Public distrust of government and industry over GM crops keeps growing

Nerun Yakub

Naya Krishi Andolon and its redoubtable leaders, Farida Akther and Farhad Mazar, have been at the forefront of the fight against global ag-bio-industry's ploys to undermine the earth's biodiversity and to push genetically modified organisms(GMO's) on our unsuspecting farmers. Several years ago, when Monsanto first attempted to co-opt Dr Yunus and his Grameen network to enter Bangladesh, it was this duo's strong resistance, and rare editorial voices in the press, that had made Monsanto change tactics. Now this aggressive conglomerate is once again in the news, this time with its Bt Brinjal, avowedly 'to improve yields and to help the agriculture sector' in South and Southeast Asia. Dozens of varieties of this popular vegetable, native to Asia over thousands of years, are available in Bangladesh.

In an article last Saturday ( ' Amader oti priyo begunke dushito korben na,' Prothom Alo ) Farida Akther pleads for good sense, explaining how the powerful agro-chemical and seed industries have been wrecking people's food security on the pretext of enhancing it through biotechnology. In this instance, Monsanto has enlisted the Indian hybrid seed company Mahyco of Maharastra to collaborate on further research and development of Bt Brinjal. A poison-making gene from the soil bacterium, Bacillus Thuringiensis, has been inserted into the DNA or genetic code of the vegetable to produce the pesticidal toxin in every cell. Mahyco claims millions of brinjal farmers, bothered by the fruit and shootborer, the commonest pest attracted to eggplants, would benefit from Bt Brinjal. 'It would not require pesticides !' Farida tells us, quoting promoters tongue-in-cheek !

Mahyco-Monsanto's Bt Brinjal thrust is not confined to India. Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute ( BARI) and a private company, East-West Seed Bangladesh, are doing their bidding in this country too.[ BARI, we are told, have been involved in it over the past four years.] In India itself two government institutions are on the bandwagon together with a key university in the Philippines. All are part of this R&D enterprise, funded by USAID under its Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II (ABSPII).Although the environment ministry in Bangladesh does have some biosafety guidelines, designed to protect local resources from the adverse effects of this esoteric science, there is enough reason to be anxious about the fallout from such tinkering, given the precedents of the biotech industry since the first generation GMO's made themselves felt, even as the international Biosafety Protocol came to be adopted in January 2000.

Here is a sampling ----- justifying the public distrust of the biotech industry and its friends ----- from the records of the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) :

l US and Venezualan researchers confirmed in January 2000 that the Bt toxin in transgenic maize could, contrary to industry claims, escape into the soil and kill larvae up to 25 days after the break-out.

l A long-suppressed US government memo in the early 1990's revealed an experiment in which 4of 12 female rodents fed the FlavrSavr (a GM tomato owned by Monsanto since the late 1990's) suffered gross stomach lesions. This tomato has a very long shelf life. [Who knows whether or not we have also been consuming this variety ?]

l A GM maize variety ('StarLink') banned in the USA for human consumption ( because of fears of rare allergic reactions) but permitted as livestock feed, showed up in taco shells in popular restaurants. The company involved is Aventis, raising concerns about the industry's and government's capacity to manage GM products efficiently. The taco shell scandal spread to Kellogg's corn flakes and hundreds of other products and companies.There were concerns that Bt maize had entered Japan and Europe illegally. It turned up also in Korea. [ What about Bangladesh's 'poppon'? ]

l FAO's Ethics Panel (a group of world reknowned agronomists and ethicists) concluded that GM crops are risky. Terminator technology is immoral; and the patenting of genes and other genetic material leads to crop genetic erosion and unacceptable monopoly. [Monsanto's GM seed traits accounted for over four-fifths of the total world area devoted to GM crops in 1999]

It may be mentioned here that GMO's have been banned in Europe and proper labeling is demanded in most developed countries that have chosen to be open to the marketing of Bt foods. Bangladesh's farmers and consumers are yet to be made aware of what is going on in the name of boosting quality through science. Not many pro-people activists like Farida and Farhad are around in Bangladesh to explain in laymen's terms the real meaning of multinationals using scientific breakthroughs to mint money and concentrate power in their hands. 'Biocrats' in experimental fields like ours give them blank cheques, as it were.

Consider what the French scientist, Gilles-Eric Seralini, has to say in an interview with Business Standard. 'You may not be aware that 99.9 per cent of edible GMO's are designed to contain toxic pesticides whose effect on the human body and the environment are not known ………… everything is kept confidential by the biotech companies whose data governments accept without validation. We want many more tests on the environmental and health-safety aspects of GMO's and it should be assessed independently. We want science to be used for the benefit of the people, not companies ……. Bt Brinjal has been modified to produce an unknown chimeric insecticide toxin. In the toxicity tests on target and non-target insects, this chimeric toxin was not used. Instead, an improper CryIAc toxin was used because this control was easier …….'

India's Vandana Shiva, a seeded environmental scientist, has the same opinion. She has taken on the government, calling for a moratorium on commercial GM approvals. 'Bt Brinjal is a test case for the future of our food, our democracy, our science,' says Shiva, 'and it should not be introduced in our farms and our kitchens without a proper reassessment, especially in the context of false assumptions made to present Bt Brinjal as the only alternative available, ignoring the proven agro-ecological approach to pest control.' On the same subject (the Indian government's move to introduce the engineered vegetable into farms), Professor P M Bhargava, the only independent expert appointed by the Supreme Court of India to the country's Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) was quoted as saying, that a majority of the necessary biosafety tests were skipped before the clearance was given !

If this has been happening in India, where a highly conscientious and scientifically up-to-date breed of pro-people activists exist, one can imagine the scenario where vigilance is not quite as sharp. Anything can happen, for example, in a free experimental field like Bangladesh. As Vandana Shiva puts it with reference to Mahyco-Monsanto's Bt Brinjal, 'This is a 'don't look, don't see, don't find' policy to create deliberate ignorance of risks and use this ignorance as proof of safety.'

Is there anyone in Bangladesh to look deep into the workings of the biocrats who are bent on advancing the cause of giant companies at the expense of the people's food security ?