Thirteen Months of Biotech Lies

Thirteen months ago, the ag-biotech industry wakened to a nightmare. Illegal and unwelcome, the presence of genetically-modified (GM) maize was reported smack in the crop's center of genetic origin in Mexico. There's never a good time for a political/ecological calamity, but the beleaguered Gene Giants were already struggling to persuade consumers, following the Starlink Taco Debacle, that companies could control their inventions and their inventory. The seed companies were also hoping to arm-twist EU ministers into lifting the ban on GM products in Europe. Suddenly, the headlines were full of the contamination scandal. To make matters worse, the year ahead was shaping up to be the Year of the Summits -- a succession of diplomatic poverty, hunger, and pollution "retros" including the Monterrey Summit on development financing in March; the 10th anniversary of the Biodiversity Convention in April; another World Food Summit (once more with feeling) in June -- all boiling up to the "mother of all summits" -- World Summit on Sustainable Development -- in South Africa in September. For the corporations (and the United States so aggressively supporting them) the issue was: how to run the gauntlet of intergovernmental marathons with GM contamination on their backs? Thirteen months later, the issue for governments, international agencies, and civil society is: how did the Gene Giants duck and dodge their way through all these for an entire year with Southern African governments -- half a world away from the scene of the crime -- being blamed and vilified for rejecting GM seeds?

Dodge 1: Denial

One year after the Mexican government announced that maize in two states was contaminated with GM varieties, neither Mexico nor the international genetic resources community have taken constructive, coherent steps to arrest, fully assess, or ameliorate the contamination. Mexico is the center of origin and diversity for maize -- one of the world's most vital food crops. As local farmers, joined by more than 150 social movements and civil society organizations worldwide, raged, the first reaction from pro-GM scientists (public and private) was denial. It couldn't be true. The reports were wrong. Mexico (at least, initially) and the two U.S.-based researchers who provided corroborative evidence, held their ground. When the whistle-blowers revealed that their study was being peer-reviewed by Nature, industry's nightmare became a hologram.

Dodge 2: Diversion

Quickly, biotech's spin doctors took control, launching a vindictive e-mail and media campaign to discredit the scientific competence and political intent of the scientists, one of whom is Mexican and one American -- both located at the University of California at Berkeley. Rather than deny contamination, the likelihood of which was scientifically undeniable, the industry strategy was to divert attention by orchestrating a row over research methodology, the vagaries of which are always academically irresistible. This strategy became doubly important when Nature's article confirming contamination was published in November 2001. A good scientific squabble, industry reasoned, could obscure any truth and immobilize the germplasm community for months.

CIMMYT Bimited

Caught like a deer in the headlights of this battle was the Mexican-headquartered International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) -- the flagship of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and the developing world's leading institute for maize breeding and conservation. Mandated to help eradicate poverty and conserve maize diversity, CIMMYT soon took to the woods. Despite repeated requests from civil society for CIMMYT to weigh in on the reality of contamination and cut through the absurdity of the methodology obfuscation, the Institute limited itself to pious pronouncements about the need for scientific clarity and promises to help in any way short of action. CIMMYT went on to produce a succession of studies confirming that, whatever else may or may not be happening in the world, its own gene bank was not contaminated. The centre holds the world's largest unique maize germplasm collection. Always dependent on U.S. funding and increasingly dependent for its technologies on the biotech corporations, CIMMYT refused to publicly acknowledge what every maize researcher in the world knew -- that GM contamination of the Mexican maize crop was a reality. During the 10th anniversary of the Biodiversity Convention in April, however, the international institution did concede that the Mexican situation was grave enough for CIMMYT to adopt a moratorium on maize seed collection for conservation purposes. There was a risk that GM-contaminated seeds would find their way into the CIMMYT gene bank if collections continued. Still, CIMMYT refused to publicly back the Mexican government's ongoing moratorium on the introduction of GM crops. A moratorium for conservation in its own genebank, but not a moratorium for commercialization or contamination. Realizing that the Precautionary Principal was being ignored and that food sovereignty was being trampled, Mexican farmers' organizations and CSOs were furious.