaBounty.

But with feed fish stocks already under great pressure from overfishing, the prospect of needing to catch more feed fish to raise even more farmed salmon is worth examining, says Smith.

“Salmon farming technology has improved dramatically in the past several decades, but there is still a requirement to feed salmon wild fish,” he says. “You can’t ignore the inputs that go into the production of farmed salmon any more than you can ignore the inputs that go into the production of other types of foods.”

He and his co-authors recommend the FDA expand its analysis to examine as many of these consequences – both positive and negative – as possible, and if it does not have the authority to expand that analysis the U.S. Congress should look into expanding the agency’s mandate.

So far their analysis has focused primarily on examining the health risks associated with eating the transgenic salmon and checking for any known toxins or allergens, but new technologies may require new scope to assess their impacts – AquAdvantage salmon will certainly not be the last GM animal to come up for approval for human consumption.

These innovations might eventually lead to new, more sustainable solutions to problems like how to feed a rapidly expanding human population that will need to raise enough animal protein and other nutrients with limited resources, but if not addressed the side effects of these innovations could outweigh their benefits.

Smith thinks it is not too late – or too difficult – for the FDA to expand its analysis of AquAdvantage salmon, but even if it is, he says, “It is more important to establish a precedent of looking at these implications. If they establish the right precedent for this case, then we can expect a broader analysis in the future.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
WASHINGTON, Nov 9 2010 (IPS)

When the Green Revolution took root in the 1960s and 1970s, plant biologists’ main concern was increasing the yield of the staple crops on which people in poor countries depended. This, it stood to reason, would increase the amount of food available to the world’s poor – and decrease hunger.

It generally succeeded. But what if those staple crops were themselves lacking in the micronutrients – such as vitamin A, iron or zinc – that people were short on but which are necessary for healthy bodies?

Addressing this micronutrient deficiency would require a new approach and a new effort which is only now beginning to, quite literally, bear fruit.

In sub-Saharan Africa, many people, especially in rural areas, depend on staples such as white sweet potatoes or white maize, which may lack sufficient quantities of the nutrients their bodies need. Vitamin A deficiency, for instance, leads to at least 250,000 children going blind each year, according to the World Health Organisation, with half dying during the following year.

Sufficient quantities can be found in other foods eaten elsewhere in the world, but rather than undertake the daunting task of changing diets and traditions, plant breeders started trying to develop orange varieties of these crops that would do well in the particular growing conditions of sub-Saharan African countries.

Research on an orange sweet potato began in the mid-1990s. In 2005, a group called HarvestPlus, funded by governments, foundations and research institutes and part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), became involved in the research.

They set clear objectives for the breeders: increase the level of provitamin A in the sweet potato depended on by people in East African countries by 1,500 percent.

In 2007, they released the tuber in Uganda amidst a complementary advertising campaign meant to spread the message that orange equals healthy and that people should choose to plant the orange variety.

They saw some nutritional impacts on people’s health in 18 months.

Because people were so vitamin A deficient and the sweet potato is such a rich source of it, only 60 to 120 millilitres of the vegetable is needed to meet the recommended daily allowance of a young child, says Jan Low, who leads HarvestPlus’s sweet potato work.

As the group looks ahead to releasing new varieties of maize, rice, cassava and other crops bred to be more nutritious, HarvestPlus is organising a three-day conference in Washington starting Tuesday which it says is the first- ever international meeting on how agriculture can attack micronutrient malnutrition.

The conference comes as the role of breeding as a solution to malnutrition is approaching a crossroads, according to HarvestPlus’s director, Howarth Bouis.

He says they are ready to release several crops in the next several years, but that this step will take additional money. “The initial research cost for the breeding and studies are relatively low, but when you start getting into the final stages of development, when you get into delivery, your costs expand and go up,” Bouis told reporters Monday.

At the same time, though, he sees increased interest among development donors in investing in nutrition as well as in using agriculture as a tool to improve nutrition.

“In the past, those working on nutrition have not really looked at agriculture as a primary means of improving nutrition,” he says, noting that supplements and the practice of fortifying prepared or packaged foods with micronutrients were preferred.

But those practices are focused more on urban consumers. To reach the poorest of the poor, predominantly found in rural areas, they felt it was necessary to improve the crops themselves – but to do so through conventional breeding that would avoid both the regulatory and cultural hurdles, and safety concerns, of genetic engineering.

That is not to say HarvestPlus rejects the potential of genetically engineered crops. They have been involved with research on a transgenic variety of rice which is rich in iron and zinc, and Bouis says if it becomes easier to create and release transgenic varieties in the future they would do it.

