The purveyors of genetically modified foods persist in their claims that they will feed the world but refuse to address the social and economic causes of hunger, Father Sean McDonagh, a leading environmentalist, has said.
Moreover, the "terminator seed", which is genetically engineered by a Monsanto-owned company to die after one growing season, was "grossly immoral", he claimed. It would lead to increased starvation, he said in a paper presented to the Third Sustainable Earth Fair staged by voluntary groups in Trinity College Dublin at the weekend.
The chairman of Voice of Irish Concern for the Environment had one question for those who opt for high-tech solutions to famine and are silent on the economic, political and social factors that cause poverty and malnutrition. "Do they think that agribusiness companies will distribute genetically engineered food free to the hungry people? Given their dedication to bottom-line profits, I think it is highly unlikely."
Famine and hunger stemmed from complex economic, social and cultural factors rather than inability of peasant farmers to access agribusiness's super-seeds, Father McDonagh said. Those who wished to banish hunger should address those social and economic inequalities and not pretend a "magic" technology would solve all the problems. His experience of 20 years working in the Philippines confirmed this view.
"Terminator technology" was another reason for asserting that the feed-the-world argument was spurious, he said. "This technology, if it becomes widespread, will surely strike the death knell for the 2.4 billion small subsistence farmers who live mainly in the Third World. Sharing seeds among farmers has been at the very heart of subsistence farming since the domestication of staple food crops 11,000 years ago."
It would lock farmers into a regime of buying genetically engineered seeds that are herbicide-tolerant and insect-resistant, "copper-fastening them on to the chemical treadmill".
At an ethical level, he claimed technology which introduces a killer transgene to prevent the germination of the harvested grain from developing "must be considered grossly immoral". If anything went wrong terminator genes could spread to neighbouring crops and wild relatives of the plant engineered to commit suicide.
