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Seeds of Conflict update, with transcript (Friday, Oct. 4, 2002 -- CropChoice news) -- The PBS television show, NOW with Bill Moyer, will feature "Seeds of Conflict" tonight. Go to http://www.pbs.org/now. Here is a transcript of the program.
Seeds of Conflict
REPORTER MARK SCHAPIRO: These quiet fields in southern Mexico are an
unlikely flashpoint in a worldwide battle over the future of agriculture.
A conflict that pits developing countries against industrialized
ones...traditional farming against corporate agriculture... the surprises of
nature against the precision of science.
Human cultivation of corn began right here, centuries before the
conquistadors arrived.
NAUN SANCHEZ, FARMER: Our ancestors left us the seed. Our land is used to
it. If we plant another kind of corn it won't grow. Our land is used to our
ancestor's seed.
SCHAPIRO: Corn here is about survival.
MAURICIO BELLON, PHD, SENIOR SCIENTIST, INTERNATIONAL MAIZE AND WHEAT
IMPROVEMENT CENTER (CIMMYT): You have to realize that here you don't have
job insurance or health insurance but having corn is what ensures that you -
your-life will keep on once you have corn you basically made it for the
year.
SCHAPIRO: If it's a local insurance policy, it is also a global treasure,
prized by scientists for the differences in the genetic makeup of these
kernels - they call it diversity.
Here in the state of Oaxaca alone there are more than sixty varieties of
corn. Which is good. Because nature is fickle - one year it's too hot,
another it's too wet. Unwelcome pests shows up. If all your corn is the
same, and equally vulnerable to any one problem — your crop is doomed. If
it's all a little different, some will survive.
And when disasters strike — scientists can come to this gene pool to breed
back resilience. It's so critical, they save corn seed from Oaxaca in gene
banks around the world.
MAURICIO BELLON: The diversity of these genes is the basis of our food
supply. We need this diversity to cope with the future, with evolution, with
unpredictable things.
SCHAPIRO: A crop this varied evolved over thousands of years as, season to
season, individual farmers selected the seeds best suited to local
conditions.
Now American corporations are going in the opposite direction. Their goal is
not diversity it is tailoring seeds with very specific traits to suit the
needs of modern industrial agriculture.
These traits would never have evolved in nature. They occur when scientists
take genetic information from one living thing and put it into the genes of
another. The resulting plants are called "transgenic."
The Mexican government banned planting transgenic corn amid concerns that it
would threaten the diversity of their native corn. And growing distrust of
genetically modied organisms — or GMOs — has pushed thirty other countries
to impose restrictions on these crops.
People are protesting from Europe to India to Brazil, fearful of unknown
risks to human and environmental health.
TAPE OF PROTEST: This is contamination of our food...
SCHAPIRO: They don't want what American farmers produce, what American
consumers are eating.
That's right we're eating transgenic ingredients. Those genes — altered
through biotechnology — are in 70 percent of the processed foods on our
grocery shelves. In cooking oils, soda, soy products, breakfast cereals,
cookies. Transgenes are in the most widely used sweetener in America — corn
syrup.
There's no scientific evidence that eating these ingredients hurts our
health. But around the world critics and scientists are raising questions:
are transgenic crops safe for the environment over time? Will they harm the
diversity of our food supply? We don't know yet.
To try to answer that question I traveled to the American Midwest. If
Oaxaca, Mexico is the cradle of corn cultivation, this secret and isolated
field in Iowa is the frontier of corn modification.
Dr. Kan Wang isn't growing corn for food. She wants corn to make medicine.
DR. KAN WANG, PHD, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, AGRONOMY IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY: I do
not understand why so much heat on the issue of biotechnology crop. I think
this is a great technology, but I do agree, there's many aspect we don't
understand yet.
SCHAPIRO: Dr. Wang and her students from Iowa State University made me
promise not to reveal the location of this place. They fear protestors will
destroy their work.
