Study 3: Ecodestruction and the Right to Food: The Cases of Water ...

Starving the Future Study 3
enjoyment of the right to health.” It “reminds all Governments of the primacy of human rights obligations
over economic policies and agreements”. 46
Terminator seeds
The so-called terminator seeds are a great danger for biodiversity and the ability of subsistence and
small peasants to feed themselves. Terminator seeds are seeds that are genetically manipulated in
order to produce plants that are sterile, i.e. unable to regerminate in a second growing season. For
farmers, it means that they cannot use the seeds they selected from the last harvest to plant the next
one. In southern countries, the selection of seeds was often the traditional task of women who have
gathered a great experience in choosing the best seeds for the next harvests. This role is threatened to
disappear with severe social, cultural and envrionmental consequences (loss of a know-how and thus of
a conservation of biodiversity). However, one of the first implications is the economic dependence of
producers upon seeds and chemical companies. The debate is ongoing but more and more voices are
turning against the pressure exercised by the actors who have already legally patented the technology
in the US in March 1998 (the US Department of Agriculture and the Delta and Pine Land Seed
Company - a Monsanto subsidiary). The World´s greatest network of agricultural institutes, the CGIAR
(Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), itself took position in 1998 against
terminator seeds. CGIAR stated that the technology is bad for poor peasants and for biodiversity. 47
GMOs and Biotechnology: a solution to world hunger ?
Considering the results achieved in the field of genetic engineering, it appears doubtful that research
has been carried out in order to eradicate hunger – contrary to the public statements by agribusiness
corporations and part of the “development” bureaucracy: The innovations rather tend to ensure market
shares (and to increase the farmers’ dependence on agribusiness products beyond the reach of those
peasants who are threatened by hunger and malnutrition): Seeds patented by Monsanto corporation, for
example, are only resistant to Monsanto herbicides. According to an unpublished study conducted on
behalf of the EU and leaked out to Greenpeace, the financial and ecological implications of a large
cultivation of GMOs would create problems even for EU farmers (not to talk about peasant farmers in
the global South) and provide a threat for organic agriculture. Afraid of the political impact of this study,
the EU decided not to publicize its results. 48
GMOs carry high risks for health 49 and for biodiversity. It must be kept in mind that the usual “trial and
error” method cannot be applied once a GMO has been released: If a certain type of medicine turns out
to be risky it can be recalled from the shelfs – not so with genes once they have started proliferating.
It has not been proved, for example, that there is no risks for consumers and that genetically engineered
food has the same nutritional features. Altieri and Rosset (reference below) give the example of
Monsanto Roundup Ready soybeans which contain less isoflavones, an important phytoestrogen.
In the field of insecticides, one of the innovations of biotechnology has been to engineer a gene against
a pest into the plant instead of using a chemical or natural pesticide (like the engineering of the toxin of
Bacillus thuringiensis normally used by organic farmers as a biopesticide) against a particular pest.
Today, the development of "Bt-Crops" is largely questioned since the presence of the Bt toxin in the
plant itself as genes has already caused damage on non target species like other plants, insects or
herbivores. Moreover the genetic manipulation runs the risk of increasing the pest exposure to
pesticides which in turn accelerates and improves resistance of this pest to the means used against it.
Genetic engineering and the manipulation of genes of crop plants contributes further to the
standardization of crops and therefore to the environmental risks linked to monoculture.
Although many countries have decided a moratorium on the cultivation or on the commercialization of
GMOs according to the precautionary principle 50, more and more cases of contamination, uncontroled
dissemination or illegal growing of GMOs are reported. In Bolivia, the invasion of maize containing
FIAN International 137
June 2002