The Hindu Business Line : GM foods: Towards an apocalypse

In the over-enthusiasm to promote an expensive technology at the cost of the poor, what has been overlooked is the risk that biotechnology could perhaps widen the great divide between the haves and have-nots. And GM foods produced by the biotechnology corporations will only further exacerbate the food crisis, says Devinder Sharma.

THE noose is slowly tightening. An all-out offensive has been launched, using the three most important instruments of economic power — World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — along with the badly bruised but democratically elected governments. And this time, the target is not oil but to force the world to accept genetically modified foods and crops.

In reality, the battle for controlling the global food chain has begun.

The American administration fired the first missile by formally launching a complaint with the WTO against the European Union for its five-year ban on approving new biotech crops, setting the stage for an international showdown over an increasingly controversial issue. Interestingly, the US Trade Representative, Mr Robert Zoellick, says the European policy is illegal, harming the US economy, stunting the growth of the biotech industry and contributing to increased starvation in the developing world.

Coinciding with the frontal attack through the dispute panel, is a seemingly harmless exercise to close ranks around flawed economic policies. Senior officials of the WTO-IMF-World Bank have begun to deliberate on how to bring greater `coherence' in their policies through ``liberalisation of trade and financial flows, deregulation, privatisation and budget austerity''. As if loan conditions of the IMF/World Bank that have forced developing countries to lower their trade barriers, cut subsidies for their domestic food producers, and eliminate safety nets for rural agriculture were not enough, the WTO Agreement on Agriculture could be used very effectively to allow the US — and 12 other food exporting countries — to dump unwanted genetically altered foods, thereby destroying food self-sufficiency in developing countries and expanding markets for the large grain exporting companies.

Trade and financial manipulations alone are not enough. With the United Nations no longer relevant, any such global offensive needs political allies. Therefore, three ministers from each of the 180 invited countries — and holding the portfolios of Trade, Agriculture and Health — will assemble at downtown Sacramento in California from June 23-25. The invitation, which comes from the US Agriculture Secretary, Ms Ann Veneman, is essentially for educating these democratically elected representatives on the virtues of GM foods, and why they must back the US multinational corporations fight against global hunger. If not, then why must they remain quiet.

The three-pronged attack will force the European Union, to begin with, to either alter its policy toward GM crops and foods, which some consumer groups call as `Franken foods', or face economic sanctions across a range of sectors. For the US, the European markets for genetically modified crops and seed are potentially worth several billion dollars a year. For the rest of the world, Ms Ann Veneman will explain the `consequences' — both economic and political — of not accepting the fruits of `cutting-edge' technology, as genetic engineering is fondly called. Knowing well that these countries will crumble one by one under the domino effect. The first GM Ministerial, therefore, is not open to the public.

The overt and covert machinations to push unhealthy and risky GM foods had actually begun a decade ago. The US has so far opposed the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which has been signed by over 100 countries and was intended to ensure through agreed international rules and regulations that countries have the necessary information to make informed choices about GM foods and crops. Earlier, the US had made every possible attempt to see that the Cartagena Protocol does not come through. And when it did, the US preferred to stay away.

Food aid to starving populations is about meeting the urgent humanitarian needs of those who are in dire need. Ideally, it should not be to push the commercial interests of the biotechnology corporations (while staying away from the international consensus such as the Cartagena Protocol), or planting GM crops for export, or indeed finding outlets for domestic surplus. First finding an outlet for its mounting food surplus through the mid-day meal scheme for African children (force fed through the World Food Programme), the US then literally arm-twisted four African countries to accept GM food at the height of the food scarcity that prevailed in central and southern Africa in 2002. It even tried forcing the International Federation of Red Cross to lift the GM food as part of an international emergency so as to feed the hungry in Africa.

It did not work. Zambia led the resistance against GM foods, saying that it would prefer its poor to die than to feed them with unhealthy food.

The US has finally found a way out to force the African countries into submission. The US Senate has passed a Bill "the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003," (HR 1298)", which in a diplomatic way (calling it as `sense of Congress') links financial aid for combating HIV AIDS with GM food acceptance. Section 104A states that "individuals infected with HIV have higher nutritional requirements than individuals who are not infected with HIV, particularly with respect to the need for protein. Also, there is evidence to suggest that the full benefit of therapy to treat HIV/AIDS may not be achieved in individuals who are malnourished, particularly in pregnant and lactating women."

The next sentence reads: "It is therefore the sense of Congress that the US food assistance should be accepted by countries with large populations of individuals infected or living with HIV/AIDS, particularly African countries, in order to help feed such individuals."

In 1986, the US had enacted a legislation, called Bumper's Amendment, that prohibited "agricultural development activities, consultation, publication, conference, or training in connection with the growth and production in a foreign country of an agricultural commodity for export which would compete with a similar commodity grown or produced in the United States". As a result, the American support for research and development for crops, which competed with those grown in the US were stopped. No wonder, the FAO, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the numerous other developing country agricultural programmes continue to remain starved for financial support.

At the same time, biotechnology research in the developing countries get a tremendous boost for the simple reason that the US knows that none of the developing countries, including India and China, pose any serious threat to the profits of the multinational corporations. In fact, the ongoing biotechnology research programmes in the developing countries only help facilitate the scientific and public acceptance of GM crops and foods.

Never in the past history has any government stepped in to force the world and that too literally down the throat into accepting what it produces. Never before has the world been forced to accept technologies (howsoever risky these might be) and that includes nuclear power, in the name of poor, hungry and sustainable development. Never before has any country tried to force feed a hungry Continent by creating a false scenario of an impending famine, which never happened. Never before has science and technology been sacrificed in such a shameful manner at the altar of commercial growth and profits.

The tragedy is that `good' science has been given a quiet burial. On the other hand, the party for the biotechnology industry has just begun.

The reality of hunger and malnutrition is too harsh to be even properly understood. Hunger cannot be removed by producing transgenic crops with genes for beta-carotene; hunger cannot be addressed by providing mobile phones to the rural communities. Nor can it be eradicated by providing the poor and hungry with an "informed choice'' of novel foods. Somehow, the international community misses the ground realities, misses the woods for the trees to bolster the commercial interests of the biotechnology industries. In its over-enthusiasm to promote an expensive technology at the cost of the poor, what has been overlooked is that biotechnology has the potential to further the great divide between the haves and have-nots.

While the political leadership is postponing the monumental task to halve the number of the world's hungry, the scientific community too has found an easy escape route. At almost all the genetic engineering laboratories, whether in the North or in the South, the focus of research is on transgenic crops that adds to profits, edible vaccines and bio-fortification to address the problems of malnutrition or "hidden hunger'' by incorporating genes for Vitamin A, iron, and other micro-nutrients. But what has been forgotten in the first instance is that unless hunger is removed, `hidden hunger' cannot be eradicated. In other words, if the global scientific and development community were to aim at eradicating hunger at the first place, there would be little "hidden hunger". Much of the existing hunger in the world is because of lopsided trade and economic policies that keep the farmers in rich countries plump with massive subsidies, the resulting impact of which creates more hunger, malnutrition and destitution in the majority world.

GM foods, produced by the biotechnology corporations, will further exacerbate the food crisis — eliminating in the process not hunger but the hungry.

(The author is a New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst. Responses to this article can be emailed to: dsharma@ndf.vsnl.net.in)

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