Alex Johnson, who works on the rice variety, says it is important to note that it is of the utmost importance to them that the plants they develop produce viable seeds, unlike the patented plants of agricultural corporations. In the case of sweet potato, seeds are not even needed; farmers just pass along cuttings to their neighbors in what Low calls one of the most informal dissemination processes imaginable.

But there is a limit to the impact increasing the amount of vitamins and nutrients in crops can have, of course.

“Getting all people’s nutrient needs into one or two grains and expecting that will solve their problems has serious limitations,” says Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, where he focuses on agricultural biotechnology and sustainable agriculture. “Something like this really has to be seen as a stopgap – maybe an important stopgap – but not a solution in itself.”

But he welcomes HarvestPlus’s emphasis on conventional breeding methods. “Conventional breeding has in general been very successful for many decades but its funding tapered off following the Green Revolution, and a lot of projects to improve crops went straight to a transgenic approach,” he says, “but groups like HarvestPlus have rediscovered that breeding works better than transgenics in many situations.”

Excerpt:

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Oct 19 2010 (IPS)

Embarrassing retractions of scientific papers and a thinly-disguised report favouring introduction of genetically modified crops by the country’s top science academies have revived calls for more stringent action against plagiarism and unethical practices.

India’s scientific community professed shock to see three retraction notices published in the November-December 2010 issue of ‘Biotechnology Advances’, a prestigious international scientific journal, against three papers presented to it by Indian scientists.

Among the papers retracted is ‘Microbial production of dihydroxyacetone’ published by Biotechnology Advances (BA) in July-August 2008 and authored by Ruchi Mishra, Seema Rani Jain and Ashok Kumar of the department of biological sciences and bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Kanpur.

A group of 16 autonomous engineering and technology institutes IITs are deemed to be of national importance by parliament and are known worldwide for producing highly skilled scientists and engineers.

The reason given by BA for the retraction was that ”the authors have plagiarised part of several papers that had already appeared in several journals” when ”one of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that their work is original and has not appeared in a publication elsewhere.”

BA goes on to say that the ”article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and we apologise to the readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.”

Similar reasons were given for withdrawing ‘Molecular imprinting in sol-gel matrix’, by Radha Gupta and Ashok Kumar, also of IIT Kanpur, and published by BA in November-December 2008.

In a statement issued Oct. 10, Sanjay Dhande, director of IIT Kanpur, announced that a three-member panel would examine the plagiarism charges and submit a report to the board of governors by Nov. 2.

”We have a serious problem with plagiarism and no institute is ready to acknowledge it,” said K.L. Chopra, a former director of the IIT at Kharagpur and now president of the Society for Scientific Values, an independent watchdog that boasts membership of 363 of India’s leading scientists.

Chopra told IPS that India was only one of several countries, including China, where plagiarism was rampant. ”The difference is that countries like China take stringent action against scientists who get caught.”

At the beginning of the year two Chinese university lecturers were sacked two weeks after the journal ‘Acta Crystallographica Section E’, published by the International Union of Crystallography, a non-profit, global scientific union, withdrew papers submitted by them on grounds of plagiarism.

In India, Chopra said, the problem was more with the smaller and less well- known institutions whose scientists sent up papers to international journals for publication without proper peer review.

Indeed, a third paper retracted by BA, ‘Nanosilver – the burgeoning therapeutic molecule and its green synthesis’, was sent up by scientists from the biotechnology department of the relatively obscure Kalasalingam University in southern Tamil Nadu state.

”Scientists are under pressure to publish and too often resort to cut-and- paste from the Internet in the mistaken belief that they are not going to get caught,” Chopra said. India urgently needs to ”set up a quasi-judicial body which can blacklist or otherwise take action against unethical scientists.”

Chopra said that instances of plagiarism are high in India because the country faced a set of problems peculiar to it. ”India is a poor country with great social disparites, but it also happens to rank among the scientifically and technologically advanced countries.”

He referred to a row over over a report favouring quick commercial release of genetically modified (GM) brinjal (eggplant or aubergine), jointly presented on Sep. 24 to Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Environment, by six of India’s top scientific academies.

Parts of the inter-academy report turned out to be have been copied from a pro-GM paper funded by Monsanto, the United States-based biotechnology giant. .

Ramesh quickly dismissed the report — by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Academy of Engineering, Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, National Academy of Medical Sciences and National Academy of Sciences — saying it was ”not a product of rigorous scientific evaluation.”

Compelled to respond to the ministerial rebuke, Mamannamama Vijayan, who coordinated the report, issued a statement on behalf of the academies admitting to the ”inappropriateness” of copying text without citations or references. He said the report would be reviewed but also that it was ”very unlikely that the recommendations (on GM brinjal) will change.”