What are they hiding? You could call it "corn sex." Actually, in a way,
"safe sex" for corn.
Corn is usually pollinated by the wind, randomly. But Dr. Wang and her
students are controlling pollination very carefully. They take the pollen
from the male tassels... Then sprinkle it on the female silks. Pollen slips
down each strand of corn silk passing along its genes to the next generation
of seed.
They don't want the pollen to travel outside this field, because it contains
experimental genes that could mix with ordinary corn. What kind of genes?
Dr. Wang has actually inserted genetic information from a pig virus into
this corn.
She wants to create a vaccine for pigs. If things go according to plan, when
the pig eats this corn, the corn will immunize the pig against the virus.
It's a whole new way of using plants for human needs.
DR. WANG: Now, not only we can make medicine out of a plant, we can make
plant to make medicine. So that part is really quite exciting and the
potential using biotechnology is huge in this regard.
SCHAPIRO: Scientists can now take these corn embryos and insert genetic
instructions from any organism — from a virus, even an animal — into corn;
to make that corn do something new.
Dr. Mike Lee is a professor at Iowa State University. He is also working
with transgenic corn; not turning corn into medicine, but into a more
nutritious food for hogs. He takes genetic information from hogs mothers'
milk and puts it into corn plants.
DR. MIKE LEE, PHD, PROFESSOR, PLANT BREEDING AND GENETICS, IOWA STATE
UNIVERSITY: The corn plants contain a new DNA sequence that would be
producing this protein that would make that corn grain a more complete food
for hogs.
SCHAPIRO: To do this, scientists copy the gene that makes hogs mothers'
milk, then modify it to make it work in a plant.
DR. MIKE LEE: They'll start to form roots and shoots and a new plant
emerges, hopefully a plant that carries those genes now in their chromosomes.
SCHAPIRO: These genes are a totally new development in the history of life
on earth.
DR. MIKE LEE: Now do we have a hog gene in there or do we have a version of
a hog gene or do we have a corn gene? When does it stop becoming a hog gene?
That's a tough question.
SCHAPIRO: Dr. Kan Wang knows there are risks. A new gene makes new proteins.
And new proteins in food or vaccines could provoke unforeseen reactions like
severe allergic attacks.
Dr. Wang will test her corn vaccine for side effects. If the vaccine is safe
for pigs. The same techniques could lead to better vaccines for people.
DR. KAN WANG: I think that the potential for plant production system for
vaccine product is huge. Vaccines for HIV, for Hepatitis B, for maybe
Alzheimer's in the future.
SCHAPIRO: This is the dream, designer crops: crops making medicine, crops
with more nutrition, crops that thrive in any climate.
But agricultural biotechnology is not only being driven by idealism. It is
also being driven by a multi billion dollar industry in search of
blockbuster products.
To that end, six corporations now own 75% of the patents for the
bioengineered seeds of some of America's most important crops. Not only
corn - but cotton, canola, and soy. Seeds that they can sell to farmers like
Frank McLain.
FRANK MCLAIN, FARMER: Everything's different. The way we farm is
different... The perfect crop would be to control the pests, be weed-free,
and yield great so that we can pay our bills. I think that's what farmers
want. We want to be able to pay our bills.
SCHAPIRO: In the past growing the perfect crop required heavy doses of
chemicals and lots of human labor. Biotechnology promised a different
approach, just plant a new kind of seed. A transgenic seed.
The most widely used and profitable transgenic crop so far is a special kind
of soy bean seed. This seed has been given a gene, designed by Monsanto, to
resist a weedkiller.
FRANK MCLAIN: When I was a kid, you'd see grass or other weeds poking up in
these fields and we'd have to go through and chop them out with hoes or
shovels or whatever and try to clean it up manually or mechanically as best
we could. And now it's pretty easy to come in here with sprayer and
accomplish the same thing.
