Lies and Hype -NGOs Denounce United Nations
Report on Biotech

Note: There is also a Response from Food First below
GREENPEACE HITS UNDP REPORT FOR BLIND BIOTECH BIAS

10 July 2001

London/Manila/Mexico City - Greenpeace today deplored the ill-advised
pro-biotech prescriptions of the newly released Human Development
Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), stressing
that the report presents as facts the unsubstantiated promises of the
genetic engineering (GE) industry while dismissing the environmental
risks and ignoring the real challenges of agriculture in developing
countries.

"While the report in general follows the UNDP's highly respected
tradition of providing hard facts and a critical view on major
development issues, its assessment of Agricultural Biotechnology
suspiciously reads as if it had been written by a Public Relations
agency to promote genetically modified organisms (GMOs)," said Von
Hernandez, Campaign Director for Greenpeace in Southeast Asia.

The UNDP report claims that GMOs would increase yields and nutritional
properties and provide solutions for complex agricultural challenges
such as pest control and drought. However, no single GMO on the market
fulfils such promises and is of any relevance to the pressing needs of
agriculture in developing countries.

"The UNDP of all agencies should know that complex problems of hunger
and agricultural development will not be solved by technological
'silver bullets'. The real crisis is the obvious neglect of research
and investment in the further development and spread of sustainable
and ecological agriculture technologies," added Hernandez.

Support for agriculture has decreased dramatically during the last 10
years. Overall technical co-operation in the field of agriculture,
forestry and fisheries from all OECD donor countries has been halved
from more than 7 billion US Dollars in 1989 to less 3 billion in 1999.
The cut in support for agriculture has been particularly dramatic by
the multilateral institutions like UNDP and the World Bank from 3.5
billion in 1989 to less than 500 million in 1999. (1)

"For UNDP to promote GMOs in developing countries as a solution after
giving up any substantial role in supporting agricultural development
is extremely hypocritical and does not help the credibility of UNDP in
any way. Instead of naively advocating the export of ill-devised and
unsafe GE technology in the South, agencies like the UNDP should
concentrate on the dissemination and promotion of proven and
sustainable methods to improve agricultural practices," added
Hernandez. (2)

Furthermore, Greenpeace considers the report's approach to the
environmental risks associated with the release of GMOs into the
environment and to their potential health risks to be frivolous. It
ignores the general agreement among the scientific community that
especially long-term environmental risks of GMOs cannot be assessed by
present scientific means and that a lot of additional research would
be needed to even properly assess the food safety of such varieties.
(3)

"The reality is that GMOs are facing increased resistance in all
industrialised countries and the global agrochemical and GE companies
are dumping these questionable technologies on developing countries.
To claim that the growing concern in the South was exported by
Northern conservationists is an insult not only to hundreds of
southern non-governmental groups working on this issue, but also to
the majority of Southern governments, who have fought hard against
industry and US attempts to prevent an International Biosafety
Protocol, which has been adopted last year and clearly advocates a
precautionary approach in agricultural biotechnology," said Hernandez.

Greenpeace fully supports access to new technologies for developing
countries, including those of biotechnology (4). Developing countries
must urgently be in a position to identify GMOs imported into their
territories and should be enabled to devise their own and proper
approach to apply new insights from molecular biology. The most
promising applications of these technologies do not require risky
releases of GMOs, but improvements of present breeding technologies,
e.g. by use of genomics.

"The Northern Industry hype about GMOs will not feed the world but
could put entire ecosystems at risk thereby posing greater threats to
global food security," concluded Hernandez

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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Von Hernandez, Campaigns Director, Greenpeace South East
Asia, Mob: +639175263050;
Benedikt Haerlin, Co-ordinator, Greenpeace International Genetic
Engineering Campaign,
Tel: +493030889912.
In Mexico City, Raul Benet, Executive Director of Greenpeace
Mexico, Mob: +5273289629,
Tel: +5285905645; Greenpeace Mexico Press Office, Cecilia
Navarro, Mob: +52 73289629;
Greenpeace International Press Office, Teresa Merilainen, Tel:
+31205236637
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(1) OECD Development Assistance Committee, 2001 Official Commitments
(or Disbursements) by Sector (Table 5) (Bilateral & Regional Banks),
at http://www.oecd.org/scripts/cde/viewbase.asp?dbname=cde_dac
(2) A study commissioned to Prof. Jules Pretty by Greenpeace Germany
and Bread for the World, and supported by the UK Development agency
recently presented more than 200 cases all over the world that showed
sustainable and productive farming practices are possible in the most
different environments. The report is available at:
http://www2.essex.ac.uk/ces/ResearchProgrammes/CESOccasionalPapers/SAF
ErepSUBHEADS.htm

A recent case of contamination of food with a potentially allergenic
corn variety in the United States illustrates the inadequacy of risk
management tools available in this country. Despite spending hundreds
of millions of dollars, the company Aventis, who caused the
contamination, recently admitted that it was unable to fully recall
their "Starlink" corn and that it had contaminated up to 20% of the
entire corn production of the USA. In Europe there is a moratorium on
any new commercial GMO releases as member states deem the present
safety system inadequate.

(4 ) The single most important obstacle to proper access to these
technologies are Intellectual Property Rights, which are designed to
allow private property claims over single traits of varieties as well
as entire plants and animals. Companies like Monsanto, Syngenta,
Aventis or DuPont are carefully constructing and tighter and tighter
net of dependency and total control not only over genetically
engineered organisms but ultimately over any useful genetic traits and
varieties, thus usurping the common heritage of global diversity, most
of which is located in developing countries.

