[asia-apec 1298] Peasants protest mutant corn field test in Mindanao, Laguna

[tpl at cheerful.com]

KMP (Peasant Movement of the Philippines)

PEASANTS OPPOSE GM CORN, GENETIC IMPERIALISM

The Kilusan ng Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) demanded that government ban 
the commercialization of experimental crops that have been crossbred with 
dubious gene material because of threats to farmers' seed traditions, 
genetic diversity and consumer health.

KMP chair Rafael Mariano said that peasants will lose the 
twelve-millennium-old rights to raise their own seeds to agrocorporations 
which control the trade of food, chemicals and seeds and which have 
exclusive rights to the new seeds that need huge doses of chemicals.

On June 1, the village council of Barangay Lagao, General Santos City 
passed a resolution asking the National Committee on Bio-Safety of the 
Philippines (NCBP) to reverse the impending approval of a field release by 
the seed and chemical conglomerate Monsanto-Cargill of transgenic 
(genetically engineered) corn.

According to a non-government organization Searice, the NCBP is mandated 
to regulate laboratory researches in enclosed gardens only and not of field 
tests.

Councilor Rolito Blando led the council to ask Monsanto-Cargill to stop 
field preparations and also asked the city council to declare Gen. Santos 
free of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). They charged that city 
agriculturist and the local health and environment offices were not notified 
of the field tests.

Called Bt-corn, it is ordinary Zea mays L infused with a gene from the 
bacteria Bacillus Thuringensis that produces poisons inside the plant to 
combat corn borers.

Manuel Yap, head of the farmer-scientist group Magsasaka at Siyentipiko 
para sa Ikauunlad ng Agham Pang-agrikultura (Masipag), warned that Bt-corn 
can breed with normal corn and corn-related weeds in a process called 
"genetic pollution."

Bt-toxin kills beneficial and innocent insects, and even turn the corn 
borer into "super pests" resistant to the toxin. Yap said this can cause 
massive crop failures when super pests attack traditional corn nationwide, 
thus neutralizing local farmer opposition to imported corn. Industrialized
countries will be unhampered in dumping their surpluses of corn and
corn-substitutes on the country.

Meanwhile, the Katipunan ng mga Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan 
(KASAMA-TK) is also protesting a similar introduction by DuPont-Pioneer 
HiBred in Barangay Masaya, Bay, Laguna.

According to the group's president, Jerry Mangubat, Bt-corn is the
continuation of the Green Revolution which destroyed self-sufficiency of
farmers when it 
promised higher yields, yet replaced traditional plants with weakling 
monocultures that need costly inputs. Mangubat said Monsanto and Pioneer 
promote pesticide use instead of traditional manual labor to manage pests, 
thus increasing landlessness and unemployment in the countryside and damage
the rural folk's health.

Pioneer controls 34% of the US$1.33 billion US hybrid corn market while 
Monsanto is the second largest agrochemical giant and third largest seed 
company that has bought eight other firms for US$8.1 billion.

Farmers' groups in Europe, Brazil and India have launched huge protests 
that involved uprooting and burning of transgenic cotton and soya. Offices
of Cargill and Monsanto in India have even been vandalized.
 
Widespread consumer boycotts have forced food giants and supermarkets to 
pull out GMOs and genetically-altered foods (GAFs).

Mariano said Estrada's Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA) 
provides the structure and policy framework for the systematic spread 
of "genetic imperialism."

"The new technology will be coursed through corporative farming schemes 
under AFMA, in which peasants will further be tied down to tenancy to big 
landlords and multinational corporations, with the added burden of dealing 
with still unknown health dangers emanating from contact with new DNA 
recombinations," Mariano added.

While human reaction to the Bt-toxin remains untested, doctors in the 
United Kingdom have linked animal and human illness to consuming GMOs 
because of the popular use by the biotechnology industry of third genes 
called "enhancers" and "markers."

Markers are fragments of antibiotics which make it easier for technicians 
to know if a breeding has succeeded. Also, parts of deactivated viruses, 
because of their infective character, are used as enhancers to heighten the 
expression of  the gene, for example, improved shelf-life, flavor or color.

A promoter gene from the cauliflower mosaic virus, popular in the industry 
and used to boost herbicide-tolerant traits in soya, is suspected of making 
laboratory rats suffer organ abnormalities after they were fed with 
transgenic potatoes.

Bt-corn contains markers from ampicillin, a popular antibiotic in the 
Philippines, and contact with bacteria in the intestines of cattle and 
humans can create super-germs that are immune to penicillin drugs, 
increasing a future danger of wildfire epidemics of previously controllable 
infections.

Mariano said corporate biotechnology has produced a series of failures and 
cannot justify its claims to raise yields, relieve hunger, make crops 
resistant to stresses, increase nutrition and liberate peasants from 
inhumane labor. Instead, genetic imperialism merely commercializes 
agriculture while creating conditions for environmental disaster.

KMP demands an unconditional removal of all GM crops from planned open 
tests worldwide. It calls on Filipino and other Third World peasants to 
oppose imperialist globalization and its nenewed attempts to propagate
export-oriented crops in their respective countries thus further
endangering food security. # # #