Cameron Duodu
LETTER FROM THE NORTH
Those who have been gladdened by the news that Monsanto, the giant company that is developing genetically modified foods, has dropped its “Terminator Seed” programme, may be rejoicing too soon.
Terminator Seeds, as you may have read, are seeds of crops like rice, maize, wheat and cotton that have been specially modified to become impregnable to the attacks of pests, fungus and other diseases.
The problem is that instead of simply passing these enormous advantages to farmers, Monsanto has attached a terrible condition to them – you can only plant Terminator Seeds once. The harvest it produces is only for eating or processing. It has been programmed to be “sterile”, so it does not produce fertile seeds.
According to The Guardian, “In Monsanto’s version [of Terminator] seeds are soaked in the antibiotic tetracycline, which sets in motion a genetic chain reaction that ultimately instructs the plant to kill its own seeds.” So, each time you need to plant a field, you must go to Monsanto and buy.
If you don’t have money to do that, you starve. That is what would have happened to many farmers in the developing countries, where the foreign exchange needed to keep buying Monsanto Terminator Seeds – at prices dictated, of course, by Monsanto – would have posed a perennial, insurmountable mountain.
That a company that has spent millions of dollars developing and patenting a product with such potential power – both over the imagination of farmers and over their pockets – would allow the idea to simply die, is unthinkable.
The notion the company will try to sell to its shareholders, who ask it to justify the money “wasted” on the abandoned research, will be that the attempted “marketing” of the product was done in a hasty manner; or that the climate of opinion had not been softened enough; or that an inadequate budget was applied. But the company will never admit that the idea is intrinsically wrong or immoral.
Which means that the PR guys the company employs might already have begun redrawing blueprints for a new campaign that will whitewash Terminator.
So, if we could hear Terminator speak right now, he would be barking at us: “I’ll be back.”
Indeed, Terminator could already be undergoing transmutations that would enable it to be unleashed on the world in one form or the other. For instance, there are already in existence “trait technologies” – dubbed “Terminator 2” or “Gene-switchers” – that give companies like Monsanto the capability to develop crops that can only grow if sprayed with a regimen of chemicals that include herbicides or insecticides manufactured by the company.
Monsanto is believed to have 87 Terminator patents pending in developing countries. Thirty-one Terminator patents have been granted to other companies. Monsanto says the introduction of the technology is five years away. It has also pledged not to “commercialise” the technology.
But, according to The Guardian, “There are fears that Monsanto may simply be dropping the technology until the political climate improves.” However, if Monsanto resumes work on the technologies, it will be fighting an uphill battle henceforth. Tens of thousands of individuals from 54 countries have written to the United States agriculture secretary, Dan Glickman, demanding the banning of the technology. The opponents of Terminator technology have tasted blood and will not be easily drawn away from the scent of the battle.
India, Bangladesh and the Phillipines are among the countries where the loudest fears have been expressed against Terminator technology. Neth Danos of the South-East Asian Regional Institute for Community Education is quoted as saying: “Farmers here know about the Terminator and are telling their governments to reject the patent. The Terminator could be the greatest threat to the well-being of poor farmers we have ever faced.”
In India, a protest campaign has been launched against Terminator called “Cremate Monsanto”. In one state, peasants with green shawls flung over their shoulders invaded one of Monsanto’s experimental fields and uprooted hundreds of cotton plants being grown there. They believed, quite wrongly as it turned out, that the cotton plants were being grown from Terminator seeds. In another state, any field where genetic engineering was suspected to be taking place was torched into a giant funeral pyre.
The Indians’ anger reflects the anxiety caused by the arrival of giant American seed and biotechnology companies like Monsanto. Indian scientists fear that the Terminator gene could make other crops sterile by inadvertent cross-pollination. This would threaten the diversity of seed stocks in India. Worse, it would make Indian farmers slaves to a few strains of imported seed. So it was that in August last year, a “Quit India” campaign was mounted against Monsanto by a coalition of 2 000 organisations representing farmers, environmentalists, scientists and church workers.
The Indian government has already introduced a ban on Terminator, albeit in an indirect way: its customs department has been ordered to demand a testimonial from the governments of countries exporting seeds to India that all such seeds are “Terminator-free”.
As far as other developing countries are concerned, the choice facing them is quite simple: do you want to add to the tight grip that developed countries already have upon your economic well- being – in the sense that they dictate the prices of the products you sell to them as well as the products you import from them – by also empowering them to dictate to you whether you should be able to plant food and cash crops? Any government that has resolutely banned harmful products like dagga and cocaine, but thinks Terminator and products of that ilk, on the other hand, are welcome, must have its head examined.