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The Space Between 02
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" <cclash@web.apc.org>
To: pauls@etext.org
Subject: sub
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the space between
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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.
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The means are to the end as the seed is to the tree.
attributed to Ghandi.
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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.