Think Tank Report Challenges U.N. on Genetic Engineering

FULL REPORT ON-LINE: "Genetic Engineering of Food Crops for the Third
World: An Appropriate Response to Poverty, Hunger and Lagging
Productivity?" by Dr. Peter Rosset
http://www.foodfirst.org/progs/global/biotech/belgium-gmo.html

[contact info at end]

OAKLAND, CA: Comments about genetically engineered (GE) crops
expressed in the just-released "Human Development Report 2001", the
flagship publication of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), reveal
a shocking lack of understanding of the production problems that must
be confronted by poor farmers in marginal environments in the third
world, according to a crop science expert at a U.S.-based think tank.

The authors of the U.N. report urged rich countries to put aside their
fears of genetically modified organisms and help developing nations
unlock the potential of biotechnology. "Biotechnology offers the only
or the best 'tool of choice' for marginal ecological zones, left
behind by the green revolution but home to more than half the world's
poorest people," they said.

The reality of farming in these regions, however, is such that GE
crops are likely to do more harm than good, according to a report from
a leading food policy think tank, the Institute for Food and
Development Policy (Food First), based in in Oakland, California, USA.

In this report, "Genetic Engineering of Food Crops for the Third
World: An Appropriate Response to Poverty, Hunger and Lagging
Productivity?," the Institute's co-director and author of the report,
Dr. Peter Rosset, argues the approach of genetic engineering, which is
to produce single, genetically uniform varieties, ignores the needs of
farmers in complex habitats for multiple varieties fine-tuned to local
soil and climatic conditions. "Genetically engineering is just not
capable of producing what poor farmers need," said Dr. Rosset, an
agricultural scientist himself. "Hands-on participatory plant
breeding, where farmers themselves take the lead, has been shown to be
far more effective in producing the crop varieties needed by poor
farmers in marginal environments. Furthermore," he added,"the risks
associated with GE crops are likely to impact poor farmers more than
rich farmers."

According the Dr. Rosset's report, small and peasant farmers, despite
their disadvantaged position in society, are the primary producers of
staple foods, accounting for very high percentages of national
production in most third world countries.

Their agriculture is complex, diverse and risk prone. This is because
they have historically been displaced into marginal zones
characterized by broken terrain, slopes, irregular rainfall, little
irrigation, and/or low soil fertility; and because they are poor and
are victimized by pervasive anti-poor and anti-small farmer biases in
national and global economic policies.

In order to survive under such circumstances, and to improve their
standard of living, they must be able to tailor agricultural
technologies to their variable but unique circumstances, in terms of
local climate, topography, soils, biodiversity, cropping systems,
market insertion, resources, etc. For this reason such farmers have
over millennia evolved complex farming and livelihood systems which
balance risks -- of drought, of market failure, of pests, etc. --
with factors such as labor needs versus availability, investment
needed, nutritional needs, seasonal variability, etc. Typically their
cropping systems involve multiple annual and perennial crops, animals,
fodder, even fish, and a variety of foraged wild products. Under such
highly varied circumstances, uniform varieties, such as those put
forth under the green revolution, or newer GE or 'transgenic' crop
varieties, are unlikely to be widely adopted or found useful by many
such farmers.

When GE crop varieties, carrying the Bt insecticide gene, for example,
are "forced" into such cropping systems, the risks are much greater
than in large, wealthy farmer systems, or farming systems in Northern
countries. For example, in the Third World there will typically be
more sexually compatible wild relatives of crops present, making
pollen transfer to weed populations of insecticidal properties, virus
resistance, and other genetically engineered traits more likely, with
possible food chain and super-weed consequences. Such farmers are
unlikely to plant refuges, making resistance evolution by insects more
likely. Horizontal transfer of genetic material is also highly risky
in such circumstances. The associated risks of super-weeds, new crop
varieties, among others, are likely to put the poor in a more
precarious position.

Furthermore, the widespread crop failures reported for GE varieties
(i.e., stem splitting, boll drop, etc.) pose economic risks which can
affect poor farmers much more severely than wealthy farmers. If
consumers reject their products, economic risks are equally high.
Also, the high costs of GE crops introduce an anti-poor bias.

The risks seem to outweigh the potential benefits for such farmers,
especially when we consider the factors that currently limit their
ability to improve their livelihoods, and the proven agroecological,
participatory and empowering alternatives available to them.

It is not a lack of technology which holds such farmers back, but
rather pervasive injustices and inequities in access to resources,
including land, credit, market access, etc., and other anti-poor
policy biases. Two approaches make the most sense under such
conditions: 1) technologies which have pro-poor diseconomies of
scale, like agroecological or organic farming practices, and 2)
building social movements capable of exerting sufficient political
pressure to reverse policy biases. There is little useful role that
genetic engineering can play, the report concludes.

###

FULL REPORT ON-LINE

"Genetic Engineering of Food Crops for the Third World: An Appropriate
Response to Poverty, Hunger and Lagging Productivity?"

by Dr. Peter Rosset

http://www.foodfirst.org/progs/global/biotech/belgium-gmo.html

Nick Parker
Media Coordinator
Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First
398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618 USA
Phone: (510) 654-4400 (ext. 229) Fax: (510) 654-4551
nparker@foodfirst.org

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