From cclash@web.apc.orgThu Jan 18 11:46:17 1996 Date: Thu, 18 Jan 96 10:48:04 -0500 (EST) From: "Jocelyn J. Paquette Bob Ewing" To: pauls@etext.org Subject: sub 00100101010100001010101000101010110101010101010001010101010101010 10101010101010010101010000010011111110010010101010001010101010101 the space between 101010101001010110101001010110100101010 101010100010111010101010101010010110110 Welcome to the space between an bi-monthly ezine exploring culture, art, society and creation. the space between is published by culture clash communications [cclash@web.apc.org] Editor: Rl Ewing #2 January/February 1996. 010101101101010010100101010101010110110101010101 The means are to the end as the seed is to the tree. attributed to Ghandi. 010101101101101011010101110100101010101010101010101 EDITOR's CORNER: I've elected to publish two important articles distributed by the Third World Features Network. These artilces are essential to understanding the impact that agribusiness has on food production and the impact that this has on society. BIOTECHNOLOGY WILL WORSEN AGRICULTURAL PROBLEMS Genetic engineering, says the writer, will add to the envi ronmental costs of agriculture, instead of reducing them. It will make agriculture non-sustainable rather than sustain able. Further, new health risks can be introduced through transgenic crops. By Vandana Shiva Third World Network Features Amarnath, or ramdana, grown across India in traditional farming systems, is the world's most nutritious grain. It comes in many varieties, and can be popped, baked and cooked. Its leaves and stems are also nutritious, containing more than twice the protein of other cereals. And it is environmental friendly. Prof Ashish Datta of Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Department of Biotechnology have filed a patent for transferring the gene that codes for protein in amarnath to other cereals like rice and wheat. The patent will cover the isolation of the gene and delivery/transfer or construct for transferring the gene into other crops. It will be applicable in the US and Europe. What does the patent for a transgenic crop using amarnath genes imply for biodiversity and human health and nutrition? It has been claim that the transgenic crop will enhance the protein level of edible oils. However, a comparison of the nutrition available from polycultures based on amarnath as well as the nutrition available from amarnath clearly shows this claim to be false. Amarnath is not just a source of high protein. It has high calcium and iron too. These multiple and complex nutritional properties do not get transferred to the transgenic crop. Transfering the amarnath protein gene to rice, for example, thus does not increase overall nutrition; it decreases it. Besides, people do not eat only ice, but rice with dal. The balance comes from the rice and dal mixture, not from rice alone. By trying to increase the protein content of rice through genetic engineering, dal as a source of a balanced protein composition is being negated. In addition, the transgenic rice wll have none of the built- in resilience of amarnath. It wll be vulnerable to diseases, pests and drought, thus requirng intensive chemical and intensive water use. The development of transgenic crop with amarnath genes will lead to the displacement of amanath itself as companies with investments in research and patents will have to promote the spread of the transgenes. Genetically engineering amaranth genes in rice will add to the environmental costs of agriculture, instead of reducing them. It will make agriculture non-sustainable rather than sustainable. Further, new health risks can be introduced through such transgenic crops. The extreme form of genetic determinism which assumes that each specific character of an organism is encoded in a spe cific, stable gene so that the transfer of a gene results in the transfer of a character, has already been rejected by the majority of biologists and the intellectual community, because it fails to take into account the complex interactions between genes and their products that are involved in the develoment of all characters. In many cases, it has been impossible to predict the consequences of transferring a gene from one type of organism to another. Furthermore changing a gene's cellular and surrounding environment can produce a cascade of further unpredictable changes that could be harmful. The essence of a genome is self organisation -- elements that fit together. Complexes of effective genes form coherent wholes, which vary within usually stale patterns. However, genomes of all organisms are known to be subject to a host of destabilising processes, so that the transferred gene may mutate, transpose, or rearrange within the genome, and may even be transferred to another organism. As a consequence of genetic engineering, the stabilising or `buffering' control circuits are exposed to disruption thus threatening the stability of organisms and ecosystems. In transgenic plants particularly, there is abundant empiri cal proof that genetic engineering is indeterminate and uncertain. A classic example is the maize A1 gene that has been introduced into a white flowering mutant of Petunia hybrid wqhich has lresulted i transgenic plants with flower colours ranging from brick red through variegated to white. However, during a field trial of 300,000 plants, the number of plants producing flowers with white or variegated petals and plants with weakly pigmented blooms varied during the season. The study linked the stability of the transgene with environmental stress and endogenous factors such as the age of the parent plant. The effect of environmental factors of the stability of transgene expression has also been evidenced by transgenic alfalfa. Studies with rice plants genetically engineered to resist kanamycin showed not merely that this trait, though inherit ed, was not expressed in the progeny but also that gene amplification or loss occurred in the progeny of the same parent plant. Problems like silencing or suppression of the inherited gene suggest that this phenomenon results from events that are an integral part of normal gene expression in plants. The way plants recognise the specifically inactivate foreign DNA is not known; but all evidence points to the possibility that the newly integrated DNA may be recognised as foreign. The unpredictability and uncertainty that accompanies genetic engineering has serious implications at two levels; that of the biosafety of transgenic organisms; and that of