- Giant biotech companies are pressing for the revival
of a GM technology so damaging to the world's poor that it has been suspended
by worldwide agreement.
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- The drive to rehabilitate the so-called "terminator
technology" - designed to deny hundreds of millions of poor farmers
the ability to replant seeds from their own crops - is expected to reach
a peak at an international conference in Malaysia this week.
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- Senior managers have been trying to rebrand it as a green
technology that will solve the spread of genes from GM plants to other
crops and weeds. Delegates to the Malaysia conference say that they are
expecting a big push next week by biotech firms and the Bush administration.
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- This comes at an embarrassing time for the Government,
which is drawing up plans to persuade the public that GM crops would particularly
benefit developing countries.
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- Terminator technology - officially classified as a Genetic
Use Restriction Technology (Gurt) - would make the seeds produced by the
GM plants sterile.
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- This means that many of the 1.4 billion poor Third World
farmers who save seed from their crop each year and resow it to produce
the next harvest would no longer be able to do so. They would have to buy
new seeds from the biotech companies. Many would not be able to afford
them, and would go out of business.
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- Such was the public and scientific outcry when it was
first developed that Monsanto was forced to make "a public commitment
not to commercialise sterile seed technology". The following year
the world's governments agreed to place it under an international moratorium.
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- However, the International Seed Federation, which represents
the world seed industry, insists that it presents "a possible technical
solution" to the increasing problem of contamination of conventional
and organic crops by genes from GM plants.
-
- A paper written for the ISF by Roger Krueger of Monsanto
and Harry Collins of Delta & Pine Land, the company that holds the
most patents in the technology, dismisses concerns about its ill-effects
as "conjecture", and says "Gurts have the potential to benefit
farmers in all size, economic and geographical areas".
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- However, Monsanto stresses it stands by its commitment
not to develop the technology.
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- Many developing countries made a determined attempt last
week at a conference of the parties to the international Convention on
Biological Diversity in Kuala Lumpur to have the technology banned outright.
But the attempt was successfully resisted by Canada, Australia and Brazil,
acting as surrogates for the United States, which has refused to join the
convention.
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- Hope Shand of the ETC pressure group said yesterday:
"We believe that if terminator technology is accepted ... it will
be used everywhere to enforce industry monopoly by preventing farmers from
saving and reusing their seeds."
-
- Meanwhile, Downing Street officials have told Tony Blair
that a decision to give the green light to GM maize will further damage
his credibility, with dangerous consequences for the next general election.
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- They have warned him that it has become a crucial issue
of trust, at a time when public faith in him has almost disappeared.
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- The alarm at the centre of the Government has deepened
with the outcry after last week's leak of Cabinet subcommittee meetings.
These revealed a discussion of how to spin the announcement of a decision
to approve GM maize with "careful presentation" so that public
opposition can be "worn down". Ý © 2004 Independent
Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=49391
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