http://fpif.org/gmo-wars-global-battlefield/
GMO Wars: The Global Battlefield
The case against GMOs has strengthened steadily over the last few
years, even as the industry has expanded all over the world.
By Walden Bello, October 28, 2013.
This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and
TheNation.com.
The GMO wars escalated earlier this month when the 2013 World Food
Prize was awarded to three chemical company executives, including
Monsanto executive vice president and chief technology officer,
Robert Fraley, responsible for development of genetically modified
organisms (GMOs).
The choice of Fraley was widely protested, with 81 members of the
prestigious World Future Council calling it "an affront to the
growing international consensus on safe, ecological farming practices
that have been scientifically proven to promote nutrition and
sustainability."
Monsanto's Man
The choice of Monsanto's man triggered accusations of prize buying.
From 1999 to 2011, Monsanto donated $380,000 to the World Food Prize
Foundation, in addition to a $5-million contribution in 2008 to help
renovate the Hall of Laureates, a public museum honoring Norman
Borlaug, the scientist who launched the Green Revolution.
For some, the award to Monsanto is actually a sign of desperation on
the part of the GMO establishment, a move designed to contain the
deepening controversy over the so-called biotechnological revolution
in food and agriculture. The arguments of the critics are making
headway. Owing to concern about the dangers and risks posed by
genetically engineered organisms, many governments have instituted
total or partial bans on their cultivation, importation, and
field-testing.
A few years ago, there were 16 countries that had total or partial
bans on GMOs. Now there are at least 26, including Switzerland,
Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary,
Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Mexico, and Russia.
Significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about 60 other countries.
Restraints on trade in GMOs based on phyto-sanitary grounds, which
are allowed under the World Trade Organization, have increased.
Already, American rice farmers face strict limitations on their
exports to the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and the
Philippines, and are banned altogether from Russia and Bulgaria
because unapproved genetically engineered rice "escaped" during
open-field trials on GMO rice. Certain Thai exports-particularly
canned fruit salads containing papaya to Germany, and sardines in soy
oil to Greece and the Netherlands-were recently banned due to threat
of contamination by GMOs.
The Case against GMOs Gains Strength
The case against GMOs has strengthened steadily over the last few
years. Critics say that genetic engineering disrupts the precise
sequence of a food's genetic code and disturbs the functions of
neighboring genes, which can give rise to potentially toxic or
allergenic molecules or even alter the nutritional value of food
produced. The Bt toxin used in GMO corn, for example, was recently
detected in the blood of pregnant women and their babies, with
possibly harmful consequences.
A second objection concerns genetic contamination. A GMO crop, once
released in the open, reproduces via pollination and interacts
genetically with natural varieties of the same crop, producing what
is called genetic contamination. According to a study published in
Nature, one of the world's leading scientific journals, Bt corn has
contaminated indigenous varieties of corn tested in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Third, a GMO, brought into natural surroundings, may have a toxic or
lethal impact on other living things. Thus, it was found that Bt corn
destroyed the larvae of the monarch butterfly, raising well grounded
fears that many other natural plant and animal life may be impacted
in the same way.
Fourth, the benefits of GMOs have been oversold by the companies,
like Monsanto and Syngenta, that peddle them. Most genetically
engineered crops are either engineered to produce their own pesticide
in the form of Bacillus thurengiensis (Bt) or are designed to be
resistant to herbicides, so that herbicides can be sprayed in massive
quantities to kill pests without harming the crops. It has been
shown, however, that insects are fast developing resistance to Bt as
well as to herbicides, resulting in even more massive infestation by
the new superbugs. No substantial evidence exists that GM crops yield
more than conventional crops. What genetically engineered crops
definitely do lead to is greater use of pesticide, which is harmful
both to humans and the environment.
A fifth argument is that patented GMO seeds concentrate power in the
hands of a few biotech corporations and marginalize small farmers. As
the statement of the 81 members of the World Future Council put it,
"While profitable to the few companies producing them, GMO seeds
reinforce a model of farming that undermines sustainability of
cash-poor farmers, who make up most of the world's hungry. GMO seeds
continue farmers' dependency on purchased seed and chemical inputs.