patents fo them. Given the factors of instability and uncertainty of genetic engineering, the `safety' of genetically engineered oganisms cannot be taken as a prior assumption. As more transgenic crops leave the controlled environment of research greenhouses and are subjected to natural variation in farmers' fields, problems associated with transgene instability will increase in magnitude. Datta, who has a co-application for the patent claim on the amarnath gene, is also the head of the commission meant to decide on biosafety regulations, which has recently permitted Proagro Seed Company of India and Plant Genetic Systems (PGS) of Belgium to deliberately release hybrid brassica (which includes mustard and rapeseed) and hybrid tomatoes at the Proagro Research Station at Gurgaon, near New Delhi. The tomato variety will contain a Bt gene and the mustard will tolerate the herbicide Basta produced by Hoechst. When contacted, the Department of Biotechnology first contended that such release was safe, and then admitted that information on biosafety based on which the permission was granted was supplied by PGS on the basis of its own work in this field. Genetically engineered herbicide tolerance carries with it enormous environmental risks. A primary concern is that such resistant plant could themselves become weeds, or transfer their resistance to wild relatives, which would then become super weeds, especially in countries which have developed the crop in the first place and where numerous farmers' varieties still exist. A study conducted by University of California-Riverside geneticist Norman Ellstrand has confirmed that genetic traits of crops can be transferred to their wild relatives by even hybrid varieties by simple polination. Besides, such varieties will encourage the use of more herbicides. Likewise, the Bt gene has also proved to be less effective and more hazardous both for the environment and for lifeforms other than those targeted than claimed. Transgenic plants with the bt component produce anti-pest toxin continuously, leading to increasing Bt resistance. Further, Bt ingestion can result in feeding inhibition in the pest before it has absorbed a lethal dose of the toxin. Bt has also been shown to target beneficial insects, and has been linked to the creation of newer resistant virus varie ties as well as multiple virus infections. In humans, it has been incriminated in severe types of eye infection that can lead to blindness, besides food poisoning. Microbiologists agree that the most obvious potential hazard associated with Bt is to individuals whose immune defences are impaired. Such individuals comprise most of the Third World populations as immune defences become impaired by diseases like measles in childhood and malaria, besides AIDs. Developing biosafety regulations is thus imperative in environmental and public interest. The instability and unpredictability of genetic engineering also have implications for intellectual property rights in the area of lifeforms. Patents to genetically modified organisms are given on grounds that these are biotechnological inventions. Such a patent claim is based on the false assumption that genes make organisms and, therefore, the makers of transgenic genes make transgenic organisms. Proteins are not made by genes but by a complex system of chemical production involving other proteins. Genes cannot make themselves any more than they can make a protein. They are made by a complex machinery of proteins. It is also not genes that are self-replicating but the entire organism as a complex system. Thus relocating genes does not amount to making an entire organism. Organism `makes' itself. To claim that an organism and its future genetations are products of an investor's mind needing to be protected by international property rights as biotechnological innovations amounts to denying the self-organising, self-replicating structures of organisms. Put simply, it amounts to a theft of nature's creativity. Granting patents for genetically engineered organisms becomes even more inappropriate because biologists who claim patents on life often have to use `junk DNA' (95% DNA whose function is not known). In the case of the transgenic sheep Tracy, called a `biotechnological invention',, the scientists at PPL (the company holding the patent on Tracy) had to use `junk DNA' to get high yields of alpha-i- antitrypsin. As Ron James, director, says, `We left some of these random bits of DNA in the gene, essentially as God provided it and that produced high yield.' However, their patent claims are proof that PPl is claiming to be God. The primary threat to diverse forms of life as both biologi cal and cultural diversity comes from this reductionist/mechanistic paradigm which has devalued most species, and all non-Western non-reductionist knowledge systems, leading to species extinction and erosion, and cultural extinction and erosion. Conservation of biological and cultural diversity calls for transcending of the dominant reductionist trends in biology. The need of the hour is a post-reductionist trends in biolo gy. The need of the hour is a post-reductionist biology in which humans and other species stand as equal but diverse partners and modern biology ad ancient systems of life sciences stand side by side in a pluralism.- Third World Network Features - ends - About the witer: Vandana Shiva is a leading environmental scientist in India and the author of Staying Alive and many other books and articles on issues related to resources, the environment and women. GLOBAL FOOD SURPLUSES GENERATE FAMINE Although world agriculture has now the capacity to satisfy the food requirements of mankind, the spectre of famine still stalks the world. This paradox is to be explained by the fact that famine in the era of globalisation is not the consequence of a scarcity of food, but of a structure of global oversupply which undermines food security and national agriculture.