Frankenfood and the WTO - bite back!

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BITE BACK: WTO HANDS OFF OUR FOOD!

Sign the Citizens' Objection to the WTO!

Biotech companies have invested billions into genetically modified foods (called GMOs) products that nobody needs and nobody wants. Such products take away consumer choice, make farmers dependent on big business and undermine food security in developing countries. Nobody knows what risks they pose to people's health and the environment.

To force GMO products into global markets, George Bush has filed a legal dispute at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), accusing the European Union of blocking trade by restricting GMOs. If successful, not only will the EU have to accept genetically modified food and farming but so will the rest of the world.

You can help stop Bush and the WTO: Bite back and sign the Citizens Objection to the WTO online.

Also see the article of Aruna Rodrigues-Clarke of Sunray Harvesters, India, which puts GMOs into the context of future food security and agricultural production of the developing countries.

Received from: Aruna Rodrigues-Clarke
By way of: Dr. Leo Rebello
Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2003 10:16 AM

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" A year after…a massive spraying…there was not a sound of the song of bird….. What was man doing to…our beautiful world.… Who has made the decision that sets in motion…this ever-widening wave of death." From Rachael Carson’s "Silent Spring"

Food Security, The WTO, GMOs & The Need for a Global Ethic
Call for a Global Moratorium on GMOs
By Aruna Rodrigues

[Aruna Rodrigues-Clarke of Sunray Harvesters, India, is an economist and project management consultant. She works in the field of photovoltaics (PV) for sustainable energy solutions: promoting PV applications and its commercialisation in a developing economy. This article written by her in Sept. 2003. Special acknowledgement: Devinder Sharma’s "The Great Trade Robbery". Aruna's Email : sunray_harvesters@vsnl.net]

In the 1930s, CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons) were presumed by the scientific community, to be one of the most environmentally benign of substances, in fact environmentally safe. Decades later, and well into the foreseeable future, we are faced with the unfortunate legacy of this great error of judgement --- the disastrous impact of these ozone-depleting substances. We should be so humble, especially our fraternity of scientists and technology pundits, to think that we can be so simplistic in matters concerning our natural environment and muck around in any fashion with Mother Nature. But history keeps repeating itself with a wearying regularity, precisely because we are not so humble. We now have dangerously contaminated ground-water, and deadly pesticides have entered our food chain. The effects of such pesticides on the health of our population and other third-world countries make appalling reading. We have even contaminated "mother’s milk". Now we face an even more potent threat to the survival of our world. I am of course talking about genetically modified organism (GMOs). Whichever way we vote on the subject, we need to recognise that it is the single most potent technology that the world has known: it has the power to disrupt Mother Nature as nothing else before, even atomic power. Add to this, money and the power of Multinational Corporations, Pharmaceutical and Biotech Companies, ably aided and abetted by the US FDA, the WTO and Bretton Woods Institutions.

This is the potent cocktail of power in all of its guises that confronts us on the issue of GMOs in foods and agriculture. Yet GMOs whether in the form of seeds, foods or agricultural trials, are being ‘exported’ forcibly and forcefully by America with official approbation. As a consequence they are being released and deployed by the most insidious and devious means throughout our environment without virtually any safeguards: and this is precisely the point.

The Independent Science Panel on GE (ISP) was set up because scientists have felt frustrated by the lack of open debate at Government-sponsored meetings, (including the UK Government) which are stacked by GMO-supporting scientists who routinely back GM foods as being absolutely safe. In this set-up, looking for independent scientists who are not seriously compromised is as rare as encountering an Indian tiger in a concrete urban jungle. On the 10th of May 2003, the ISP published its report "The Case For a GM-Free Sustainable World". In brief, the main points are summed up in the following (quoted, highlighting mine):

1) The scientists are extremely concerned about the hazards of GMOs to biodiversity, food safety, human and animal health, and demand a moratorium on environmental releases in accordance with the precautionary principle. The hazards of GMOs to biodiversity and human and animal health are now acknowledged by sources within the UK and US Governments. Particularly serious consequences are associated with the potential for horizontal gene transfer. These include the spread of antibiotic resistance marker genes that would render infectious diseases untreatable, the generation of new viruses and bacteria that cause diseases, and harmful mutations which may lead to cancer.