”There is a lesson here for the academics,” said Chopra. ”They may have harmed rather than helped the cause of introducing GM crops in this country with a shoddily produced report.”

The anti-GM lobby quickly seized the advantage. On Oct. 18 a group of 14 non-government organisations jointly petitioned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding that the presidents of the six academies be sacked for demonstrating ”inherent scientific bias that can have a serious impact on the future of Indian science as well as its relevance to the needs of the country.”

The petitioners pointed out that the president of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Mangala Rai, is on the board of the Indo-U.S. Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture, Research and Marketing which has been ”aggressively pushing GM crop research in India.”

”In an age where science and technology play an important role in socio- economic development, this country needs to encourage excellence and ensure accountability,” Devinder Sharma, one of the petitioners said. ”India needs to be especially careful since it openly aspires to be a world leader in science and technology.”

Excerpt:

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Oct 6 2010 (IPS)

The cultivation in several Cuban provinces of genetically modified maize, obtained by the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, endangers biodiversity and contradicts the government’s own agricultural production plan, warns Cuban agro-ecologist Fernando Funes-Monzote.

Fernando Funes-Monzote wants transparency for transgenics in Cuba. Credit: Patricia Grogg/IPS

The experts issued a statement calling for a moratorium on GM crops until more information is available and society has a chance to debate their environmental and health effects.

The meeting was seen as the first official space open to a segment of Cuba’s scientific community’s concerns about the release of GM organisms into the agricultural system of this Caribbean island nation.

Q: Cultivation of this genetically modified variety, FR-Btl, began in 2008, but opinions against it predate that. Why has it taken until now to ask for a moratorium in order to analyse the advantages and disadvantages? A: The issue was silenced, but in 2008 the alarm was sounded when this maize was planted as a test crop: one hectare that would give way to the planting of 50 hectares, as a prelude to the expansion of the crop in 2009 to 6,000 hectares across several provinces.

Until that moment, it was thought that the work with GM organisms would be kept in the laboratories until there was proof that they would not harm the environment or human health.

We now believe that a moratorium would provide the time necessary to make better-informed decisions and to reflect on the matter, with the participation of the public. Those who think this is a problem exclusive to science and that those in power have the last word are mistaken.

Q: Do you think standards and regulations have been violated? A: The precautionary principle is being violated. That is, there is no visible, public information that allows us to know that all precautions were taken. We are starting from the fact that those who made the decision could have made mistakes.

This year is a crucial time for reconsidering the expansion and maintenance of this crop because the permit granted by the Office of Regulation expires. But we have been told that it is not in their power to issue a moratorium and that the decision to release this variety of maize had a technical component as well as a political component.

Q: Is it possible to halt a process that appears to be quite advanced already? A: A moratorium would allow for a process of public consultation and debate. There is a political decision as well as a political risk, because Cuba is being seen as a promoter of transgenics that the progressive world opposes.

And it is not only opposed because of the control of the transnational corporations, but also because of the technology’s impacts on agriculture, which can have adverse effects for the population and threatens the fragile biological balance.

Q: How much has been planted of this variety of maize, which is resistant to the armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) and to herbicides? In what conditions has it been cultivated? A: They haven’t reported this year’s total. According to the permit, they can cultivate the FR-Btl variety in fields from Havana to Camagüey (534 kilometres away). Pinar del Río in the west and the eastern region are excluded, but who can assure us that the seeds have not crossed provincial borders?

We don’t know the results or how many areas were planted in total. There was a meeting at the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology to report on the results of the first year of planting, but there is no written record. Undoubtedly there has been a lack of transparency in this process, which is a matter for all society.

Q: But have you and other experts been able to directly observe in the countryside how this GM maize is developing? A: From what I saw in Sancti Spíritus (a central province), I can affirm that the biological security guidelines are not being taken into account. In other words, the technology is not being applied as it was originally conceived, which threatens the traditional maize varieties and, as its promoters affirm, leads to “the death of the technology.”

Not all farmers are following the technological instructions, nor did they receive adequate training or technical assistance. We have seen some farmers giving the seeds to others, planting it without any precautions and unaware of the conditions clearly defined by the National Centre for Biological Security.

Q: What are the principal risks of applying transgenic technology under the conditions existing in Cuba? A: The fundamental risk in the opinion of the agro-ecological movement, which is 20 years old in this country, is the expansion of a technology that threatens biodiversity and reduces the ability of native varieties to adapt, for example, to climate change, drought or changes in temperature.