(First of a two-part article) By Michel Chossudovsky Third World Network Features In the late 20th century, famine is not a consequence of a shortage of food. On the contrary, famines are spurted as a result of a global oversupply of grain staples. Famine has become a worldwide phenomenon: death and starvation are striking simultaneously in all major regions of the world: Sub-Saharan Africa, Northeast Brazil, South Asia, the Andean altiplano of South America, the former Soviet Union. >From the dry savannah of the Sahelian belt, famine has extended its grip into the wet tropical heartland. A large part of the population of the African continent is affected. There are several million people in famine zones in India and Bangladesh. Moreover, in the labour-surplus economies of South Asia and the Far East (eg. India, China, Indonesia), an important segment of the rural and urban population driven well below the poverty line due to the absence of employment opportunities, is seriously at risk. Hunger and deprivation, however, are no longer limited to the Third World: the economic crisis is conducive to a process of global impoverishment resulting in unemployment, homelessness and low wages in the urban ghettoes and shanty towns, and the destruction of the independent farmer in Europe and North America. Low levels of food consumption and malnutrition are increasingly hitting the urban poor in the rich countries. According to a recent study, 30 million people in the United States are classified as hungry. What are the underlying causes? The global TV image spotlights the victims of civil war, drought and flood. Famine in Somalia or Mozambique is mechanically ascribed to the external political and climatic factors: the absence of rain-carrying clouds and air pressure anomalies... History is distorted, only the surface and colour of world events are disclosed. Somalia was self-sufficient in food until the 1970s; what precipitated the collapse of civil society? Why were food agriculture and nomadic pastoralism destroyed? Complex and far-reaching changes in the global economy have taken place since the early 1980s which redefine the structure of both industry and agriculture. The family farm is driven into bank- ruptcy, the agricultural producer loses control over the land which he farms. And in the developing countries, the peasantry is increasingly transformed into an army of landless seasonal plan- tation workers. The earnings of farmers in rich and poor countries alike are squeezed by a handful of global agro-industrial enterprises which simultaneously control the markets for grain, farm inputs, seeds and processed foods. One giant firm Cargill Inc. with more than 140 affiliates and subsidiaries around the world controls a large share of the international trade in grain. Since the 1950s, Cargill has become the main contractor of US food aid funded under Public Law 480 (1954). With the signing of the final act of the Uruguay Round, the articles of agreement of the new World Trade Organisation (WTO) will give unrestricted freedom to the food giants to enter the seeds makets of developing countries and establish plant breeders' rights to the detriment of millions of small farmers. The acquisition of exclusive intellectual property rights over plant varieties by international agro-industrial interests, also favours the destruction of biodiversity. World agriculture has for the first time in history the capacity to satisfy the food requirements of the entire planet, yet the very nature of the global market system prevents this from occurring. The capacity to produce food is immense yet the levels of food consumption remain exceedingly low because a large proportion of the worlds population lives in conditions of abject poverty and deprivation. Moreover, the process of modernisation of agriculture (including the Green Revolution) has led to the dispossession of the peasantry, increased landlessness and environmental degradation. In other words, the very forces which encourage global food production to expand are also conducive to a contraction in the standard of living and a decline in the demand for food. The economic policy actions of G-7 governments and the Washing- ton-based international financial institutions tend to support this worldwide restructuring of agriculture. National agriculture and the independent peasantry are undermined, demand and supply relations are remoulded. Global impoverishment since the debt crisis tends to favour stagnation in the production of basic food staples while redirecting agriculture towards high value added non-staple and processed foods. Throughout the developing world, food security is destroyed, the national grain market is displaced, grain prices are realigned with those of the world market and the peasantry is subordinated to the requirements of the global food monopolies. In turn, local-level merchants and money lenders as well as bureaucrats become increasingly tied into the interests of the food transnationals. The food giants are not only the recipients of US food aid, but have become development brokers in a wide range of agro-industrial projects funded under PL 480. With direct access to the World Bank, the US Department of Agriculture and the national governments, they exercise a dominant role in shaping the agricultural policy of indebted countries. Since the early 1990s a similar reform pattern has affected the countries of the former Eastern bloc with devastating economic and social consequences. In September 1994, the Ukraine signed an agreement on macro-economic reform with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which laid the basis for the restructuring of its agricultural sector. The IMF shock treatment implemented in October 1994 wreaked havoc: the price of bread increased overnight by 300%, electricity prices by 600%, public transportation by 900%. Combined with the abrupt hikes in fuel and energy prices, the lifting of subsidies and the freeze on credit will contribute to destroying the Ukraines breadbasket economy. In November 1994, World Bank negotiators were examining the overhaul of the Ukraines agriculture. With trade liberalisation (which is part of the proposed package), the door is open to the dumping of US grain surpluses and food aid on the domestic market. This would contribute to destabilising one of the worlds largest and most productive wheat economies. Third World Network Features - ends - About the writer: Michel Chossudovsky is a Professor of Econom- ics, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, Canada. THE JOYFUL NOISE Ring a bell! Bang a gong! Pound a drum! On October 31, 1996 at 6:00pm eastern standard time join the Joyful Noise. Once you have made your noise create a mail or email art piece to commemorate your experience. Please limit size to 8x10 inches. mail all work to Culture Clash Communications for exhibit in mid-November 1996. Mailing address Culture Clash Communications, Box 24046, 70 N. Court Street, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, P7A 8A9; email: cclash@web.acp.org. All entries will be exhibited.