Genetic modification: how it works Appeal for the Amazon SOS whales The top ten seed corporations	Mutants on the menu France Bequette
Cloning plants in sterile conditions in the Dominican Republic. In 1998, United States farmers alone sowed 20 million hectares of genetically modified maize, soya and cotton Genetic modification: how it works The nucleus of each cell contains chromosomes made up of genes which govern heredity. Genes are sequences of long molecules arranged in the form of a double helix and known as DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). DNA sees that the cell functions in a way specific to the species to which it belongs. A single gene can determine several characteristics, but sometimes several genes are needed to determine a single characteristic. Molecular biologists cut up the genome (the genetic endowment) of a given species, increase the number of genes and insert them into another species to obtain a new hereditary characteristic coded by the transferred DNA. This is how genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are obtained. In the laboratory, though not yet on our plates, maize has been given a scorpion’s gene so that it can resist insects and a petunia gene to enable it to resist herbicides. Potatoes have been endowed with a gene from a chicken or a moth to fight disease, as well as a human gene to digest heavy metals. A fish gene can be added to tomatoes to help them resist the cold, and rice and sunflower seeds can be protein-enriched with genes taken from beans and brazil nuts respectively. Cucumbers fight disease with the help of a tobacco gene. All kinds of things are imaginable, if not immediately feasible: a gene from a bird with black feathers to colour roses, a lettuce gene to camouflage cows in green meadows. But beware of the hybrids that might escape from the lab. Truth may turn out to be stranger than science fiction! Drawing by Rousso. The introduction of antibiotic-resistant genes into plants is causing concern Appeal for the Amazon Can Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso keep his promise to save 25 million more hectares of Amazonian forest by the year 2000? The World Bank and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) see his pledge, made at the end of April 1998, as one of the first fruits of their June 1997 agreement to strengthen measures to protect “natural” forests, i.e. those largely untouched by human activity. The accord aims to set up a worldwide network of protected areas totalling 50 million hectares by 2005. It is an extension of WWF’s campaign to bring, by the end of the century, 10% of every type of forest (tropical, Boreal, temperate, dry, humid) under protection from the pillage which is slowly eating away at the planet’s biodiversity. Only 6% of the world’s natural forests are legally protected at the moment, with wide regional variations—from 9% in Latin America to 2% in Europe. But often this protection only exists on paper. Many forests are being damaged by pollution from oilfields or mining (legal protection does not extend underground) and by continuing illegal activities. Eighty per cent of Brazil’s mahogany, for example, comes from protected forest areas. By promising to extend protected areas, Brazil, which contains a third of all the world’s tropical forests, has declared its determination to break with policies which have paid little heed to sustainable management. Now the money has to be found. Brazil has very few means of enforcing protection and “there are only 300 people to monitor all of Amazonia,” notes WWF’s Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, who reckons that the project requires about $75 million immediately and $10 million a year thereafter. The World Bank is expected to help Brazil obtain contributions from the rich countries and the private sector. Without them, President Cardoso’s promise may be an empty one. Technicians examine cloned plants (Dominican Republic). Have we not cast a basic precautionary principle to the winds and gone ahead too fast? Drawing by Rousso.	Genetically modified plants are being developed so quickly that they could become the backbone of tomorrow’s agriculture. For better or for worse? Feeding the world is one of the big challenges of the next century. Paradoxically, whereas the planet’s farmers actually produce more food than world population needs, about 800 million people are chronically undernourished and two billion suffer from malnutrition, nearly all of them in the poor countries of the South. The number of mouths to feed is expected to increase by almost 100 million annually in the next thirty years. A worldwide shortfall in production is not yet the main cause of hunger, but output will have to be stepped up in the first half of the next century. The area of cropland will certainly have to be expanded, but a limit will quickly be reached. Biodiversity is already under threat; deforestation causes erosion and impoverishes soil, irrigation leads to salinization and water resources are shrinking. Today farmers are also required to respect the environment and the health of consumers. In the 1960s, the “green revolution” was about maximizing production by using massive quantities of fertilizers, pesticides and other inputs. The downside of this race to boost output was that it generated pollution. Massive inputs did not eliminate crop losses, which are still considerable, running in the early 1990s to 42 per cent of all the wheat, rice and maize harvested worldwide. Would it not be best to enable plants to fight diseases and pests by themselves? This is the proposal of the transgenic revolution which is currently sweeping the world of agriculture. In 1953 James Watson (USA) and Francis Crick (UK) discovered the spiral structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), but it was not until thirty years later that the first gene transfer was made, in the laboratory, on a tobacco plant. The first field tests were conducted in 1987 and the technique then took off. A decade later, genetically modified crops were growing on 15 million hectares of land around the globe. In 1998, United States farmers alone sowed 20 million hectares of genetically modified maize, soya and cotton. Argentina and Brazil have accepted genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and so have China and Australia. By the year 2000, genetically modified crops are expected to be growing on 60 million hectares worldwide–81 per cent of them in North America, 10 per cent in Asia and one per cent in Europe. In the United States alone, they will comprise a $100-billion market over the next decade. Why this spectacular expansion? Farmers have crossed different varieties and species from time immemorial. But, says European Ecology Institute Chairman Jean-Marie Pelt, “this painstaking work by agronomists has always taken place within the barriers between species. . . . Barriers strictly delimiting a given species, without the chance of hybridization with others, except, possibly, closely related species.” Genetic modification makes light of all these barriers. Theoretically gene transfer makes all kinds of things possible. Plants are already capable of producing haemoglobin, a growth hormone, and human insulin. The supporters of transgenic agriculture point to other advantages. If a plant has a gene which resists certain pests, there is no need for it to be treated with a chemical which threatens the health of the person who applies it and pollutes soil and water. It can also be given a gene to make it resistant to a herbicide, enable it to survive cold or drought, and even change its taste or nutritional qualities. So are GMOs the key to the future of agriculture? Certainly not, say its detractors. First, because genetically modified crops favour large-scale industrial agriculture to the detriment of small farmers and the countries of the South. If small farmers opt for genetically modified seeds, their costs rise and they will have to sign contracts with transnational firms like Monsanto, Novartis, AgrEvo, Dupont, Pioneer or Rhône-Poulenc and buy seeds from them every year, as well as the herbicides the plants are treated to resist. One example is Round-Up Ready, the genetically modified rapeseed produced by Monsanto, which is resistant to Round-Up, a herbicide made by the same firm. In addition, if we become capable of producing substances tasting like, vanilla or cocoa from plants which can stand up to the climates of the northern hemisphere, farmers in poverty-stricken countries may lose their meagre source of income. Yet according to the American Biotechnology Industry Organization, things are less alarming. It gives examples of technology transfers such as the passing on to a research institute in Indonesia of material to produce insect-resistant potatoes by tissue culture, and the insertion of a fungicidal gene into African bananas. Since research in this field is very costly, genetically modified plants are usually privatized through patenting. Monsanto, with an annual turnover of more than $6.6 billion, says it spent $166 million last year on GMO research, but refuses to say how many patents it applied for. Small companies and the countries of the South stand no chance against the big transnational firms. Taking out a patent is highly expensive. For it to be valid in all the rich countries, an initial deposit of about $84,000 is required, plus a tax which increases exponentially during the life of the patent. By the end of last year, 1,377 patents for genetically modified plants had been applied for at the European Patent Office. Several hundred of them are currently awaiting examination. Does this mean that Europe has not been won over by GMOs? The import of genetically modified maize and rapeseed has been authorized by the European Union since 1997 and will this year amount to $200 million. But some countries have expressed doubts. Austria and Luxembourg have forbidden imports and Italy has banned growing of GMOs. In April 1997, the European Parliament opposed the European Commission’s approval of such crops, declaring that “economic and social pressures have overridden health and environmental considerations”. The introduction of antibiotic-resistant genes into plants is also causing concern, but there is no proof that such genes are passed from plants to animals and then to humans. In this case the gene acts as a marker in a gene transfer process. To find out whether the transferred gene is present in the cells, they are soaked in an antibiotic solution. Only the cells which have not accepted the resistant gene are destroyed. For example, the Flavr Savr tomato produced in the United States in 1994 contains a gene to keep it firm and slow the rotting process, along with a gene resistant to kanamycin, which is used to fight respiratory ailments. A single mutation of this gene also makes it resistant to other antibiotics used to treat meningitis and serious lung diseases. The resistant gene will always remain in the genetically modified plants and risks transmitting such resistance to the consumer. Another problem is how someone allergic to brazil nuts, for example, can know whether such a gene has been introduced into sunflower seeds to make them more protein-rich. Arnaud Apoteker, of Greenpeace, raises another issue. “Is it wise,” he asks, “to insert into bananas a gene with the hepatitis B vaccine designed for humans, as