The Canadian government led a successful charge last week to bid hasta la vista to a proposed ban on terminator gene research.
Canadian representatives attending a United Nations meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, blocked a controversial report calling for a moratorium on genetic use restriction technologies, or GURTS.
That has enraged one anti-biotechnology group that accused Ottawa of unleashing an “all-out push” for the commercialization of sterile seed technology.
“The Canadian government is doing the dirty work for the multinational gene giants and the U.S. government,” said Pat Mooney, executive director of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration.
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“Even Monsanto wasn’t prepared to be that upfront and nasty.”
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news, the group accused Canada of backing anti-farmer technology by insisting other governments accept the field testing and commercialization of terminator varieties.
Stephen Yarrow, director of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s plant biotechnology office, called the accusations a gross distortion of the facts.
“ETC is doing a terrible disservice to the Canadian government by totally misrepresenting the position of the government at that meeting in Bangkok. We certainly weren’t condoning or endorsing or pushing for field trials or anything like that.”
He said Canadian representatives sitting on a scientific advisory body to the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity were simply encouraging their counterparts to allow for the scientific evaluation of GURTS.
“To just categorically say we are going to ban the whole lot, well that’s not a science-based decision and it’s not one that the government of Canada could support.”
In 2000 the convention adopted a recommendation that GURTS should not be approved for field testing until appropriate scienitific data justifies it.
Canada was OK with that wording but objected to a more recent report from an expert panel calling for an outright ban on field testing.
That report was rejected in Bangkok for failing to accurately reflect the consensus view of the expert panel and the old language adopted back in 2000 was upheld, said Yarrow. He understands why farmers are nervous about a technology that could prevent them from saving their seed.
“It could be very serious for a lot of these developing countries, so absolutely we all acknowledge there are great concerns around this.”
However, terminator genes could also be the answer to a problem that has plagued genetically modified crops. By developing plants that kill their own second-generation seeds, biotech companies could potentially eliminate cross-contamination between genetically modified and traditional crops.
It would be particularly useful for molecular farming applications where crops are genetically modified for pharmaceutical and industrial purposes, preventing what some have referred to as the interferon in your cornflakes dilemma, Yarrow said.
“One could argue that GURTS is the golden dream. It’s the way of controlling (GM crops).”
For groups who oppose agricultural biotechnology, it is more akin to a nightmare.
“Canada is about to launch a devastating kick in the stomach to the world’s most vulnerable farmers Ñ the 1.4 billion people who depend on farm saved seed,” Mooney said.