SCHAPIRO: That's a bonus for McLain - he can now spray herbicide right on
his crops without hurting them. There is perhaps a bigger bonus for
Monsanto, because the herbicide the crops resist is made by none other
than — Monsanto.
They call the herbicide Roundup®, and they call the seed Roundup Ready®.
It's growing in fully three-quarters of the soybean fields in America.
FRANK MCLAIN: Farmers are always looking for an herbicide or an herbicide
system that fits their operation the best and the Roundup Ready® system has
a pretty good fit for farmers.
SCHAPIRO: It's biotech synergy. Monsanto sells its chemicals and its
chemical-resistent seed in a package deal.
The problem, critics say, is that the science is being driven by the
agriculture industry, that their priority is rushing products to market, not
worrying about the possible long-term consequences.
DR. CHARLES BENBROOK, PHD, AGRICULTURAL ECONOMIST, BENBROOK CONSULTING
SERVICES: If you ask, well, why are these technologies the ones that are in
the market? The reason that they're there is because it's what
biotechnologists were able to do at the time, and the companies that had
invested so heavily in the technology and in buying up the seed industry
they had to have product on the market.
SCHAPIRO: Agricultural economist, Charles Benbrook says that pests are
already adapting to some of these transgenic crops. And some plants are
showing subtle changes in structure. Ominous signals of a weakening system.
DR. CHARLES BENBROOK: The trends for really 30 years have been towards
bigger farms, more specialized farms and similar production systems. All
three of those trends go against the grain of diversity. That's really one
of the fundamental lessons that's come from applying science to agriculture:
diversity in tillage systems, diversity in weed management systems,
diversity in the genetics of your crop that you're planting. All of those
things hedge the farmers bet against serious losses to pests.
SCHAPIRO: This is exactly why critics worry that three quarters of the
soybean fields in America grow those Roundup Ready® seeds.
DR. MIKE LEE: All of the pests that like soybeans have a great opportunity
before them if they could adapt to that variety of soybeans. You know then
they're going to rapidly spread and reproduce and maybe adversely effect the
soybean crop.
SCHAPIRO: Others worry that once this new biotechnology is introduced,
there's no turning back.
Take the case of Bt - Bacillus Thuringiensis - a big name for a tiny
bacteria. A gene from Bt, put into corn, is toxic to a pest called the corn
borer. Every cell in this new kind of corn, called Bt corn, makes its own
insecticide to kill the corn borer.
Farmers in Iowa planted thirty percent of their fields with the bug-killing
corn this year. But not Laura Krouse. She runs a small organic farm and
grows her own variety of seed the old-fashioned way.
LAURA KROUSE, FARMER: Are we ok on broccoli? Is that going to work out? ...I
like this corn. This is a great variety. It's been on this farm for 99
years. It's an important business for this farm. It's how I make a good
portion of my farm income. And if I stop growing it - it will probably go
extinct.
SCHAPIRO: Like the corn in Oaxaca, Mexico, her corn is openly pollinated.
The grains of pollen travel on the wind.
LAURA KROUSE: There's 300 kernals on an ear, there could be 300 Dads
involved in producing all the kernels of corn on that ear. And open
pollinated means that they could have come from anywhere.
SCHAPIRO: Sure enough, pollen did blow into Laura Krouse's fields. It
carried the Bt gene and she says it contaminated her organic seed.
Because of the presence of the Bt gene, Laura Krouse could no longer certify
her corn as organic. She lost half her business.
LAURA KROUSE: There's no way for me to go into that field and look for the
plants that contain the Bt gene and deselect them, kill them, don't include
them in next year's seed. It will always be there.
I don't know if there's room for a business like mine anymore. Biologically
it doesn't seem like it's going to be possible because of this sea of
genetically engineered pollen that I live in, over which I have no control.
SCHAPIRO: In the end, neither individual farmers, nor entire nations may be
able to control transgenic seeds once they leave the laboratory.
