TERMINATOR technology: the name alone makes it sound like the work of a James Bond villain intent on world domination. For critics of multinational biotech corporations, the reality seems hardly less horrifying. Terminator technology is a way of making genetically modified plants produce sterile seeds, forcing farmers to buy fresh seed every year instead of saving it from the previous year鈥檚 harvest.
Aren鈥檛 farmers in developing countries poor enough already? Surely multinationals should not be plotting to make them even poorer. There is a de facto moratorium on the commercialisation of Terminator technology, and this month at a meeting in Bangkok of the Convention on Biodiversity, Canada failed in an attempt to overturn it. Shouldn鈥檛 we be celebrating?
Actually, no. Eco-activists have got it wrong. Instead of fighting Terminator technology, we should all be encouraging it 鈥� even campaigning to make it compulsory for most GM plants. There are plenty of good reasons for doing this, but first let鈥檚 get one thing straight. Claims that Terminator genes might spread to other crops or wild relatives are nonsense. If any neighbouring plants are fertilised by pollen containing the Terminator gene, the resulting seeds will be sterile. End of story. The Terminator terminates, it does not spread.
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The Terminator is just one of a group of 鈥済enetic use restriction鈥� technologies, otherwise known as GURTs, designed to stop the spread of engineered traits to other plants. Some do not interfere with fertility at all but instead switch on the desired GM trait only when farmers apply a proprietary chemical to their fields. One, dubbed the Exorcist, destroys all the foreign DNA in the seeds and fruits of the plant, so the food it produces is GM-free.
There is no hiding the fact that seed companies want to exploit these technologies to make money. But anyone concerned about the spread of GM crops has good cause to encourage them, for Terminator and its ilk are a great way of controlling both GM crops and who grows them.
Indeed, without this technology GM crops can seriously disrupt agricultural markets. Look at what is happening in South America. Last month, Monsanto stopped selling its herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready soya in Argentina. The crop has no patent protection there, so the company was unable to force Argentina鈥檚 farmers to sign licences obliging them to buy new seeds every year, as it does in countries like the US and Canada. The result was a huge black market in GM soya seeds, and losses for Monsanto.
Monsanto鈥檚 misfortune will please its enemies, but even for those opposed to GM crops there is a downside to this story. Many of the black-market seeds are being sold in Brazil, where GM crops have not been approved. Consumers are buying Brazilian soya thinking it is non-GM. Yet astonishingly, as much as one-third of Brazil鈥檚 soya crop is thought to be GM. Had Terminator or Exorcist technology been available and acceptable when Monsanto developed its soya, Brazil would still be GM-free.
鈥淓ven if you hate the idea of GM plants, it makes sense to support ways to keep them in check鈥�
There are other reasons to embrace GURTs. While herbicide-resistant crops make it easy to kill off weeds, they can become weeds themselves when leftover seeds sprout at the wrong time. Farmers then have to use another herbicide to kill them off. And in Canada, varieties of oilseed rape (canola) that have been engineered to be resistant to different herbicides have interbred, making them even harder to dispose of. The Terminator or the Exorcist would prevent such problems.
Perhaps their greatest benefit is in preventing the spread of altered genes. The most notorious example of such 鈥済ene flow鈥� is the discovery of genes from GM maize in traditional varieties in Mexico. As GM plants become more widespread 鈥� from fast-growing trees to grasses for golf courses and blue roses for gardens 鈥� cases like this will become more common. These GM strains may be harmless, or they may be even more threatening than the exotic plants that are already wiping out indigenous flora everywhere from the Galapagos to the Cape of Good Hope. But any genetic pollution is undesirable, so let鈥檚 not wait to find out. If regulatory agencies worldwide insisted on GURTs in any plant given a trait that enhances survival, the risk of gene flow would be greatly reduced. Even if you hate the idea of GM plants, surely it makes sense to support technologies that could help keep them in check.
As for the accusation that forcing farmers to buy GM seed every year will hit poor farmers hardest 鈥� well, no farmer will be forced to buy GM crops. And many GM varieties either require expensive inputs such as herbicides that poor farmers can ill afford, or are not suited to their local conditions. Seed companies argue, perhaps correctly, that if they can be sure of making a profit they will invest in developing a more diverse range of crops, rather than focusing on products for rich commercial farmers.
It is time we face the fact that GM plants are here to stay. Technologies like the Terminator and the Exorcist are the best hope we have of controlling them. For the benefit of the environment, consumers and even farmers, we should embrace them.