Maize production in Cuba, as does all agricultural production, faces many other challenges, and it is a mistake to think that GM crops alone will increase yields.

As for potential harm to human health, it is necessary to conduct tests that prove this transgenic maize can really be consumed without danger in Cuban households. If such tests have been done, then they should be made available.

*This story is part of a series of features on biodiversity by Inter Press Service (IPS), CGIAR/Biodiversity International, International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), and the United Nations Environment Program/Convention on Biological Diversity (UNEP/CBD) — all members of the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

Excerpt:

By Miriam Mannak
CAPE TOWN, Aug 27 2010 (IPS)

Civil society organisations have reacted with outrage to claims that the international campaign against genetically modified (GM) crops is partly responsible for food shortages and food insecurity in Africa.

Claims about a certain flood-resistant type of rice being genetically modified have been refuted. Credit: Miriam Mannak/IPS

King added that, “many African countries have the idea that food that is not good enough for Europeans, is not good enough for Africans.

“In Europe, people might have a choice between conventional and genetically modified products. In Africa, this is not the case. Here, any food that is available is great.”

South African organisations that oppose the genetic modification of food, such as the South African Freeze Alliance on Genetic Engineering (SAFeAGE), have condemned King’s statements.

“Africa’s food insecurity has nothing to do with the anti-GM campaign,” said Fahrie Hassan, media spokesperson at SAFeAGE.

It has in large part been caused by economic policy measures with strict conditions imposed on countries seeking loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund since the 1980s, he argued.

“Many governments of developing countries were forced to tell their farmers they should farm cash crops, which are predominantly meant for the export market, instead of focusing on subsistence farming for local use,” he added.

“In addition, European countries and the U.S. dump their food surpluses onto African markets while heavily subsidising their own farmers,” Hassan added.

Mariam Mayet, director of the non-profit African Centre for Biosafety (ABC), said that, “malnourishment in Africa is not just a result of food shortage, but of poverty. It does not matter how much food is available, if you don’t have money to buy it you are stuck.

“In addition, the plants the GM industry wants to produce in Africa are mainly cash crops that are not just meant for the export market but are to be used to feed pigs and cows in Europe and China and as bio-fuel and cooking oil.

“These crops are not meant to feed African people, thus they will not contribute to food security,” she added.

Mayet slammed King’s statement that African countries rejected GM crops because of the influence of the anti-GM campaign, which originated in Europe and the U.S.

“King is clearly not aware of the fact that Africans have common sense. Does he think we are stupid, can’t think for ourselves and still listen to whatever Europeans tell us to do, like we did in the colonial era?

“We might be poor, but we make our own decisions free from what Europeans, whether politicians or the GM movement, think. African countries are led by their own understanding, not by the anti-GM campaign,” Mayet stated.

Hassan rejected any suggestion that GM corporations intend to help Africans to overcome problems such as malnourishment. “It has nothing to do with helping Africans, but with helping themselves. If a farmer agrees to switch to GM crops, he or she will be tied to the seeds provided by the seed company.

“This process precludes the saving of seeds for the next year. This means the farmer will have to buy seeds every year, which is profitable to the company.”

Muna Lakhani, spokesperson for Earthlife Africa, agreed that GM “will lock Africa into neo-seed slavery” as GM production increases dependence on imported inputs and is therefore detrimental to African food sovereignty. The non-profit Earthlife Africa seeks a better life for all people without the exploitation of people or the degradation of their environment.

“Organic agriculture produces far more food than the current chemicals- based agro-industry. We need to resist attempts to colonise our food production and insist on sustainable food cultivation that is not geared to benefiting the developed world.

“The fact of the matter is that the GM industry, having lost the battle in many countries, now sees African countries as easy pickings,” Lakhani argued.

King also repeated claims that he made in 2008 about flood-resistant GM rice, of which a marketable product “was only recently developed” despite the science to develop flood-resistant rice being in existence for 15 years, according to him.

“The delay of developing a marketable product is partially a result of the pressure of the anti-GM campaign. Because of this, millions of poor people unnecessarily suffered from malnutrition and hunger over the past 10 years,” King claimed.

Rice is an important staple food in Africa, the world’s largest importer of Asian rice. Every year floods cause massive rice production losses all across Asia. “Flood-resistant rice could have prevented much of the losses,” King said, adding that rice losses in Asia have had a severe impact on Africa’s food security.

Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association, a British organics food and farming organisation, pointed out in 2008 in Britain’s Guardian newspaper that the flood-resistant rice in question is not GM.

Instead, it is the result of “normal breeding informed by knowledge of the genome and supported by environmentalists and organic organisations”.

