The industry's credibility problem on terminator technology is worsening as public statements of questionable judgement and accuracy continue. These include statements in communications to SBSTTA delegates. Governments have good reason to be concerned that they may not be hearing the whole truth from industry giants like AstraZeneca and Monsanto.

If GURTs are allowed, they may effectively strip governments of their intellectual property policy-making power. As "hardware protection", GURT technology could be used to control traits and varieties indefinitely, thereby creating de factoperpetual patents. "Stacked" GURTs involving many proprietary genes may also move toward "bloatware" seeds prone to side-effects and unpredictable internal and environmental interactions.Additionally, SBSTTA needs to consider the possibility of GURT weapons.

The combination of global anger over greed-driven, anti-farmer terminator tech and concerns about perpetual patents and stacking should move governments at SBSTTA to recommend a UN inquiry into the factors that are causing private sector research to become so focused -- arguably obsessed -- with the creation of malignant seed technologies.

Industry credibility plummets

When government delegates to the Biodiversity Convention's SBSTTA register and pick up their meeting documents on Monday morning, they will find among the papers an open letter from AstraZeneca's research director, Dr DA Evans. (AstraZeneca, a UK/Swedish multinational, is the owner of Verminator technology, a GURT designed to addict plants to proprietary chemicals.) Seeking toallay concerns, Evans begins his letter -- dated February 24 -- by saying: "Firstly, let me state categorically that Zeneca is not developing any system that would stop farmers from growing second generation seed, nor do we have any intention of doing so."

But less than one week before the Evans letter, on February 18, the company's US joint venture - ExSeed Genetics - received a world patent (WO 99/07211) on a new technology whose purpose precisely contradicts AstraZeneca's statement.

From the patent: "There remains a need for an inducible lethal trait in seed of a number of plant species...the present invention is a method of preventing volunteer plants from developing from fallen seed which includes planting and growing the germinatable mature seeds of the present invention and applying an activator to the plants produced therefrom, to produce daughter seed or embryos which will not germinate."

Fallen or saved, it does not matter. In either case the invention prevents farmers from growing secondgeneration seed, unless the farmer buys a proprietary chemical. ExSeed's research director and the inventor, Dr Peter Keeling, was previously a senior scientist employed directly by AstraZeneca.In the past, ExSeed and Zeneca have cooperated to jointly own rights to several patents.

According to RAFI's executive director Pat Mooney: "It is indisputable that AstraZeneca's letter does not tell governments the whole truth. Observers may wish to draw their own conclusions as to why."

But the confusing statements from industry don't end with AstraZeneca's embarrassing predicament. A Monsanto statement also included in the government delegate's documents asserts that the US umbrella group InterAction (an NGO) "has agreed to work with its members and other groups to help...a thorough, independent and comprehensive consideration be given to the concerns raised about the impact of new gene protection technologies."InterAction, however, denies that they have been contacted by Monsanto. Says RAFI's Pat Mooney "What'sgoing on here? Monsanto seems to be calling for a de facto moratorium and for a global dialogue. This is commendable, however the company says it is working with InterAction to develop the process.

First, the rest of the world has never heard of InterAction.

Second the issue is wider than Monsanto, it involves at least 13 patent-holders in a half-dozen countries.

Third, InterAction denies that they have been contacted by Monsanto and agrees that they don't have the competence to address the issue."

Industry is expected to be present in force at SBSTTA and to vigorously promote terminator technology. Delegates will have difficult work deciding if company statements are to be considered reliable.

The SBSTTA science report draws a sharp distinction between so-called "V-GURTs" (V for "variety") and "T-GURTs" (T for "trait"). The difference is the level at which the terminator function operates.

In V-GURTs, such as DeltaPine's original terminator patent, a lethal function in the plant stopsreproduction of viable seed entirely, the second generation is sterile.

In T-GURTs, an inhibiting function operates at the gene level, such that the plant may be able to produce viable seed; but certain proprietary traits (for example, drought or disease resistance) will not be expressed in subsequent generations unless external chemicals are applied.

I feel, while the T-GURT/V-GURT distinction may be helpful in understanding terminator science,the report authors erred in suggesting the distinction might be meaningful in a policy context. In fact, it would result in impractical and ineffective rules.

Numerous T-GURTs exist -- indeed almost all known iterations -- which share the negative characteristics of V-GURTs. For example, AstraZeneca's Verminator is a T-GURT, since it addicts plants to chemicals rather than killing seed. Similarly, Novartis has patented a technique to use T-GURT technology to disable a plant's natural disease resistance, making it more likely to require chemicals.

Clearly, theseT-GURTs and an unlimited number of future variants share most if not all of the V-GURT disadvantages. SBSTTA cannot be so simplistic in its approach. Recommending a ban on V-GURTs while forgetting T-GURTs will give a green light for the sale of chemically-addicted, genetically-mutilated seed. Companies will ensure profits by building V-GURT disadvantages into T-GURT platforms. They're already doing it, and in the future the trend will accelerate as techniques become more refined and companies realize the seed production profit advantages of T-GURTs."

"Instead of following the faulty distinction," says RAFI's research director Hope Shand, "SBSTTA should recommend a ban on all forms of terminator/GURT seeds. If, in the future, new GURTs are proposed which are purportedly beneficial for farmers and biodiversity, very specific exemptions from the ban might be made.

