Suicide seeds

Yes, that heading made me stop and take notice. It was a pamphlet about Terminator Technology (another scary word) which is the generic modification of plant to make them produce sterile seeds. That means that farmers cannot collect and save seeds from one year to another, but must buy new seeds every year, which of course will benefit multinational agribusiness companies. That does not seem to me a good way of ending world poverty.

As I read more about this technology on the internet I found out that it is not yet field-tested or commercialized, but tests are being done in the US. There is a big push from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US to allow field-testing of these seeds. In March, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) upheld its moratorium on GURTs (Genetic Use Restriction Technologies – Terminator technology is a GURT). The moratorium means that products incorporating GURT should not be approved for field test or commercial use until socio-economic or scientific assessments have demonstrated that GURTs pose no harm to people or to the environment. You can read more about Terminator Technology on the Canadian site Ban Terminator.

The pamphlet made me read more about GM technology and I found out that it is only a few crops that are genetically modified: corn, cotton, soya beans and rape. The complication is that these crops are used in animal feed, which means that the meat you buy and eat is not guaranteed to be free from GM technology. The US is the largest producer of GM crops (50% of the worldwide production), followed by Argentina, Brazil, Canada and China. In Sweden there is not (yet) any commercial production of GM crops. The Swedish site GMOfri has some good information on how to shop for non-GM food. I will certainly pay more attention when I shop for groceries from now on, and try to avoid GM foods as much as possible.