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By Busani Bafana
HARARE, Aug 12 2010 (IPS)

An innovation by researchers in Nigeria could be a cure for the devastating Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) – responsible for annual losses in excess of 500 million dollars of crop across East and Central Africa. But it has also fuelled debate on the genetic engineering of crops in Africa.

Despite opposition to genetic engineering, a transgenic banana could be what Africa needs. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Green pepper contains the plant ferredoxin-like amphipathic protein (Pflp) or hypersensitive response-assisting protein (Hrap) which are considered novel plant proteins that give crops enhanced resistance against deadly pathogens. A transformed banana, infused with Pflp or Hrap have shown strong resistance to BXW in the laboratory and screen houses, according to IITA.

“The Hrap and Pflp genes work by rapidly killing the cells that come into contact with the disease-spreading bacteria; essentially blocking it from spreading any further,” said Dr Leena Tripathi, a biotechnologist with IITA.”Furthermore, the mechanism – known as Hypersensitivity Response – also activates the defence of adjacent and even distant uninfected plants leading to a systematic acquired resistance.”

But anti-GMO (genetically modified organisms) group, Friends of the Earth Nigeria said it was apparent that Africa has become the popular excuse for experimentation in modern biotechnology focusing on the so-called poor man’s crops. Crops being targeted included cassava (a staple for over 20 million people in Africa and across the tropical world), cowpea, corn, cotton, banana and plantain.

“What Africa needs right now is a decisive stand to maintain seed as well as cultural diversities and defend staple crops,” said Mariann Bassey from Friends of the Earth Nigeria.

Bassey, coordinator of the organisation’s Food Sovereignty and Agrofuels Programme, believes the biotech industry targets people’s staple crops even when there is no need for GM varieties. “We believe this case in point (to genetically modify bananas in Uganda) is without any doubt a subtle means of colonising Uganda’s local food,” she said.

Bassey said during a recent visit to Uganda a local farmer told her that they produced banana in such large quantities that they faced problems with storage. Promoters of GM crops, she said, must not be allowed to use Ugandans as Guinea pigs.

“Ecological agriculture has fed Mankind over thousands of years and improvements have been achieved through knowledgeable handling of seeds – with due respect to cultural, social, spiritual and climatic environments,” Bassey told IPS. “We do not want GMOs under any form or guise. Africa can feed itself.”

But Triphathi, the lead author of a paper on the research published in the 2010 Molecular Plant Pathology journal, said although it was still a while before the transgenic bananas found their way into farmer’s fields, the breakthrough was a significant step in the fight against the deadly banana disease.

The feat could be a leap in the fight against BXW. If unstopped, scientists say, BXW spells doom for banana production and threatens food security in areas where it is a staple food and a potential high-earning export crop.

Friends of the Earth Nigeria said seed diversity and sustainable farming were key to meeting the world’s food needs. The organisation argued that GMOs were a direct threat to the environment and negated the notion of food sovereignty and the pursuit of food security.

Despite opposition to genetic engineering, a transgenic banana could be what Africa needs. Scientific research has found estimated total banana yield loss as a result of BXW infection at between 30 to 52 percent, meaning a huge reduction in the amount of bananas harvested at household level.

The disease, first identified 40 years ago, is widespread in key banana-growing areas such as Uganda, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania. Signs of the disease include wilting and yellowing of leaves, with plants producing yellowish bacterial ooze, premature ripening of the bunch and rotting of the fruit.

Researchers from IITA, in partnership with the National Agricultural Research Organisation and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, are now ready to evaluate these promising resistant lines under confined field trials after the National Biosafety Committee of Uganda recently approved the tests.

According to the IITA, presently there are no commercial chemicals, bio control agents or resistant varieties to help control the spread of BXW. Currently, the removal of the male bud, known as de-budding, has proved effective in preventing the occurrence of the disease as the male bud of the banana has been found to be the primary infection site. But de-budding is also labour intensive and some farmers are unable to cope.

Tripathi emphasised that even if a source of resistance was identified, developing a truly resistant banana would be extremely difficult given the sterile nature and long gestation period of the crop.

The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) has prioritised the role of research as promoting agricultural productivity. FARA executive director, Dr. Monty Jones, told participants at the 5th African Agricultural Science week held in Burkina Faso in July 2010 that there is no agricultural development without scientific research in Africa.

“I believe that research can do wonders for agriculture in Africa but no matter how outstanding the research products we cannot make an impact if we do not back that research with other packages such as infrastructural development,” Jones said.

