Farmers in Canada and around the world heaved a collective sigh of relief when efforts to undermine a six-year UN moratorium on Terminator seed technology were rejected at a recent meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Brazil.
Canada, Australia and New Zealand—the so-called Terminator Trio—supported by the U.S. and the biotechnology industry, were pushing for a change to the language governing the moratorium with the aim of eventually having it eliminated altogether.
Farmers and NGOs throughout the world want a permanent international ban on the technology, which they say if used widely is a threat to humanity that will eventually lead to starvation and famine on a worldwide basis. Terminator seeds are genetically engineered to ensure that they become sterile after a single use and will not reproduce for the next growing season, forcing farmers to buy a new batch of seeds.
So far, only Brazil and India have an outright ban on Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTS)—also known as suicide seeds.
"There's overwhelming opposition to this," says Pat Mooney, executive Director of the ETC Group, an action group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration based in Ottawa. The NGO has been fighting Terminator technology since it was first developed by the U.S. government and the biotech industry in 1998.
"But it's just too profitable for the companies to give it up, so they'll just keep pushing. Until there's a full ban that's legally binding, I think that they'll keep on trying to get their way."
Mooney says that although Monsanto, Dupont and Sengenta, the three major biotech companies, have said they won't use the technology, he knows that they're still doing research and acquiring patents, and intend to go ahead if the moratorium is weakened. The Terminator technology is jointly owned by the United States Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pine Land, the only company openly pushing for GURTS, according to Mooney.
For most opponents, Terminator technology has become synonymous with corporate greed and a further move toward corporate globalization. Farmers, environmental groups, NGOs, agricultural scientists and churches alike have united worldwide in their fight against it.
Mooney says the U.S. is the only country that's currently testing Terminator in greenhouse trials. Because the U.S. isn't a member of the CBD they couldn't participate in the Brazil debate that took place from March 20 to 31. Nonetheless, they sent a large delegation to the meeting as observers. Mooney believes that Canada, New Zealand and Australia attended the meeting as "fronts for U.S. interests."
But Giuliano Tolusso, Senior Policy Analyst with Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada (AAFC), says he finds that accusation "a bit disingenuous."
"The U.S. has a similar regulatory system as Canada, Australia and New Zealand do. We're like-minded countries, just as other like-minded countries choose to ban GURTS outright."
Tolusso says that while no research is currently being done on GURTS in Canada, the AAFC has an interest in supporting a "culture of innovation" for Canadian farmers and Terminator technology is part of that. He says Canada has a strong regulatory system with enough "cheques and balances" to ensure a minimum of environmental risks. As far as peasant farmers in developing countries being unable to afford new seeds on an annual basis, Tolusso says he doesn't foresee a problem.
"There exists lots of choice in the marketplace, and personally I find it hard to understand how a whole culture of seed saving that's existed for thousands of years could suddenly be wiped out almost overnight, as the NGOs are saying."
But Terry Boehm, Vice President of the National Farmers Union, says it's not just peasant farmers that will go broke if this technology is approved for use. He says Canadian farmers are already under extreme economic stress and an additional burden of having to buy new seeds every year would be "the final straw."
"Farmers around the world are absolutely dependent on saving and reusing seeds. I farm about 4,000 acres on the prairies, and I would be really bankrupt if I was forced to buy seeds every year on an annual basis."
Calling terminator seeds "an affront to nature," Boehm says that Canadian bureaucracy is so inundated with lobbyists and the belief in an "innovation agenda" that they aren't considering the wellbeing of farmers or consumers and are guilty of short-term thinking.
"If it's innovation just to allow the profit centres to be more concentrated with Monsanto and other companies that own or are licensees of this technology, where's the public interest and where's the public good and where's the good for the planet in that?" asks Boehm.
New Zealand Greenpeace campaigner Steve Abel says his government evaluates genetic modification technology as neither good nor bad but neutral, and therefore doesn't believe there should be any ramifications other than the need to have an environmental risk assessment done. Abel says this thinking reveals a "major gap" in the New Zealand government's policy on Terminator technology.
"Of course it's not a neutral technology," says Abel. "It was specifically developed to stop farmers saving seed and as such it's a highly proprietary technology and a major potential threat to food security globally."
Although most testing to date has been on cotton and tobacco, according to Delta and Pine Land's 2005 brochure promoting its Technology Protection System, a.k.a. Terminator, TSP target crops are wheat, rice and soybeans—all major global food crops, hence the concern.
Abel says the technology must never even be allowed to get to the point of being tested in field trials, because it's already known that genetically modified crops have the potential to spread accidentally throughout the world's food supply. Although it could take years before the sterility trait spreads enough to have a significant impact, when it did it could greatly decrease crop yields.
"I think there are very real pathways in the world right now for this technology to be spread even though it may not be spreading legally or officially," says Abel. "There are no fences that can contain pollen and once you're growing a [genetically modified] crop in the field—it's in the environment, and it can spread. And in that way, we don't believe it should ever be let out of containment."
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