These should be considered on a case by case, gene by gene basis and, if approved, then placed in the public domain. By banning the technologyoutright, governments can study the social and economic impacts in their own national context before putting their farmers and biodiversity at risk. Regulators will be able to establish that a scientific, social, and ecological consensus exists that a specific GURT in a specific variety is indeed just, safe, and beneficial."

"But," Shand adds, "the GURTs that the life industry is currently patenting fall light years short of meeting even those simple tests. Terminator apologists like the US Department of Agriculture argue that the technology should not be banned because sometime in the future there might be a few very limited beneficial uses. USDA's reasoning is desperate. SBSTTA should ban GURTs, and then maybe, just maybe, in the future governments will decide to approve an exception or two.

Perpetual monopoly

As the number of patented GURTs has dramatically expanded, so too have concerns that the technology is a threat to government prerogative on intellectual property policy. The subtly andvariable combinations of GURTs may be used to give create indefinite physical monopoly over traits, without the legal monopoly of a patent. This problem has been clear to many developing country governments for some time, following DeltaPine's haughty 1998 boast of its goal to sell millions of hectares of terminator cotton, rice, and wheat seed in developing country markets.

Now it is becoming clear to northern governments that terminator's beyond-intellectual-property threat extends to them as well. According to the SBSTTA report authors: "...patents can only be obtained when an invention can be claimed. Instead, the V-GURT technology, at least in principle, may be applied to any seed, novel or not.... patents have a finite time duration... while the V-GURT technology may be used indefinitely.... the V-GURT technology would confer an absolute anti-copy protection in the sense that the seed could not be reused by any farmer, either large or small scale. Protection would not be dependent on legalprocedures..."

RAFI maintains that this observation by the SBSTTA scientists with respect to V-GURTs will apply to all industry GURTs. Industry T-GURT varieties will be the practical equivalent of V-GURTs because of their built-in dependencies on chemicals in order to express traits critical for successful farming.

Genetic bloatware and side-effects

US Government scientists and private sector researchers envision the loading of multiple GURTs into plant varieties to create complexes of proprietary genes each turned on (or off) by its own chemical trigger.

But much like unreliable computer programs with complicated features that make basic tasks difficult, cause problems with other software, and create technical dependencies, the stacking of GURTs in plant varieties poses potential problems.

Called "bloatware" in computer science, the possibility of unduly complex, difficult to predict bloatware seeds may be in farming's future. RAFI's Mooney asks: "Will farmers have to shop for seeds likepharmaceuticals... consulting the label for interactions and side effects?"

If this happens, much of it sadly would be unnecessary since so many of the traits companies want to link to GURTs are either negative or are genes that would be linked to chemicals for economic instead of agronomic reasons.Adds Mooney: "Companies won't be able t resist the temptation to profit by `GURTing' everything, when in fact the vast majority of `value-added' traits might not need a chemical trigger and could be more useful and require fewer inputs if regulated by natural cycles."

GURT weapons: While there is no overt offensive genetic warfare research being conducted anywhere in the world, the potential for GURT weapons is undeniable. According to the SBSTTA science report, in 3 to 7 years, new GURTs are expected that will be "more robust and penetrant, but at the same time much harder to detect and police, due to the subtle and potentially non-transgenic nature of the changes made... "

A GURT encoding, for example, asuicide sequence such as the University of Texas' patented GRIM gene might be introduced through tainted seed, inputs laced with a recombinant vector (such as a genetically engineered virus), or an air or waterborne microorganism. Such a GURT could easily proliferate undetected and not cause any harm until triggered.

A GURT weapon trigger would be a very specific chemical or environmental condition, probably in and of itself relatively benign; but lethal in the presence of the GURT. It could, for example, be a chemical sprayed from the air, or a compound found in agricultural inputs. The GURT might also be constructed to be triggered by the environment, for example by linking GRIM genes to a promoter sensitive to heat.

In the GRIM example, once the GURT has proliferated, the appropriate chemical or environmental condition would trigger the cell death wherever the GURT was present.

Like GURTs in general, GURT weapons might be applied to virtually any plant species, including major crops. GURT bombscould be used on domesticated and other animals. In fact, the University of Texas has already experimented with its lethal GRIM system in mammalian cell cultures... of course for non-military purposes.

Additionally, such GURT weapons would not have to be used to be effective: their mere existence for particular crops or environments would be enough to exert a compelling influence over potential victims, who might starve or face economic collapse if the weapons were used. GURT weapons would also likely be very inexpensive compared to other arms and be amenable to plausible deniability because of their extreme stealthiness.

In Montreal

Because of the objections of a very small number of countries, the Bratislava COP compromised and backed away from declaring GURTs for what they are: a dangerous and immoral technology that poses threats to farmers, biodiversity, and food security. SBSTTA should make a clear recommendation to COP-V that it pass a resolution deciding that parties shall ban GURTs intheir country and advising them to reject GURT patents on the basis of public order and morality.

Finally, in light of the Terminator, Verminator, and numerous other efforts underway by the private sector to deliberately incorporate negative traits into seeds, SBSTTA should recommend that, in conjunction with other UN bodies, the CBD should participate in an international inquiry into the underlying factors which are causing private sector seed research to produce anti-farmer and anti-diversity technologies.

(The author is programme officer at The Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), a non-profit international civil society organisation, headquartered in Winnipeg, Canada)