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By Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Aug 6 2010 (IPS)

A civil society protest against a British agrochemical company that claims it has invented a particular sort of broccoli has again focused attention on the question who owns natural biodiversity, especially vegetables, seeds, and many forms of meat and animal food products.

Greenpeace protests in Munich against the patent on broccoli. Credit: Falk Heller/argum/Greenpeace

EPO granted the patent in 2002, on a method claimed by Plant Bioscience for increasing a specific compound in broccoli through conventional breeding methods. The patent, which also faces opposition by two other agrochemical multinationals, includes the breeding methods, and the broccoli seeds and edible broccoli plants obtained through these procedures.

The demonstration in Munich took place as the EPO opened its litigation procedure on the legitimacy of its own patent agreement. A decision on the issue is expected in October.

Plant Bioscience claims that its breeding methods increase the anti- carcinogenic glucosinolates in the species. This is one of hundreds of similar claims presented by numerous agrochemical multinational companies, such as Monsanto and Syngenta.

For environmental and consumer activists and independent farmers, such patents amount to an attempt to expropriate natural biodiversity for the benefit of a handful of corporations, which would rule as a cartel upon agriculture, especially in developing countries.

Christoph Then, expert on intellectual property rights for the environmental organisation Greenpeace, told IPS that what a handful of biochemical multinational companies are doing is to “misappropriate biodiversity.”

Then is co-author of a study on the ‘The future of seeds and food’, in which he warns of the “monsantosizing of biodiversity.” Earlier this year he led a successful European campaign against a patent filed by Monsanto, in which the company claimed it had invented a particular sort of ham.

Last April, EPO revoked this patent given to Monsanto in 2005. Then told IPS that the “revocation of the patent is a major success for consumers and farmers in Europe. The EPO’s decision shows that even the most powerful transnational companies must give in to public pressure.”

According to Greenpeace and other environmental organisations researching patent claims by agrochemical corporations, the EPO has to decide on more than 1,000 other property rights filed on vegetables, seeds and animal products presented by the firms Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont-Pioneer, Bayer Cropscience, BASF and Dow Agrosciences, and others.

The broccoli case is typical of this battle among multinationals over conventional breeding methods. The agrochemical companies Limagrain and Syngenta, which have filed opposition against the Plant Bioscience patent, argue that the patent has to be revoked as its claims refer to an essentially biological process, and so to conventional methods.

According to the European Patent Convention, essentially biological processes are not patentable.

Despite this, most patents filed today by agrochemical multinationals concern conventional breeding methods. In a study for the Gen-Ethical Foundation, German biologist Ruth Tippe showed that the number of patents filed by agrochemical multinationals on conventional breeding methods has grown more than 20 percent since 2000.

“Nowadays, 30 percent of all patent applications on plant breeding filed by Monsanto involve conventional breeding methods,” Tippe told IPS. “Before 2005, such patent applications did not reach five percent of the total.”

“The patent on broccoli has become a test case for the patentability of conventional seeds and breeding methods,” Franz Schaettle, director of the international campaign No Patent on Seeds, told IPS.

No Patent on Seeds represents hundreds of environmental, consumer, and farmer organisations across the world, to fight the “monsantosizing of biodiversity”, and has formulated a global appeal against patents on conventional seeds and farm animals addressed to the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office, governments, and the executive boards of agro-business companies.

“The continuing patenting of seeds, conventional plant varieties and animal species leads to far reaching expropriations of farmers and breeders,” Schaettle told IPS. “Farmers, especially in developing countries, are deprived of their rights to save their harvested seeds, and breeders are under strong limitations to use the patented seeds freely for further breeding.”

Numerous examples of patent applications by agrochemicals confirm the warnings of Tippe, Schaettle, and Then. In Monsanto’s patent application WO2008021413 on maize and soy, methods are claimed that are widely used in conventional breeding.

“On more than 1,000 pages and in 175 claims Monsanto apply for patents on various gene sequences and genetic variations, especially in soy and maize,” Schaettle said. “Monsanto even goes as far as explicitly claiming all relevant maize and soy plants, inheriting those genetic elements. Furthermore, all uses in food, feed and biomass are listed.”

By filing specific regional applications Monsanto shows especial interest in applying for this patent in Europe, Argentina and Canada.

By the same token, in patent application WO 2009011847, on meat and milk, Monsanto broadly claims methods for cattle breeding, the animals, as well as “milk, cheese, butter and meat.” Other companies have also filed patents on genetic resources needed for feed and food production.

“All these patents are the backbone of a strategy for taking over global control on all levels of food production, “Schaettle said. “The patents do not stifle research and innovation; they are simply meant to block access to genetic resources and technology and to establish new dependencies for farmers, breeders and food producers.”

