Canada Backs Terminator Seeds - Truthout.org 02/09/05

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Canada Backs Terminator Seeds

by John Vidal

The Guardian U.K.

 

Wednesday 09 February 2005

 

An international moratorium on the use of one of the world's most

controversial GM food technologies may be broken today if the Canadian

government gets seed sterilisation backed at a UN meeting.

 

Leaked documents seen by the Guardian show that Canada wants all

governments to accept the testing and commercialisation of "terminator"

crop varieties. These are genetically engineered to produce only

infertile seeds which farmers cannot replant.

 

Jointly patented by the GM company Monsanto and the US government,

the technology was condemned in the late 1990s by many African and Asian

governments who called for a permanent ban.

 

Monsanto and other GM companies which were developing similar

technologies voluntarily pulled out of research after concerns were also

raised about the "terminator" genes spreading to non-GM crops, and

international outrage that poor farmers would not be able to use seeds

from their crops, as they have always done.

 

But leaked instructions to Canadian government negotiators at the

Bangkok meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and

Technological Advice, a group which advises the UN's Convention on

Biological Diversity, show that Canada will request today that all

countries open their doors to the technology.

 

The papers, leaked to the environment group ETC, also show that the

Canadian government will attack an official UN report critical of the

potential impact of "terminator" seeds on small farmers and indigenous

peoples. The report recommends that governments prohibit the technology.

 

The Canadian government team in Bangkok was last night unavailable

for comment.

 

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