is being done in Mexico? Can we say what the effect of such a vaccine will be on the animals, birds and insects which eat them?” Bearing in mind that zero risk does not exist, what impact will GMOs have on the environment? The pollen of genetically modified rapeseed can be blown as far as 2.5 km, which means it can become crossed with wild species like mustard. What’s more, in rotating crops, strict care must be taken before switching from rapeseed in the rotation that seeds do not fall on the ground during harvesting. Should the seed pods be genetically altered so that seeds do not spill out? In the same way, genetic-engineered resistance to certain insects can lead to the emergence of new insects resistant to the artificial poisons produced by these plants. How can they be dealt with? Science does not yet have enough data to answer these questions satisfactorily. Another unknown is the reaction to genetically modified bacteria of bacteria and fungi which act in myriad ways in the soil, e.g. to help plants with growth and to fight parasites, frost and anti-pollution products. A gram of surface soil contains between 100 million and one billion bacteria and between 1,000 and 10,000 different species–and scientists say they have only investigated a tenth of those. Noëlle Amarger of the French National Agronomic Research Institute (INRA) has written that “data are lacking about the ways and circumstances in which a micro-organism introduces itself successfully into the ground, stays there and performs its function.” So we cannot yet predict what will happen when a GMO is introduced, either to it or to its genetic heritage in the field in which it is put. Amarger concludes that “once they are introduced, micro-organisms can linger for many years, even indefinitely, with no possibility of removing them, so we should be cautious.” Have we gone ahead too fast and cast a basic precautionary principle to the winds? Fierce debate is going on between supporters and opponents of genetic modification. To give consumers a choice between consuming or rejecting food containing GMOs, clear labelling is necessary. This is easier said than done. Shipments of imported farm produce often contain mixtures. Unless they are sure of their suppliers, the big food firms will have to carry out costly and elaborate tests. But the customer should be able to make a free and informed choice. For this, we need to wait until more is known. But as so often, the profit motive is overriding all other considerations.   The world’s top ten seed corporations Ranked according to 1996 seed sales Company Estimated 1996 seed sales (US) millions Comment Pioneer Hi-Bred Intl. (USA) $1,721 Dupont now owns 20% share in Pioneer Novartis (Switzerland) $991 Formerly Ciba Geigy and Sandoz Limagrain (France) $552 French co-operative; claims to be the world’s largest vegetable seed company Advanta-joint venture of Zeneca/Van der Have (The Netherlands) $493 Zeneca and Royal VanderHave established this joint venture in 1996 Grupo Pulsar (Mexico) approx. $400 Pulsar (a giant agro-industrial corporation) owns Empresas La Moderna (Mexico), which is majority shareholder of Seminis Inc. Sakata (Japan) $403 Vegetables/flowers/turfgrass Takii (Japan) $396 Privately-held. Vegetables/flowers/turfgrass Dekalb Plant Genetics (USA) $388 Monsanto is a large shareholder (approx. 40%) KWS (Germany) $377 World’s largest supplier of sugar-beet seeds (25% market share) Cargill (USA) +$300 (estimate) Privately-held. Will not disclose financial information The top 10 companies control approximately 40% of the global commercial seed market, valued at approximately $15 billion. Source: Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI)    SOS whales Half a century ago, whales nearly died out as a species as a result of being indiscriminately hunted. Then, in 1946, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling was signed and its management put in the hands of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which recently celebrated its fiftieth birthday. Today whale hunting has virtually ceased, except by the Japanese and the Norwegians, who kill about 1,200 minke whales each year out of a population of about a million. But although hunting may have been sharply curbed, whales are still in danger—from pollution. The IWC has not been able to enforce totally the moratorium on whaling it introduced in 1986, but the measure has enabled the population of great whales to increase. Now the Commission has taken on a new task—protecting the environment to safeguard whales, and by so doing to ensure its own survival. The commission’s 40 Member States, dominated by English-speaking countries, especially the United States, have realized that passing resolutions which were mostly ignored was not enough. Despite their infringements of the moratorium, Japan and Norway refuse to leave the commission and have obstructed its work, helped by several small Caribbean states. But all agreed at the IWC’s meeting in Muscat (Oman) in May 1998 that a deteriorating environment was now “the biggest threat” to whales. The Commission’s scientific committee will give “the highest priority” to research into the impact of pollutants and chemical contamination on whales, as well as the effect of climate change on the biological and physical habitat of whales and their prey. The Arctic, where whale meat is now so contaminated it has become dangerous for human consumption, will be studied first. In recent years, scientists have found that whales, as animals at the end of a food chain, have absorbed large quantities of poisonous pollutants of all kinds, including pesticides, chlorine compounds and heavy metals. Drawing by Rousso.
The UNESCO Courier