Genetic engineering produces risks, not solutions

Interview with Ethiopian Dr Tewolde Egziabher, aged 61, who represents developing countries at conferences on genetic engineering, biodiversity and gene patenting. The ecologist runs the Ethiopian environmental protection authority and the non-profit Institute for Sustainable Development.

Greenpeace: Are you happy about the agricultural giants' offers to fight world hunger with new plants developed through genetic engineering?

Tewolde: Not at all. It's naïve to imagine that plants and their highly efficient gene pools - which have evolved over millions of years - can be improved by replacing or adding a new gene. The interaction between genes and proteins is far too complex. Which is why so many genetic experiments go wrong.

But don't you take their offer seriously?

No, they're missing the point. Famine in developing countries is mainly the result of unfair distribution. Today, the world is producing more food than ever before - but there are still more people starving than ever before as well. Producing even more food doesn't automatically mean that the poor will benefit. They simply haven't got the money to buy it. And genetic engineering isn't going to change that.

Couldn't the genetic engineering industry produce plants that are better adapted to dry or salty soils?

There's a lot of propaganda about this, but there's absolutely no proof that these plants are more prolific. The big companies actually have very different goals: they want to supply farmers with strains that are immune to specific pesticides, in order to make them dependent on these pesticides. The Life Sciences Industry also has a second goal: to take control of the developing countries' existing seeds and gene pool. The strategy is always the same: they supply free seeds until farmers have used up their own resources or the resources are no longer usable, and then they start charging fees.

That's a serious accusation.

It coincides with the experiences we've had with pesticides and artificial fertilisers. And it's the very same agrochemical companies that are pushing genetic engineering today. Controlling seeds and charging the poor farmers for this service is not going to solve the problem of famine.

If the farmers' harvests improve, they can afford to pay the fees.

Some 30 different parties own patents for the notorious "golden rice". None of them charge fees at present. But once they have the farmers under their thumbs, they'll get their money. Agricultural companies are using patents to make us dependent on their seeds. There could hardly be a more effective form of colonialism? The genetic engineering industry will effectively be able to hold us hostage. That isn't the way to bring about world peace. Rather, it will spark an unprecedented rebellion with waves of refugees heading for the most affluent countries.

Why does the UN development program UNDP support genetic engineering?

Because its work is dependent on money from the industry. The report definitely discredits the UNDP. I often wonder whether it is really still on the developing countries' side.

How can the world's affluent countries help?
By supporting developing countries' endeavors to improve their infrastructures. We need decent roads for transporting the food produced here to the markets. We need to preserve food, and be in a position to process it. And we need warehouses where we can keep surplus food from good harvests in store for harder times.

None of this is necessarily inconsistent with using genetic engineering in agriculture, though.

We should only start contemplating this new technology when we've solved the other problems. We don't need any new plants for food either; nature provides all the nutrients we require. These nutrients simply need to be distributed evenly. Genetic engineering doesn't present solutions; it presents risks. The tropics are home to an incredible array of species, and a valuable and irreplaceable gene pool. If genetically manipulated species were to be released, they could contaminate this gene pool, and many strains or species would die out. And that would be irreversible.

Do you believe that sustainable farming can produce enough food to eliminate famine completely?

Yes, I really do. Jules Pretty's study provides a lot of examples to support this view. Farming in the north has ceased to become an alternative for us. It destroys the soil and contaminates the ground water, which is ultimately our drinking water. We can use artificial fertilisers, but only if they improve the soil quality rather than destroying it. All the methods need to pass a test: they shouldn't be allowed to disrupt natural cycles and processes. Bio-farming is no longer a luxury for us. It is our only remaining hope.

Interview: Michael Friedrich

The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service

From tomorrow, countries will have a right under international law to ban imports of food containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that they think could be unsafe. Or maybe not.

The UN's Biosafety Protocol - which allows bans where governments fear imported GMOs in food may have an "adverse effect" on biological diversity or human health - comes into force on Thursday. But as it does, the right to impose bans is being attacked by a US action launched in August against the European Union.

The US claims a five-year-old European ban on food containing GMOs is a breach of another set of international rules - the World Trade Organization's requirements for free trade.

The dispute, which will be decided by the WTO's dispute panel, is shaping up to be a face-off between the competing goals of free trade and safeguarding the environment. Friends of the Earth campaigns director Liana Staples condemns the US action: "It is just the latest Bush government-led attempt to bulldoze over other countries' rights to protect their people and the environment."

But US trade representative Robert Zoellick says the EU ban is "unsupported even by the EU's own scientific studies". The dispute promises to be a major talking point at the WTO meeting starting today in Cancun, Mexico.

Collision course

The Biosafety Protocol, agreed between most of the world's governments in 2000, formed an addition to the 1992 Biodiversity Convention. It seemed to legitimise a five-year-old EU ban on imports of GM foods from the US and elsewhere.

But the US never signed the convention, and so is not a party to the protocol. It called the EU ban an illegal infringement of trade and began the WTO action. In so doing, say environmentalists, it is setting the two treaties on a collision course.

The EU says the US complaint is now irrelevant. In August, EU ministers set new rules that should allow imports of products containing GM material, provided they are properly labelled and the sources of the GMOs are fully traceable. But the US disagrees, saying that in practice the rules would be impossible to meet.

Hunger and poverty

The controversy will be further inflamed on Thursday when Tewolde Egziabher, one of the architects of the Biosafety Protocol, marks its coming into force by speaking at the British parliament.

Egziabher, director of Ethiopia's Environmental Protection Authority, will argue that the US action is designed to intimidate African countries. They want to use the protocol to set up their own systems for regulating imports of GM food, including US food aid.

Before leaving Addis Ababa, Egziabher said: "We resent the way that the image of the hungry in developing countries has been used to force a style of agriculture that will only exacerbate problems of hunger and poverty."

And he added that Ethiopia, as a centre for the natural genetic diversity of the world's grain crops, has special reason to oppose "the hasty introduction of GM crops". His fear is that GMOs might contaminate the country's wild grains, from which early food crops were bred.

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