Remember Oaxaca, Mexico? The cradle of corn diversity? Surprisingly, traces
of transgenic corn have shown up in the remote mountain village of
Calpulalpan. The community found out when farmers, like Olga Moldonado,
brought samples of their corn to be tested in a local lab.
OLGA MOLDONADO, FARMER: When I found out that my corn was contaminated I
asked for an explanation. And I thought of my children, and I felt remorse
and fear it would hurt the health of my children.
DR. IGNACIO CHAPELA, PHD, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, ECOSYSTEM SCIENCES, UC
BERKELEY: I'm not going to die from that, you're not going to die from that.
But we are thinking of intergenerational responsibility. How can we assure
that our grandchildren will have a stable and reliable food source? I think
we're playing with that.
SCHAPIRO: Dr. Ignacio Chapela is a professor of microbial ecology at the
University of California at Berkeley. He and his graduate student, David
Quist, helped discover the transgenes in Oaxaca's corn and were the first to
focus the world's attention on them.
DR. IGNACIO CHAPELA: If nothing else, this discovery really showed that
transgenic organisms are really out of control. Especially something like
corn that produces pollen that gets distributed very widely.
SCHAPIRO: Chapela and Quist published their findings in the journal NATURE
and ignited a controversy, among scientists, about exactly how transgenes
behave.
But no one disputes their assertion that transgenic corn found its way to
Mexico. That was confirmed in August by a Mexican government study. Mexico
bans the planting and growing of genetically altered corn. So how did it get
there?
Thanks to North American Free Trade rules, Mexico allows more than five
million tons of American corn a year to be sold for human and animal
consumption. And much of American corn contains transgenes.
So all that had to happen, and all that did happen, is that farmers like
Olga Moldanado planted corn that they bought from the store - not knowing
that there might be transgenes in the mix.
OLGA MOLDONADO: I planted this corn out of curiosity. I bought it at the
government store and planted it to see if it was better than ours.
SCHAPIRO: Will it harm the environment? Will it compromise the diversity of
this treasured corn? We have no choice but to wait and see. The genie is out
of the bottle.
DR. MAURICIO BELLON: And, so now you might have transgenic diversity - but
is that good or bad? We cannot just say that they are good, they are
marvelous or they are bad. It depends very much how they're used how they're
controlled and there are still many uncertainties.
DR. MICHAEL PHILLIPS, PHD, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FOR FOOD AND AGRICULTURE,
BIOTECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY ORGANIZATION (BIO): If you're the government of
Mexico, hopefully you've learned a lesson here and that is that it's very
difficult to keep a new technology from, you know, entering your borders
particularly in a biological system.
SCHAPIRO: Dr. Michael Phillips directs the Food and Agriculture division of
the Biotechnology Industry Organization. He says countries like mexico
should simply accept the inevitable.
DR. MICHAEL PHILLIPS: We're approving them here in the United States, to the
South of Mexico, we've got Brazil, we've got Argentina, that's adopting
these technologies and so it really is incumbent upon the Mexican government
to step up the process and get your regulatory system in place so that you
can begin accepting these new products and give your farmers the opportunity
to choose.
SCHAPIRO: Frank McLain did choose. These new seeds help him manage more land
with less manpower.
Laura Krouse didn't have a choice. And there's a lot she would still like to
know about what might blow in, in the future.
LAURA KROUSE: I'm very interested in finding out where the biopharmaceutical
corns are being grown in Iowa. The corns that have been genetically
engineered to produce, for lack of a better word, medical products. If it
happens to be across the road here, I guess I'd like to know that.
SCHAPIRO: There is undeniable promise in some of these plants.
But when plants, especially food crops, are doing double-duty as pesticides,
or pharmaceuticals, even genetic engineers who believe in the promise of
transgenic crops think the unknowns unleashed by this technology call for
research, caution, and oversight.
DR. MIKE LEE: Once its out in nature and in commerce you're not going to be
able to get it back. And so that's different than cars and other products.
You can have a recall. You can't have a recall with transgenic plants. | |