This is particularly the case in developing countries, especially in Africa and Latin America. In such regions, in contrast to Europe, small farmers and consumer organisations do not have legal or financial resources to fight unfair patents. Under such circumstances, the likes of Monsanto can claim they have actually invented natural diversity.

(*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS – Inter Press Service, and IFEJ — the International Federation of Environmental Journalists.)

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By IPS Correspondents
BRUSSELS, Jul 14 2010 (IPS)

Genetically modified (GM) foods will be introduced more quickly in Europe as a result of a new proposal, some Brussels officials fear.

Over the past 12 years, the European Union has effectively observed a moratorium on the cultivation of new GM crops because of widespread opposition to biotechnology among both the public and some of the EU’s governments.

In a paper published Jul. 13, the Union’s executive, the European Commission, superficially recognised that governments have the right to keep the territories they administer GM-free. But privately officials say that the aim of the initiative is to speed up the approval process for GM foods.

John Dalli, the EU’s commissioner for food safety, said that the proposal would not allow individual governments to ban GM foods on health or environmental grounds as central EU bodies are tasked with assessing any risk that such crops may pose. But the governments would be allowed to cite moral or ethical considerations when imposing unilateral bans.

Lawyers advising the organisation Friends of the Earth have found that such grounds would be legally intangible and could easily be challenged by biotechnology companies in courts.

Dalli would not be drawn on that legal opinion, other than to say that it differed with counsel from the Commission’s in-house lawyers. “I will let the lawyers fight it out,” he told IPS. “I’m not a lawyer.”

Asked to provide examples of the ethical questions that might prompt governments to ban GM foods, he said: “It could be the fact that a country is facing a massive aversion to a certain cultivation issue. But I am not going to prophesise what the reasons could be. We would like to leave that to the flexibilities we want to give (national governments).”

Green campaigners accused Dalli of playing deaf to calls to EU governments for a strengthened authorisation procedure. The campaigners argued that the new proposal is at stark variance with a demand made unanimously by the Union’s environment ministers in 2008. At that time, the ministers urged that the European Food Safety Authority should assess the long-term impact of GM foods on the many ecosystems found throughout the EU and that the risks of GM crops should be studied by a body independent of the biotechnology industry.

Greenpeace noted that José Manuel Barroso, the Commission’s president, had tried on four occasions to persuade EU governments to approve new GM foods since his appointment in 2004. “Now President Barroso is admitting defeat by presenting a compromise deal,” said Greenpeace policy analyst Stefanie Hundsdorfer.

“In an attempt to muddle through with his pro-GM agenda, he is offering countries national bans if they turn a blind eye to the health and safety concerns they have about new crops during the EU authorisation process. But individual bans cannot replace a scientifically sound EU-level safety procedure.”

The new proposal follows an effort made by the Commission earlier this year to revive the approval process. In March the Commission chose a potato known as Amflora as the first new GM crop to be cultivated in the EU in well over a decade. Despite that decision, three EU governments — Hungary, Austria and Luxembourg — announced that they had forbidden the potato.

Three other states — France, Germany and Greece — have joined Hungary, Austria and Luxembourg in also prohibiting the cultivation of Mon-810, a maize patented by the world’s leading biotech firm Monsanto. And Poland has legislation on its statute books proscribing the sale of GM seeds.

In the short-term, the Commission is hoping that around 10 new GM crops will be planted in Europe. Four of them — all varieties of maize — have been authorised by the EFSA, in some cases for more than five years.

Biotechnology firms claimed they were unhappy with the new proposal. Carel de Marchie Sarvaas, a representative of the trade association EuropaBio, said the paper appeared to give governments “carte blanche to ban safe and approved GM crops in any country or region regardless of the needs or wishes of their farmers.”

EuropaBio has, however, been having a series of meetings with the Commission on how to end the logjam in the approvals process. The meetings, which also involve officials from EFSA in Parma, Italy, were initiated after EuropaBio wrote to Barroso in 2006, warning that the antipathy of some EU governments to GM foods could “greatly diminish” the industry’s chances of proving its theory that such foods are socially beneficial.

Friends of the Earth appealed to EU governments to reject the new proposal. It says that the proposal will not prevent organic and other non-GM crops from being “contaminated”. Traces of GM crops can easily be carried by the wind into fields that had until then been GM-free, according to environmentalists.

“While the European Commission is seemingly offering countries the right to implement national bans, in reality the proposal aims to do the opposite: opening Europe’s fields to GM crops,” said Mute Schimpf from Friends of the Earth. “The Commission continues to fail to protect Europe’s food and feed from contamination by GM crops.”

