#378, Friday, July 3, 1998
ANOTHER PIECE OF THE PUZZLE
Terminator Crop, Killer Profit
By Bradley Cook
Some may call that bribery. We do not apologize."
- Catherine Bertini, UN World Food Program Executive Director
[ Note by webmaste: 10-17-99. Just heard over the radio that the big, American seed companies are leasing seeds to farmers. The plants produce no seeds. Within ten years farmers will have no seeds in stock and will be totally under control of the giant seed companies. The seed companies are already suing farmers over seed storage. ]
FOOD is power. And the United States has just taken a crucial step towards consolidating the global food market, much in the way it has with those other forms of power - weapons, money and information. Three months ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, along with Delta and Pine Land, the world's largest cotton seed company, received a patent for a genetic engineering technique that has ominous implications for the safety of the world food supply.
The innocuously titled "Control of Plant Gene Expression" (U.S. patent #5,723,765) applies to all species of plants and seeds. The technique patented was developed with the aim of creating crops that produce sterile seeds by programming a plant's DNA to kill its own embryos - creating crops with in-built obsolescence. Already perfected for tobacco and cotton, this technique will soon be available for use on all sorts of commercial seed, including crucial crops like soybeans, wheat and rice, that are staples for three-quarters of the world's poor.
The strategy is simple. The companies that sell the seeds which feed the world hope to continually increase their sales of proprietary, genetically engineered seed. Ever-higher profits will be reaped by forcing farmers to buy seeds at the start of each planting season instead of saving seeds from one growing season and planting them the next.
Even in the bizarre new world of patented genetically altered plants, this particular "invention" stands out because it was not created to improve food safety, the environment, crop viability or consumer choice - the very reasons for which the USDA was created. The research was done, according to USDA spokesman Willard Phelps, "to increase the value of U.S. seed companies and to open up new markets in Second and Third World countries." To that end, the USDA is now pursuing patents on the technology in over 70 countries. And with good reason: Once the technology is commercialized, the USDA stands to gain a 5 percent royalty on every sale.
Labeled by opponents as "terminator technology," this technique - which is expected to eventually be adopted by all of the world's largest seed companies - literally gives its owners and licensees complete biological control over the food crops to which it is applied.
Both the importance of this patent and its intended use have gone unnoticed by all save those who stand to gain from it. Within months of being granted the patent and exclusive license for the technology, Delta and Pine Land was bought by Monsanto, a "life sciences" specialist and the largest herbicide producer in the world. Monsanto, in turn, was bought last month by American Home Products in a $98 billion merger that made headlines around the world. Several former prominent U.S. government officials now work with Monsanto, including former secretary of commerce Mickey Kantor and Marcia Hale, a former special assistant to U.S. President Bill Clinton.
The combination of dominant market share and the political lobbying muscle of the U.S. government and Monsanto will make it virtually impossible for Second and Third World countries to resist the eventual monopolization of their food supply by U.S.-based agribusinesses. The U.S. is already the global leader in seed supply, and a mere 10 corporations now control half of the world seed market, with further consolidation predicted.
Half of the world's farmers - who combined feed 1.4 billion people - are too poor to buy commercial seed and depend on the age-old practice of seed sharing and exchange to keep their crops perennially viable. If something happens to the seed supply, or the terminator gene mutates, it may irretrievably break the plant-seed-plant cycle that has supported most life on Earth. Bringing to an end the natural 12,000-year-old practice of saving, sharing and cross-breeding seeds that has allowed man to adapt his food supply to constantly changing conditions is a potentially apocalyptic move.
A number of crop geneticists who have studied the terminator gene patent believe that it is likely that pollen from crops carrying the terminator trait will infect the fields of farmers who either reject or can't afford the technology. The terminator gene also threatens the natural biodiversity of non-farmed areas neighboring farms that grow terminator crops.
The terminator gene puts the remarks made by Bertini - a former assistant U.S. agriculture secretary - in brutally clear focus. Food is power. And when farmers around the world are unable to grow their own crops without receiving biotechnologically mutated seeds from a U.S. government-sponsored corporation, they will live the very definition of being powerless. And the USDA will reap royalties on the exploitation of the world's starving millions.
copyright The St. Petersburg Times 1998
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