2) They are opposed to GM crops that will intensify corporate monopoly, exacerbate inequality and prevent the essential shift to sustainable agriculture that can provide food security and health around the world.

3) They call for a ban on patents of life forms and living processes, which threaten food security, sanction biopiracy of indigenous knowledge and genetic resources and violate basic human rights and dignity.

4) They want more support on research and development of non-corporate, sustainable agriculture that can benefit family farmers all over the world.

I’d like to concentrate on one or two issues of prime importance and of particular topical interest in view of the current WTO negotiations at Cancun. I am sure that the principles involved hold the key to the future and well being of the whole world. The developed countries ignore these issues not just to the peril of the less fortunate, the poor of third world countries, but in so doing, imperil themselves. These are

(a) food security in developing countries and the WTO and
(b) the need for a global ethic and moratorium on GMOs.

As I write, I cannot help but recall some identical issues that Dr. V Kurien, (our legendary milkman) grappled with and what he clearly saw as ‘writing on the wall’. I am drawing freely from his address to the 8th World Congress of Food Science and Technology in 1991 for the discussion, which follows. Clearly, in these 12 years, we have not only not moved forward toward a more transparent ethic, but have regressed.

The WTO, Third World Economies and Food Security

Today, we are if anything even more unsettled by a US-EU alliance, insidiously promoting their self interest. This self-interest is being dressed up, with all the sophistication and fancy economics that advanced countries with money and institutional support manage so well, as being to the advantage of the poor in the third world. The WTO is the willing organisation through which such an ignominious cover-up is being stage-managed and relentless pushed through.

Twelve years ago, it was called the theory of "comparative advantage". At that time, one of the International Financial Institutions provided the Indian Government with a set of recommendations on how we should manage our agricultural sector. One of those recommendations was that we should cease to provide incentives to the oil-seeds sector, which had been the driving force for the increased production of oil-seeds in India. By means of the usual sophisticated equations, they arrived at a "producer subsidy equivalent" of around 12%. It was said that we lacked "comparative advantage" and this huge subsidy of 12% was distorting the actual demand scenario and that this was a serious waste of resources.

Naturally, the NDDB whose then chairman was Dr. Kurien, was extremely concerned. Not only did the NDDB have a major involvement in oil-seeds, but India was the largest producer of "peanuts" (pun not intended!) in the world. This being the case, the "wasted" subsidy amounted to a lot of money for a poor country like India. Dr. Kurien, always one to spare no effort in going after the facts, discovered that the US had a producer subsidy equivalent for soybeans that was 15% and that in the EEC (now the EU), the cost of an oil-seed was 67% "producer subsidy equivalent".

Dr. K remarked, "we therefore concluded that we did lack ‘comparative advantage’; we could never afford to subsidise our oilseed farmers, or any of our farmers, to the same extent as the US and EEC subsidise theirs. In fact we understand that there are cases where the subsidies to producers are so great that governments then turn around and subsidise consumer and export sales. We certainly do lack comparative advantage".

Not much has changed today except the terminology. We now know that the EU provides a daily subsidy of US $ 2.7 per cow, and Japan provides three times more at US $ 8, whereas half of India’s 1000 million people live on less than $ 2 a day.

The craziness gets no saner if we examine the fuller picture of protective tariffs in place in the developed world. On average, farmers in OECD countries (whose members are the world’s major industrialised economies) receive price support that is 31% above the equivalent price in international trade. For milk, this rises to 80%, 100% for sugar and 360% for rice. These hugely inflated agricultural prices can only be maintained by punitively high tariff walls averaging around 60%. At the moment, developing countries hand over an estimated $16 billion to the industrialised world in agricultural tariffs!

If we were to follow the logic of the WTO, (faithfully pro