Terminator Seed

USA and industry Pushing hard to re-introduce terminator genes into crops.
by Glenn Ashton

Despite promises to the contrary, industry groups, backed by government delegations from Australia, Canada and New Zealand, recently demonstrated their commitment to introducing so-called ‘terminator genes’ into crops by attempting to overturn a moratorium on their use that is presently in place.

The eighth Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on biodiversity, concluded in Grenada, Spain at the end of January, agreed to take the decision forward to overturn the ban on terminator crops to the next meeting to be held in Curitiba, Brazil, in March.

Terminator technology

Terminator technology, also known as GURT (Genetic Use Restriction Technology), is one of the most controversial genetic modification (GM) technologies because it produces seeds that are sterile, and therefore unable to germinate. This clear intervention in the natural order is widely condemned, especially amongst developing nations that depend heavily on saved seed to maintain food security and sovereignty.

As the representative for Uganda, David Hafashimana, said on behalf of the African group at the meeting, “a technology that seeks to make seeds sterile after the first harvest, undermining the rights of especially small-holder farmers, indigenous and local communities to save their seed for the next planting season, essentially also undermines the food security of these groups and therefore the socio-economic impacts of GURTs on a continent like Africa could at best be disastrous.”

This technology is being pushed at the behest of the USA, whose government controls patents on various terminator technologies and whose corporations stand to benefit strongly. Because the USA has not ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity it has been forced to use proxy governmental and industry inputs to promote its agenda.

There are two primary interest groups pushing this technology, both with ties to government and industry. The first are the Multinational corporations like the global GM giant Monsanto, responsible for over 90% of global GM food production, who wish to halt the illegal sharing of their patented seeds. Terminator technology will effectively force farmers to return to the seed corporations to provide further seed for planting, enforcing a cycle of dependence. Monsanto, originally a chemical company, last year became the worlds biggest seed company with its strategic purchase of the worlds biggest vegetable seed company, Seminis.

The second interest group is the industry aligned scientific establishment who are convinced that there would be wider acceptance of their products if they could be guaranteed to be contained by virtue of being sterile. Present GM crops have been demonstrably promiscuous.

Using terminator genes experimental pharmaceutical crops could supposedly be grown without fear of contamination. However this overlooks the essential problem that one of the two parent lines, either male or female must be fertile for the plant to set seed, enabling the terminator genes to spread in much the same way that existing GM seed has spread uncontrollably through pollen transfer. Several other means of contamination are also possible and even intentional contamination of food crop seeds by terminator genes is not outside the realms of possibility.

Terminator technology has been widely criticised as possibly one of the most ill advised concepts devised by the GM industry. That the US government shares patents in this technology is especially ominous, potentially shifting control of international seed supplies into the hands of the worlds superpower.

But more than simply the brazen and cynical abuse of proxy power, the renewed push to introduce of terminator technology into nature remains an anathema. It is a dangerous direction for industrial agriculture to take. The implications for global agriculture are too important to ignore this latest thrust. It is essential for developing nations to reject this move to introduce a profoundly disruptive threat into the global agricultural regime.