Friends of the Earth believes that the
first decade of the commercializtion of GM
crops has been a failure for biotech
corporations. Between 1994 (when the first
GM crop was commercialized in the US ) and
2004, the promises made by biotech
companies have not been fulfilled, and
opposition to GM crops is growing stronger
by the day. Given the experiences with GM
crops in the past decade, we have come to
the following conclusions:
1. GM is a radical new
technology, and GMOs are different from
conventional organisms.
Although
the United States and the biotech industry
claim that GMOs are substantially
equivalent to their conventional
counterparts, they are increasingly
isolated in this view. The Biosafety
Protocol, a UN Treaty adopted in 2000 to
regulate GM crops, confirmed that they are
not equivalent and has established specific
rules to regulate them.
2. GMOs have been introduced
without adequate understanding of their
environmental, health and socioeconomic
impacts.
Cases of contamination
with illegal GM crops, like the ‘StarLink',
or ‘biopharmaceuticals' debacles in the
United States and the contamination of
Mexican maize show how little we know about
the impact or consequences of GM crops and
releases.
3. The first decade of
commercialization of GMOs has been a
failure for biotech corporations.
The biotech industry had expected people
and governments everywhere to embrace GM
crops without question, but public
skepticism has forced them to limit their
current activities to a few main countries.
Biotech corporations failed to market
products with clear benefits for consumers
or farmers. Instead, GM crops created novel
and alarming problems, including genetic
contamination
Moreover, biotech companies and their
powerful lobby groups relied heavily on PR
strategies to sell their dream. For
example, they heralded the genetically
modified ‘Golden Rice' as a solution for
Vitamin A deficiency in the Third World ,
but to date this appears to be a ‘golden
hoax'. Behind the scenes, companies play
dirty to secure their interests; for
instance the biotech industry has been
behind various threats of trade sanctions,
including the attempts by the US to impose
GM food on reluctant countries like Bolivia
, Croatia and Sri Lanka and on the European
Union.
4. GM crops are increasing
corporate control over
agriculture.
Monsanto engineers
and sells the vast majority of GM crops
around the world. The right of farmers to
save and use their own seeds, the
foundation of agriculture, is under threat
of being eliminated for the first time
since the creation of agriculture. The
behavior of corporations like Monsanto in
countries including the United States ,
Canada , and Indonesia shows some of the
major negative consequences of monopolistic
corporate control.
5. Nations should have the right
to impose bans on GM food, feed, or
commercial growing.
Every country
should have the right to adopt
precautionary measures on GMOs, including
bans and moratoria. Alliances between
biotech companies and pro-biotech
governments formed to threaten countries
taking precautionary measures against GMOs
with trade sanctions are outrageous
6. GM food is unfit to feed the
world.
Biotech companies claim
that GM food is needed to feed the world in
order to convince the public of its
necessity. This claim that GM crops are the
answer to the hunger problem is refuted in
the case of Argentina , where hunger
persists despite vast acreages of GMO
crops. It has also been discredited by an
increasing number of development and
farmers' organizations, scientists and
developing agricultural countries.
7. There is an urgent need to
protect centers of origin and
diversity.
In 2000, Bolivian civil
society was successful in preventing field
trials of GM potato in the country, which
is a center of origin for the potato. In
Mexico , the center of origin of maize,
contamination of local maize with GM maize
has recently been confirmed. This is
worrisome, and requires urgent action.
Centers of origin and diversity, as key
reservoirs of agricultural biodiversity,
must be preserved from genetic
contamination, and countries hosting such
centers must immediately create clear plans
of action to prevent and address
contamination.
8. There is an urgent need for
an international liability regime.
Current liability regimes are vastly
insufficient. Industry must pay for genetic
contamination and any other damage caused
by the release of GM organisms in the
environment. The launching of a class
action lawsuit by Canadian organic farmers
to make Monsanto and Aventis liable for
genetic contamination is one example of the
growing demand to make corporations liable
for the damage they cause. It is crucial
that a fasttrack process be initiated under
the international Biosafety Protocol with
the goal of putting in place an
international legally binding instrument to
protect citizens against potential future
damages caused by GMOs.
9. GM crops conflict with
sustainable agriculture and food
security.
GM crops foster
dependence on pesticides and encourage the
use of monoculture agriculture, thus
threatening the environment and endangering
food security. They are furthering the
industrialization of agriculture by
focusing on the production of cash crops
for the global market rather than the needs
of local communities and the promotion of
agricultural biodiversity. Agricultural
biodiversity plays a key role in food
security and food sovereignty. The
large-scale introduction of GM crops would
exacerbate the ecological vulnerability
already associated with monoculture
agriculture.
10. There are viable and
practical alternatives to GM crops
which are almost invariably cheaper, more
accessible, more productive in marginal
environments and more culturally and
socially acceptable.
To conclude, citizen opposition to GMOs
is snowballing. In Europe , distrust is so
high that GMOs have in effect been removed
from the majority of supermarket shelves.
In the South, many countries in Latin
America , Africa , and Asia have rejected
GM food aid outright. Consumer and retailer
suspicion has forced Monsanto to delay the
commercialization of its GM wheat,
initially planned for 2004. The failure of
biotech companies in the last decade and
the growing global opposition should
catalyze a shift of focus to alternative,
reliable agricultural techniques that are
less costly than the multi-billion dollar
modern biotechnology industry.
more information:
FoE Europe GMO Campaign:
www.
foeeurope.org/GMOs/Index.htm
FoEI GMO Campaign:
www.foei.org/gmo/index.html
