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Biotech boom linked to development dollars
By Katherine Stapp
New York City, New York, Dec. 3 (IPS)— Even as an international
debate rages over the safety and wisdom of planting genetically modified
(GM) crops, they continue to spread like wildfire, particularly in developing
countries.
Farmland devoted to GM crops — which are implanted with foreign
genes to boost production or other desirable traits like pesticide resistance
— grew by 12 percent last year, to 58.7 million hectares, according
to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications
(ISAAA), an untiring biotechnology advocate.
In fact, more than one-fifth of the global crop of soybeans, corn, cotton
and canola is now biotech. By 2005, ISAAA predicts the market value
of GM crops will reach $5 billion.
Much of this boom is in South Asia, Latin America and Africa, where
some proponents of sustainable agriculture — as in the North —
fear their concerns have been overridden by links between the biotech
industry and powerful development institutions like the World Trade
Organization (WTO) and World Bank.
For example, Eija Pehu, a senior scientist in the Bank’s department
of agriculture and rural development (ARD), is listed on the website
of the ISAAA — whose main funders include biotech industry giants
Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer Crop Science — as a member of its
board of directors.
According to the website, the board “oversees programmatic, organizational
and policy strategies.”
The Bank, says Pehu, a former president of Finnish biotech company Unicrop
Ltd., has not attended any board meetings, and a decision by an internal
Bank committee to approve her position on the board is still pending.
Gabrielle Persley, an advisor to the Bank on biotechnology issues, is
also listed as director of ISAAA programs.
With research centers in Africa, Asia and North America, ISAAA describes
its objective as “the transfer and delivery of appropriate biotechnology
applications to developing countries.”
Its current projects include introducing GM sweet potatoes and bananas
in Kenya and Vietnam; it has pursued similar initiatives in at least
10 other developing countries.
Robert Thompson, who headed the World Bank’s ARD from 2000-2001,
is now chairman of the Washington-based International Food and Agricultural
Trade Policy Council (IPC), a promoter of biotechnology and trade liberalization
whose “sustaining sponsors” are Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland,
Cargill Inc., Kraft Foods International and Syngenta Ag. Company —
a veritable who’s who of the top agri-business concerns in the
world.
Together, these firms — and others like Dow AgroSciences —
dominate the $31 billion pesticide market and the $30 billion agricultural
seed market.
Another link between the World Bank and industry is the Bank’s
staff exchange program. In the past it has brought in representatives
from Dow, Aventis and Syngenta to work in the ARD, and dispatched employees
for stints at Rhone-Poulenc (since merged into Aventis) and Novartis
Agribusiness.
The program has also included exchanges with academic institutions,
governments and United Nations development agencies.
“The influence of the biotech industry in these various international
institutions is consistent with their influence at the national level,
particularly here in the United States,” said Ben Lilliston of
the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a Minnesota-based non-profit
group that advocates sustainable farming.
“A lawyer who had previously represented Monsanto actually wrote
the primary US regulation for biotech foods at the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) in 1992. He later went to work for Monsanto after leaving the
FDA,” Lilliston said in an interview.
“The US Department of Agriculture [USDA] is full of former biotech
industry employees — including USDA Secretary Ann Veneman, who
served on the board of Calgene, which was responsible for the biotech
tomato and later bought up by Monsanto,” he added.
World Bank staff have told civil society groups that industry figures
also have less visible but equally significant ways of influencing Bank
decisions, like daily phone calls and visits to the Bank, or directing
its staff to outside scientists and researchers who are aligned with
industry’s agenda.
With nearly one-sixth of humanity chronically undernourished, the conflict
over biotechnology has also been framed as one pitting wealthy northern
consumers and environmentalists, who can afford to reject the technology,
against poor southern farmers in desperate need of increasing production.
But that is not how biotech critics see the issue.
Michael Goldman, a professor at the University of Illinois who has written
and edited several books critical of the World Bank, said in an interview
the rejection of biotech foods in Europe and elsewhere could mean the
loss of crucial export markets for southern countries that adopt the
technology.
The European Union (EU) is nearing the end of a five-year moratorium
on GM crops, which has often put it at odds with the US embrace of biotech
foods.
“Farmers all over the world have been forced to rethink the latest
biotech goods being sold to them,” added Goldman. “Without
a European market, it may be too risky for them to use GM seeds.”
