Death to the suicide seed

>> The campaign against Terminator technology

by DOMINIQUE RITTER

Illustration by Rupert Bottenberg

The idea of consuming foodstuff that originates from something called a "Terminator Seed" is little scary.

But what's in a name?

Well, according to Jean Christie, a Terminator Seed by any other name is still a bad, bad thing. Christie, a member of RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International), thinks that the name suits the seed, and she can imagine no better moniker for the technology that programs seeds to die after one life cycle instead of regenerating as prescribed by Mother Nature.

"That's the name we came up with because, in our view, it is a malevolent technology," Christie told the Mirror. "Our goal is to have Terminator and other similar technologies banned on the grounds of public morality. We're mounting a public campaign against them, and we're calling on countries to ban the technologies." Christie says the technology is antithetical to the idea of food security, or the principle that all people have a right to an abundant food supply.

Suicide technology

RAFI, a Winnipeg-based NGO dedicated to sustainable and socially responsible agricultural practices, has built itself a reputation on poo-pooing Terminator propagators and other manipulators of food genetics. They are also widely credited with making the general public aware of the suicide seed technology in the first place.

Last week, RAFI was in Montreal to make its presence felt at an international conference held by the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), a committee of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which is made up of 174 nations and the European Union. Consider it a body that decides what is good and what is bad when it comes to preserving biodiversity on our planet.

All types of genetic modifications of agricultural production worry RAFI. Christie is concerned about the gene-spliced foods (when the genes of one species are added to the DNA of another) that have already flooded Canadian grocery stores: tomatoes with fish genes and potatoes with scorpion genes, to name a couple.

But unlike these products, which are supposed to give foods certain "desirable" characteristics, such as an extended shelf life and a "built-in" resistance to insects, Terminator's suicide technology only serves to ensure a guaranteed business for the technology manufacturers when farmers buy their annual seed.

"It serves no agronomic purpose at all. Its sole purpose is to stop the natural reproductive process of seeds," said Christie.

The focus of RAFI's interest at last week's conference concerned GURTs (gene use restriction technologies) such as the Terminator seed. RAFI successfully lobbbied the SBSTTA to adopt a moratorium on GURTs. The moratorium now moves to the next level of the Convention on Biological Diversity--but as with any good bureaucracy, the approval of official documentation takes time.

Waiting game

And time is an advantage for RAFI and other anti-Terminator groups. For all the hoopla surrounding Terminator technology, many will be surprised to learn that it isn't available commercially. It has been proven that it can be used in cotton and tobacco crops, but it has even to be "field trialed" on real farms.

"The companies tell us that this technology won't be commercialized for another five years. In other words, there's a window of five years for us to actually block this technology. So that's what we're trying to do: block the patents, mobilize public opinion, force governments to take action to ban their use in different countries."

So not only do companies like American agrochemical colossus Monsanto (the people who brought us the Bovine Growth Hormone) have to overcome government opposition created by RAFI's rabble-rousing at get-togethers like last week's conference, but they must also try to evade the pitfalls of poor public opinion--which may prove impassable, if what Christie theorizes comes true.

The new stipulation in the U.K. that genetically modified foods be labeled as such (brought about by adamant and very public opposition to cyberfoods), according to Christie, will likely encourage anti-genetic engineering sentiment to heat up in Canada as well.

"I think what's going to happen on that front is that the North American producers of organic and non-genetic-engineered foods are going to end up voluntarily labelling their stuff. There is a market in Europe that is increasingly demanding that and, eventually, the choice will be available to all consumers."