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By Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Jun 30 2010 (IPS)

The latest UNCTAD report on science and technology repeats previous calls for a “green revolution” in African agriculture but contains no mention of the real and present dangers that the international trade and financial framework presents to African farmers.

In the report, titled “Enhancing Food Security in Africa Through Science, Technology and Innovation”, UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) warns that sub-Saharan Africa is very likely to miss the first millennium development goal (MDG) due to ineffective farming techniques and wasteful post-harvest practices.

MDG one is about eradicating extreme hunger and poverty by 2015.

To avoid such failure, UNCTAD wants what its secretary general Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi calls “a new green revolution for Africa” not based on foreign models but “built on Africa’s own indigenous technology and knowledge requirements, and the nutrition and food security needs of its people”.

This green revolution should take into consideration “the capabilities of Africa’s millions of smallholder farmers … to cope with the continent’s varying climate conditions. Building capabilities for science, technology and innovation of relevance to local agriculture are the only path to achieve this,” the report points out.

UNCTAD’s version of the “green revolution” must at the same time answer global challenges, such as the adaptation to climate change and the overall decline of investment in agriculture, and meet new demands, such as the need for bio energy.

In addition, UNCTAD says, future African agriculture must resolve structural constraints, particularly the difficulty with access to credit by local farmers, which also determine their ability to “cope with the rising prices of land, seeds and other agricultural inputs.”

To meet such objectives, a new African agricultural policy must focus on smallholder farmers who have proven effective at contributing to economic growth and food security. Smallholders make up over half the population in most developing countries and their farms are often efficiently run and enjoy significant growth potential,” the report’s authors recall.

However well-intentioned, the UNCTAD report has been dismissed as “yet another collection of not particularly inventive suggestions”, as Uwe Hoering, a German expert on trade and agriculture for the Luxembourg-based information service on globalisation and North-South relations, World Economy and Development in Brief, put it.

According to Hoering, UNCTAD intentionally forget to mention that the worst risks African agriculture faces lie in the international framework set by the multinational agro-industrial sector, international organisations such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, and by the agricultural and trade policies of the industrialised world.

“The greatest enemies of the small African farmers are the agro-industrial sector; unsteady prices for food at the world markets caused by speculation; and so-called free trade agreements,” Hoering told IPS.

“The agro-industrial sector dominates the research and technology development for the agriculture,” Hoering added. “All these factors drive agriculture at the local and the global level in the opposite direction as the one the UNCTAD calls for – towards monocultures, and towards more private seed patents and other expensive farming inputs.”

The UNCTAD report also fails to comment on the so-called land grab campaign, the buyout or leasing of large areas of rich arable land in many African countries by foreign companies or state funds. This land grab is seen as harmful for sub-Saharan African smallholder farmers and for the continent’s food sovereignty.

Because UNCTAD simply ignores such real factors, its report is short of “convincing arguments, and fails to provide a real promising vision for a turnaround for African agriculture”, Hoering said. The report remains “a collection of arbitrary suggestions, which try to pass by reality.”

Hoering’s criticism echoes that of other European development experts and activists.

In a joint report, the German bureaux of the humanitarian organisations Oxfam and Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN) complained that three years after the start of the world food crisis, “the agro-industrial sector (in the industrialised countries), with the help of governments, continues to powerfully push the liberalisation of international food markets and the acceptance of genetically modified agriculture (GMA).”

The survey, titled “Grenzenlos und billig” (“Borderless and cheap”), shows that the food industry in the developed countries uses the stalemate in the international trade negotiations to advance bilateral trade agreements with the developing countries in order to gain access to new markets for their food goods.

Oxfam and FIAN criticised European governments for continuing to support the exports of agricultural goods to development countries, particularly to Africa. “Instead of promoting food export (towards developing countries), the industrialised world should be supporting fair trade,” Marita Wiggerthale, expert on agriculture at Oxfam in Germany, told IPS.

“When Europe exports more agricultural goods to the poorest countries of the world, especially in Africa, it is not helping the people there. Quite the contrary,” Wiggerthale said. “Such exports crowd out local food production.”

One of the main lessons to be learnt from the world food crisis is that developing countries, especially the poorest ones in Africa, “need to increase their local farm and food production and to break their dependency from the world markets,” Wiggerthale added. “Developing countries also need to better protect their markets from imports.”

UNCTAD mentions none of these factors. Instead, the document puts forward 12 main recommendations, the core of them being putting “smallholder farmers … at the centre of policy so that agricultural research, development, and extension services meet the real needs of small-scale farmers”.

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