The most dramatic impact of such dependency is in India, where
270,000 farmers, many trapped in debt for buying seeds and chemicals,
committed suicide between 1995 and 2012."
Some studies have sought to counter these accusations against GMOs,
but they have been discredited by revelations that they were funded
by biotechnology firms or conducted by researchers close to them.
The Philippines as GMO Battlefield
The key battleground in the battle over GMOs has shifted, over the
years, from the developed to the developing world. The GMO advocates
have deployed their big guns to convince African, Asian, and Latin
American governments to shift to GMOs. Among them are Bill and
Melinda Gates, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, and
Oxford economist Paul Collier, who argues that Africa needs a new
"Green Revolution" based on genetically engineered seeds because it
missed out on the first one, which was promoted by chemical-intensive
agriculture.
The Philippines is one such battleground. Even as many other
countries have tightened their controls over GMOs, the Philippine
government has become more and more liberal in its granting of
licenses for GMO production. According to Greenpeace Southeast Asia,
it has allowed the importation of 60 genetically modified plants and
plant products for direct use as food and feed or for processing, an
additional eight GM plant varieties for propagation, and 21 modified
plant varieties for field testing in Philippine soil. Despite
concerns about its impact on the environment, Bt corn now has 750,000
hectares of Philippine land devoted to it. According to Greenpeace
Southeast Asia spokesman Daniel Ocampo, no GMO application has ever
been rejected, which is rather shocking given the controversy over
their use.
A key reason for the liberal treatment of GMOs is the revolving door
among government, academia, and corporations. For instance, three of
the most recent directors of the prestigious Institute of Plant
Breeding of the University of the Philippines at Los Banos have
either joined biotech multinationals or gone to work on projects
funded by them. They also serve as members of or advisers to
government bodies that oversee biosafety.
Judicial Restraints on GMOs
Anti-GMO activists and farmers have nevertheless made headway. Even
as some make direct action forays like uprooting Bt eggplant field
experimental sites, others have worked on the legal front. This paid
off recently when the Philippine Court of Appeals-acting on a
petition brought before it by Greenpeace, the NGO Masipag, and
several individuals-stopped the field testing of Bt eggplant on the
grounds that there was no scientific consensus or legal framework for
the introduction of Bt products. Importantly, the court also ruled
that all stakeholders-not just industry or government
scientists-should get to provide input on the introduction of GMOs
like Bt eggplant.
In a sign of desperation, the University of the Philippines at Los
Banos, one of the respondents in the case, argued that a ban on field
testing of Bt eggplant would "violate academic freedom." The court
ruling stated, however, that, "Like any other right, the right to
academic freedom ends when the overriding public welfare calls for
some restraint. The right to academic freedom does not, in any way,
give the respondent UPLB unbridled freedom to conduct
experimentation, studies and research that may put to risk the health
of the people and the environment which are equally protected under
our fundamental law."
It is unlikely, however, that this victory will discourage the GMO
lobby from making the Philippines into a springboard for the
introduction of Bt crops to the rest of Southeast Asia. Aside from Bt
eggplant, the GMO advocates are pushing genetically altered "Golden
Rice," potatoes, soybeans, canola, cotton, sugarbeet, and alfalfa.
There's big money in these crops, and the only thing that stands
between the transnational corporations and big money are those pesky
farmers, environmentalists, and consumers.
Unfortunately for the biotech corporations, more people are listening
to the words of scientists like Dr. Oscar Zamora, Vice Chancellor of
the University of the Philippines at Los Banos, who says: "For every
application of genetic engineering in agriculture in developing
countries, there are a number of less hazardous and more sustainable
approaches and practices with hundreds, if not thousands, of years of
safety record behind them. None of the GE applications in agriculture
today are valuable enough to farmers in developing countries to make
it reasonable to expose the environment, farmers and the consumers to
even the slightest risk."
Now a member of the Philippine House of Representatives representing
Akbayan (Citizens' Action Party), Foreign Policy In Focus columnist
Walden Bello was a member of the boards of both Greenpeace
International and Greenpeace Southeast Asia, which he helped set up.
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