Many GM crops are not field tested or regulated in the U.S.

• Continued development of herbicide-tolerant, virus- and pest-resistant crops.
• Methods to speed up traditional plant breeding.
• Further development of fruit and vegetables in which the production of ethylene is suppressed so that they take longer to ripen.
• Modification of oils, fats and starches to improve processing or dietary characteristics.
• Improvement of flavour, texture, bio-absorbability, nutritional content and elimination of genes for toxic substances and allergens.
• Identification of genes controlling salt tolerance, resistance to drought, flood, and extreme temperatures, and response to day length.
• GM crops that fix nitrogen with greater efficiency, thereby reducing the need for fertilizers.
• GM plants that produce vaccines or therapeutic agents.
• GM biodegradable plastics grown in plants such as oilseed rape could begin to replace plastics from fossil fuels within a decade.
• GM plants for bioremediation, i.e. removing toxic chemicals and agrochemical residues from the soil.

Biopiracy and patents on GM crops are providing new riches to biotech firms.

• Rapeseed engineered to produce lauric acid, which is used in soap and cosmetics, is already being grown commercially and the lauric acid sold to Procter & Gamble, one of the world's largest buyers of the substance. Lauric acid is traditionally derived from coconut and palm kernel oils produced in the tropics. The Philippines, the world's largest exporter of coconut oil, accounts for around two thirds of global exports. The coconut industry also provides employment for about 30 percent of the county's population.
• Farmers in the US are expected to plant twice as much GM soybean in 1998 as in 1997, and with resistance to GM soya in Europe, there are concerns that it will be dumped in countries like India [which has a good harvest of its own].
• In April, the Africa News Service reported that tomato growers in Kenya will soon have access to the longer-ripening FlavrSavr tomato, provided it meets Kenya's safety measures and guidelines on biotechnology transfer.

Corporations that patent crop plants often don't allow nations, where these crops are indigenous, to benefit.

1. Food security
If foreign researchers and TNCs can patent indigenous crop plants without making recompense to the communities who provided them, there are fears that farmers will end up paying royalties on the products of their own knowledge, products on which they rely for survival. The following are examples of such patents:

• In 1994, two researchers from the University of Colorado received US patent number 5,304,718 on male sterile plants of the traditional Bolivian 'Apelawa' quinoa variety. They claim they were the first to identify and use a reliable system of cytoplasmic male sterility in quinoa for the production of hybrids, although Andean farmers have long known that the male flower of the Apelawa variety is sterile. Quinoa is a high protein cereal and an important dietary component in Andean countries. The value of Bolivia's export market is estimated at about US$1 million per annum. The US patent claim covers any quinoa hybrid that is derived from 'Apelawa' male sterile cytoplasm, including, but not limited to, some 36 traditional varieties cited in the patent application.
• In September 1997, the US company Ricetec, Inc., was granted a patent on Basmati rice. The patent is for a variety achieved by the crossing of Indian Basmati with semi-dwarf varieties, and it covers Basmati grown anywhere in the Western hemisphere. Ricetec can also put its brand on any breeding crosses involving 22 farmer-bred Basmati varieties from Pakistan and, according to RAFI [Rural Advancement Foundation International], on any blending of Pakistani or Indian Basmati strains with the company's other proprietary seeds. Ricetec also claims the right to use the Basmati name. The Indian government has challenged Ricetec's claim, arguing that the patent jeopardizes India's annual Basmati export market of around US$277 million, and threatens the livelihood of thousands of Punjabi farmers.

• TNCs such as Monsanto require farmers who buy their GM seeds to sign contracts agreeing not to save seed. In March 1998 RAFI reported that Monsanto had taken legal action against more than 100 soybean growers in the US, and had hired Pinkerton investigators (hired police) to identify those saving seeds.
• In 1997, Farmers' Weekly reported that the Biotechnology Working Party of the National Farmers' Union (NFU) in the UK was seeking legal advice on the status of contracts between farmers and agrochemical firms under UK law. British farmers were reported to be unhappy with the US-style technology fees, licenses and contracts for GM crops. 
• In 1998 the US Department of Agriculture and the Mississippi-based Delta and Pine Land seed company were granted a patent on the so-called "terminator technology", which involves engineering seeds so that they do not germinate if planted for a second time.

Corporations are guilty of trying to patent plants that are an economic staple to some nations.

• In April 1997, two Australian government agencies applied for patents on two strains of chickpea, samples of which they had borrowed from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) at Hyderabad. ICRISAT subsequently told the Australian agencies that it would be wrong to patent plants that should be owned universally, and on 13 January 1998 they withdrew their applications.
• W.G. Grace & Co. [was granted] a series of patents on extracts from the neem tree, whose seeds and bark have been used for centuries in India for natural pesticides. Grace has estimated that the global market for the pesticide could reach US$50 million a year by 2000, and while there are no hard statistics on the impact on Indian farmers to date … [but] farmers in the south of India, where neem is harvested, are already losing out because the processing and exporting of the seeds and oil is no longer available to them. 
• In 1995, two Mississippi doctors were granted a patent for the traditional use of turmeric as a healing powder. India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) petitioned the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) on the grounds that the 'discovery' was not original, but had been chronicled in traditional Indian texts. In August last year, the PTO rejected the patent holders' claims.