According to Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, a senior scientist at the Pesticide
Action Network (PAN), “The World Bank’s policies are heavily
steered by the United States, while the Europeans are expressing concerns
the Bank should take a more precautionary approach [on biotech].”
PAN, an umbrella group of more than 600 non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) worldwide working to phase out hazardous pesticides, is funded
largely by foundations and individual donations.
At the World Bank — which will spend some $2 billion on agricultural
projects this year and next — the countries that give the most
funding have the most votes, making the United States its largest shareholder.
Washington has contributed a total of about $28 billion to the Bank’s
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International
Finance Corporation, or 16.8 percent and 24 percent respectively of
the bodies’ funding from governments.
Critics also contend that the real target of biotech companies is not
the small farmer in the South, but crops for industry on a global scale.
“Crops grown for that market — Soya, canola, cotton, maize
— which are used for either industrial-processed food production
or for animal feed in Europe and North America — have absolutely
no application for the wide array of sustainable agricultural solutions
that are necessary in the developing world,” Kronick said.
Others worry about the long-term environmental and health impacts of
the biotech revolution.
“Because there is so little governmental, industry or university
research on the risks of biotech, the NGO community has had to do it
on its own in many cases,” said Lilliston.
“For example, two years ago an illegal variety of GM corn was found
in the food supply, called StarLink corn. This was discovered by Friends
of the Earth, not the industry and not USDA.”
In the StarLink case, a brand of GM corn that had only been approved
for animal feed somehow found its way into numerous food products in
the United States, including taco shells and tortilla chips.
Allegations that StarLink caused allergic reactions in some people prompted
more than 300 product recalls and raised questions about the efficacy
of government regulation of GM products.
Conservation groups demand EPA stop using
illegal insider chemical group to forge policy
Washington, DC, Dec. 2— Conservation and pesticide watchdog
groups sent a letter demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) stop giving illegal special access to a group of chemical corporations.
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and other sources
reveal that the corporate insider group has met regularly with EPA officials
in secret and has urged the EPA to weaken regulations that protect endangered
species from pesticides.
The chemical companies are pushing the EPA to weaken pesticide safeguards
by cutting expert biologists in the US Fish and Wildlife Service and
NOAA Fisheries out of consultations determining the effects of pesticides
on wildlife. At the companies’ urging, EPA has started a rulemaking
to reserve authority over such evaluations to itself.
“[The] EPA is letting the pesticide industry have inside influence
over the fate of endangered species poisoned by toxic pesticides,”
said Patti Goldman of Earthjustice, which sent the demand letter on
behalf of the conservation and watchdog groups.
Federal law prohibits the government from using and meeting in secret
with such insider groups. Congress has established good government standards
that prevent secret and one-sided advisory bodies of wealthy special
interests. The Federal Advisory Committee Act prohibits the federal
government from obtaining advice from committees comprised of only the
regulated industry. That act also requires that the meetings of advisory
groups be open to the public.
“[The] EPA has an open door policy to the biggest chemical companies
in America while excluding the rest of us,” said Mike Senatore
of Defenders of Wildlife. “That’s not right. In America all
voices are supposed to be heard, not just wealthy interests that make
campaign contributions.”
In 2000, the EPA established this chemical industry group, known as
the FIFRA Endangered Species Task Force, to develop data disclosing
the locations of endangered species. The task force is comprised of
14 agro-chemical companies. It meets regularly with EPA officials in
closed meetings and has no public interest representatives. Over the
past year, the chemical industry task force has shifted its efforts
away from generating data to advocating that the EPA circumvent the
Endangered Species Act for pesticide uses that harm federally protected
species. It has become the chief proponent of new pesticide regulations
that would eliminate expert oversight over species protections. In early
2003, the EPA announced its plan to issue such regulations, and it plans
to propose new rules by the end of the year.
“For years, [the] EPA has flouted its obligation to protect endangered
species from pesticides,” said Aaron Colangelo of the Natural Resources
Defense Council. “Now that the courts are directing [the] EPA to
comply with its duties, the pesticide industry and the Bush administration
have come up with a new trick for delaying species protections.”
The group sending the letter have told the EPA they will consider pursuing
legal action if EPA does not commit to bring its actions into compliance
with the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Natural Resources Defense Council,
the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Washington
Toxics Coalition, and Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides,
represented by Earthjustice, sent the demand letter.
Source: Earthjustice.org
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