Chennai, January 22: The new genetic technology for seed sterilisation called `Terminator' has been germinating profit hopes, controversies, fear and anxiety among a cross section of people all over the world. It bears promise of immense profits for seed companies. But social scientists and enviornmentalists fear the damage to biodiversity and risk to food security would be beyond comprehension if the terminator is allowed to land on fields.The patent for the technology has been given to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and an American cotton seed company Delta & Pine Land Co in March 1998. The US agro industry major Monsanto is just completing the process of taking over Delta & Pine totally, and the terminator will be a Monsanto baby.
Delta and USDA had applied for patents on the technology, it is still only a technology, in over 78 countries including India.
The US seed industry is jubilant over this technology. They argue that it will increase the safety of using genetically engineered crops.Since the seed carries sterility traits, it is unlikely that transgenic material will escape from one crop to related species and wild crop relatives. This built-in safety feature is expected to expedite bio-tech advances in agriculture and increase productivity.
Another plus point for the industry is that the farmers will not be able to save or sell proprietary seeds. So far the companies had only the protection of the patent laws, enforcement of which is difficult and expensive.
`Terminator' technology provides a genetic mechanism to prevent farmers from germinating a second generation of seed. The seed companies will gain the biological control over seeds they did not have over hybrid seeds.
The Canada-based Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), in its report on Terminator has quoted Melvin J Oliver, a USDA molecular biologist and the primary inventor of terminator technology, as saying, ``My main interest is the protection of American technology. Our mission is to protect US agricultureand to make us competitive in the face of foreign competition. Without this there is no way of protecting the technology of patented seeds''.
Murray Robison, the president of Delta & Pine Land, had told RAFI, ``We expect the new technology to have global implications, especially in markets or countries where patent laws are weak or non-existent. ``The company claims that its new technology has ``the prospect of opening significant worldwide seed markets to the sale of transgenic technology for crops in which seed currently is saved and used in subsequent plantings''.
The proponents of terminator technology argue that the final choice will be of the farmers. They will not choose bad or inferior seeds.
Though the arguments in defence of `Terminator' appear appealing and promising, social scientists and environmentalists have termed it `profoundly immoral'. They say it will fundamentally change both biology and economics of agriculture to the detriment of the poor. The patent must be stopped, theycry.
According to RAFI 26,000 letters from 58 countries have gone to the US Secretary of Agriculture demanding that the `Terminator be banned'.
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has banned the technology from its crop breeding programme. CIGAR is a global network of 16 international agricultural research centres, which collectively form the world's largest public plant breeding effort for resource-poor farmers.
It is feared that `Terminator' is aimed primarily at seed markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America where over 1.4 billion people depend on farm-saved seed and on-farm breeding. `Terminator' would make it impossible for farmers to save seed and breed their own crop.
The threat for India is more than conceptual as already Monsanto is having stake in two major Indian seed companies, Mahyco and EID Parry's seed division.
CIGAR sees the potential for `Terminator' to have negative consequences for food security, gentic diversity, biosafety, sustianableagriculture and plant breeding. The major reasons cited by CGIAR for banning `Terminator' technology are:
Importance of farm-saved seed, particularly for poor farmers Negative impacts on genetic diversity Importance of farmer breeding for sustainable agriculture Possible sale or exchange of unviable seed for planting Biosafety risks of inadvertant spread through pollenA genetic technology designed to prevent farmers from saving seed would have enormous adverse impacts in the developing and less developed countries - and that is precisely the market being targeted.
Up to 1.4 billion resource-poor farmers in the poor countries depend on farm-saved seed and seeds exchanged with farm neighbours as their primary seed source. A technology that threatens to restrict farmer expertise in selecting seed and developing locally-adapted strains is a threat to food security and agricultural biodiversity, especially for the poor.
RAFI says if the `Terminator' technology iswidely licensed, it could mean that the commercial seed industry will enter entirely new sectors of the seed market - especially in self-pollinating seeds such as wheat, rice, cotton, soybeans, oats and sorghum.
Historically there has been little commercial interest in non-hybridised seeds such as wheat and rice because there was no way for seed companies to control reproduction. With the patent announcement, the world's two most critical food crops - rice and wheat - staple crops for three-quarters of the world's poor, potentially enter the realm of private monopoly.
In spite of these risks, RAFI fears that the industry may enlist government regulators and environmental organisations in backing the `Terminmator'. In RAFI's view biosafety at the expense of food security is no solution. Both must be considered, but human safety through food security must be the primary concern.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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