• many of the seeds lose viability because they are not grown out regularly,
• they are poorly catalogued and costly to run,
• and their material may not be accessible to farmers.

Bt crops have proven to be unstable and ineffective.

• Research at the University of Hawaii has shown that insects which survive Bt transmit genetic resistance to their immediate offspring. If Bt becomes useless as an implanted pest control strategy within one insect generation, as this suggests, then organic farmers, who have been using it effectively since the 1940s, will be robbed of a valuable biopesticide. Regional cases of Bt resistance have already been reported.
• In April, Greenpeace International demanded an urgent European ban on Novartis' Bt-maize (which was approved by the EC in 1996) after Swiss research showed it kills insects other than the European corn borer, which it is meant to target.
• George Stuber of Greenpeace in Sweden reports that in June 1996 Monsanto planted Bt-potatoes (containing a marker gene for the antibiotic canamicin) in three regions of Georgia, in the former Soviet Union. Georgia lacks any proper legislation controlling the release of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). The crops were devastated by fitoptora disease because, says Stuber, the potatoes were not adapted to the local climate.
• Similarly, GM FlavrSavr tomatoes were grown in Guatemala, which has hundreds if not thousands of indigenous varieties of tomato, without the consent or knowledge of the authorities. Although the tomatoes were grown in greenhouses, Stuber says there is no way of knowing how rigorously they were contained, and there is no information as to whether the transgenic tomatoes spread beyond those sites.

• In health terms, say Friends of the Earth, experiments have shown damaging and long lasting reproductive effects of glyphosate on laboratory animals. In 1995, a study in the Journal of Environmental Science and Health showed that exposure to glyphosate was associated with reduced semen quality, volume and concentration in rabbits.
• Herbicide-tolerant members of the bean family produce higher levels of plant oestrogens when grown in the presence of the herbicide, and there is a risk that these could disrupt the developing reproductive systems of children who consume them.
• In 1994 a report by the World Health Organisation's (WHO) International Program on Chemical Safety found that glyphosate residues in animal feeds arising from pre-harvest glyphosate treatment of cereals may result in low residues in meat, milk and eggs.

4. Nutritionally enhanced crops
… when crops such as rice and rapeseed with high Vitamin A concentrations are planted, there will be no way to distinguish them from normal rice, with the contingent risk of liver damage if too much Vitamin A is consumed.

5. Unpredictable crops
Monsanto is facing an increasing number of lawsuits as their GM plants are not behaving as intended. In 1997 farmers who grew Monsanto's herbicide-tolerant cotton saw the cotton balls fall off their crops … In 1996, Monsanto's pest-resistant Bt-cotton succumbed to a heat wave in the southern US and was destroyed by bollworms and other pests. 

Monoculture -- farming only one crop -- has often eradicated other varieties of the crop.

• Jonathan Rigg, a researcher in agricultural development and rural change at Durham University, cites one example from the Green Revolution: in the late 1970s, vast areas of Indonesia planted with a single variety of rice were devastated by the brown plant hopper, an event which has been linked to a subsequent mini famine on Lombok. 
• In 1996 the FAO reported that the world depends on too few crops and that many thousands of genetic varieties (landraces) have been lost, mainly due to the spread of modern commercial agriculture. The report lists the main causes of plant genetic erosion in 154 countries, and in over 80 of them, "replacement of local varieties" came top. In maize, for instance, Costa Rica, Chile, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand have documented widespread genetic erosion due to monocropping.
• "What has been almost entirely overlooked is that throughout that vast continent [of Africa] can be found more than 2000 native grains, roots, fruits and other food plants. These have been feeding people for thousands of years but most are being given no attention whatever today." [US National Research Council, 1996]

About the author: Founded in 1942 in Great Britain, Oxfam is a development, relief, and campaigning organization dedicated to finding lasting solutions to poverty and suffering around the world. Oxfam International is the family of Oxfams, sharing common values and working together. As well as Oxfam GB, there are Oxfams in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Quebec, Spain, and the USA. Laura Spinney is a scientific correspondent who worked with various organizations to write this report for Oxfam.
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/

                 

An interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva
Dr. Shiva is a scientist who leads a fight against biopiracy in India and throughout the world. She is a prominent figure who has written many books and articles on biopiracy, biodiversity, and genetically modified organisms.
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/shiva.html

Genetically engineered crops allowed in the U.S. food supply
This chart lists the GM crops currently being grown in the U.S.
http://www.ucsusa.org/agriculture/gen.market.html

Organic Consumers Association
Choose from a vast list of latest news articles on genetically modified crops and food.
http://www.purefood.org/log.html

Read a book  
GE Foods: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers by Ronnie Cummins & Ben Lilliston. First guide for consumers who want to learn more about GE foods and find out how to avoid them. Written for US consumers; however, the information is valid for all.