Responding to Monsanto's yesterday announcement of abandoning its plans to commercialise the controversial `terminator' technology, a Rafi note said Monsanto was withdrawing from `terminator' genes, but will continue to pursue closely-related research targets that could allow Monsanto to switch on or off other genetic traits vital to a crop's productivity, called "traitor" technology, by Rafi.

Monsanto is the second biotech giant to abandon its plans to commercialise terminator technology. Earlier this year, UK's AstraZenaca gave up its plans to commercialise the sterile seed technologies.

Governments all across the world need to pull the plug on terminator gene at the meeting to be held in Rome next month, feels Rafi which had been at the forefront of the fight against Monsanto's terminator gene technology.

The ministers of agriculture of various countries will gather for a ministerial meeting at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Accordingly, Rafi has urged the national governments to take action at WTO and elsewhere to reject terminator and traitor technology on the basis of public morality.

"It's the perfect opportunity for ministers to affirm Monsanto and AstraZeneca's conclusion that terminator technology is not safe for farmers or food security," said Rafi's research director Hope Shand.

"Without government action to firmly reject terminator and traitor technology, these technologies will be commercialised within a few years with potentially disastrous consequences," cautions Rafi's Pat Mooney.

Responding to Monsanto's reluctant step, Rafi's Pat Mooney said, "in withdrawing from commercialising from the controversial `terminator gene' technology, Monsanto has taken a positive step, but let's not forget that farmers can never depend on the charity and good will of the gene giants to reject immoral technologies."

Following 18 months of controversy and intense popular opposition around the world, Monsanto CEO Robert B Shapiro has advised Gordon Conway, president of the Rockefeller Foundation that Monsanto has decided to abandon plans to commercialise terminator technology (causing crop seed to become sterile at harvest time). Monsanto's open letter to Rockefeller Foundation is available on the company's web site at: http:/www.monsanto.com/monsanto/gurt/default.htm

"Congratulations should go to the civil society organisations, farmers, scientists, and governments all over the world who have waged highly effective anti-terminator campaigns during the past 18 months," said Pat Mooney, executive director of Rafi, in reaction to Monsanto's announcement.

"The public unanimously rejected terminator because it is bad for farmers, food security, and the environment," explained Mooney.

"Monsanto would never have abandoned the profit-generating potential of sterile seeds just because it was an immoral technology," said Rafi's research director, Hope Shand. "The company finally realised that terminator will never win public acceptance.

Terminator has became synonymous with corporate greed, and it was met with intense opposition all over the world," adds Shand.

Limping from a silver bullet

Monsanto is the second major "Gene Giant" to back away from terminator technology. In June of this year, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity received a letter from UK-based AstraZeneca announcing that it would not commercialise seed sterility technologies.

"In all, more than a dozen companies and public institutes have at least 31 patents that include claims involving seed sterilisation," Pat Mooney says. Monsanto was the big gun, however, and Terminator became a public relations disaster for the company when it made a bid to acquire Delta & Pine Land Seed Company in May, 1998. Delta & Pine Land co-owns the "prototype" terminator patent with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) -- US patent number 5,723,765.

In addition, Monsanto holds a second patent, WO 9744465, published, 27 November, 1997.

Transnational trait control - bio-serfdom

All the Gene Giants are pursing R&D on terminator and traitor technology, warns Rafi. Companies, including Monsanto, are working to control important genetic traits of plants with external chemical catalysts. Once perfected, a seed's genetic trait(s) could be turned on or off with the application of a proprietary chemical, such as an herbicide or fertiliser, for example.

"The companies tell us that trait control will mean more options for farmers, but chemically-dependent seeds will more likely lead to bio-serfdom," warns Hope Shand, Rafi's research director.

Rafi's in-depth report on traitor technology, and a list of private and public sector institutions who hold Terminator-type patents, is available at: http://www.rafi.org

USDA stands alone

When will USDA follow suit? USDA is now in the shameful position of supporting and defending a genetic technology that the world's second largest seed corporation has clearly rejected owing to public opposition. At a meeting with civil society organizations in June, under-secretary of agriculture Richard Rominger told Rafi that USDA refuses to abandon the patent it co-owns with Delta & Pine Land (a Mississippi-based seed company in the process of being acquired by Monsanto) because it wants to see the technology widely licensed.

Robert Shapiro's letter says that Monsanto made the decision to reject Terminator, in part, because it was responding to the views of its "very important grower constituency."

"Why is USDA ignoring its farm constituency? Why does USDA insist on defending a technology that is bad for farmers, food security, and the environment?," asks Rafi's Hope Shand.

"USDA is increasingly marginalised in its support of terminator, it should immediately cease negotiations with Delta & Pine Land, abandon the patent, and develop a strict policy prohibiting the use of taxpayer funds for the development of genetic seed sterilisation," said Hope Shand.

(Rural Advancement Foundation International (Rafi) is a non-profit international civil society organisation headquartered in Winnipeg, Canada. For the past two decades it has worked on the social and economic impact of new technologies as they impact rural societies)