Look at this little gem! The following response was posted to Florence Wambugu on the MIT Technology Forum. Notice, the author claims UK headlines as being "evidence"...goes to show how damaging all that press was, if they are using it to now attack Africans.
[Original article.]
Why Africa Needs Agricultural Biotech - Thursday, 1 July 1999
ISAAA
By Florence Wambugu
monsanto.co.uk
Message 10436669
[Response to article.]
**** Posting from "MIT Technology Review" forum follows ***
www.techreview.com
techreview.com
Africa Needs Peace and Security, Not Unproven and Unnatural Transgenic "Solutions" (A Rebuttal from an African American)
As a whole, I found the essay "Why Africa Needs Agricultural Biotech" by Florence Wambugu to be disturbing. In my opinion, it presents an overglorified view of the "benefits" of agricultural biotechnology, while ignoring or downplaying potential dangers. In particular, I feel that the following points from her essay cannot go unchallenged:
1. Her Dismissal of European Transgenic Food Safety Concerns
The criticism of agribiotech products in Europe IS based on FOOD SAFETY ISSUES !! Ms. Wambugu's statements that "(food) concerns (in Europe) have nothing to do with food safety" is an outright lie! Food safety has been raised time and time again by critics of genetically modified crops such as Prince Charles. It was the second of ten questions that Prince of Wales raised in an article he wrote to The Daily Mail on June 1, 1999 - princeofwales.gov.uk
Indeed, he has raised the issue of food safety of transgenic foods and the need to apply the precautionary principle to them since at least 1995.
Even a simple search at the BBC website (http://www.bbc.co.uk) for articles related to transgenic foods will pull up many articles that express food safety concerns. One example is "Meningitis Fear over GM Food" from April 26, 1999 in which specialists on the UK Government's Advisory Committee on Novel Foods expressed concern about genetically modified (GM) foods containing a gene resistant to antibiotics.
Finally, how do you know that "transgenic foods are eaten daily in the U.S., Austrailia, Canada, Mexico and elsewhere with no reported undue effects"?? How could negative health effects be reported in these countries when genetically modified foods have not been labelled in any of them. It is premature to state unequivocally that there are "no reported undue effects" when there have been NO long-term human health trials of these foods. You might want to note that on the same day your article was posted, the U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman announced that the U.S. would BEGIN long term human-health studies ("U.S. Plans Long-Term Studies on Safety of Genetically Altered Foods", by Marian Burros, The New York Times, July 14, 1999). Will the projects you describe, for genetic modification of bananas, sugar cane, sweet-potatoes, and tropical fruits also have long-term human health trials incorporated before these foods are released on the African market? Or the world market?
2. Complacency Regarding Terminator Technology
Who says that this product is only a concept and is not planned for Africa or elsewhere??
You are obviously very naive about the way transnational corporations work and who they serve. Their promises rarely match up with reality. Examples of present transnational ATTITUDES toward those living in the non-industrialized world include: continuing production & export of poisons banned in the U.S. like
DDT, continuing export of diesel fuel vehicles and leaded gasoline to countries where air pollution is a tremendous public health problem, and even the export of obsolete pharmaceuticals as disaster relief supplies (to obtain domestic tax write-offs). The immoral dumping of useless pharmaceuticals was evident most recently during the Kosovo refuge relief effort (and this represents Euro-American to European betrayal - it was covered in the article "Among the U.S. Donations, Tons of Worthless Drugs" by Reed Abelson, The New York Times, June 29, 1999). You better believe they're going to use Terminator technology. Their unwritten motto is 'anything for profit'!.
3. All-Too-Quick Dismissal of Concerns over Potential Toxins and Allergens from Genetically Modified Foods
Using the Pusztai case to dismiss all concerns outright is ludicrous. Whether his studies were flawed or not, they do not invalidate the concerns of many scientists about the potential harms to human health from NEW allergens and/or toxins in transgenic foods. As The Union of Concerned Scientists has pointed out
(http://www.ucsusa.org/agriculture/gen.risks.health.html) "transgenic crops could bring new allergens into foods that sensitive individuals would not know to avoid...Scientists have limited ability to predict whether a particular protein will be a food allergen, if consumed by humans...Thus importing proteins, particularly from nonfood sources, is a gamble with respect to their allergenicity." The Union of Concerned Scientists also points out that "many organisms have the ability to produce toxic substances...In some cases, plants contain inactive pathways leading to toxic substances. Addition of new genetic material through genetic engineering could reactivate these inactive pathways or otherwise increase the levels of toxic substances within the plants."
Of course, her defense that "transgenic foods are rigorously tested for possible toxins and allergens before commercialization" belies the fact that this "rigorous testing" involves checking for knowns toxins & allergens in the foreign genes and in the food to be modified ONLY. This is NOT ADEQUATE because it fails to test for newly created toxins or allergens in the final transgenic food! Plus, part of declaring that a food has undergone rigorous testing is having proof from long-term human health trials. Where are the human health trials to back up her claims?
4. Her Incessant Claim that Africa 'Needs' these Products to Keep Mass Starvation at Bay
African or not, you're lacking a true understanding of history. Especially disturbing was your fawning and erroneous statement that "(Europe) has never experienced hunger, mass starvation and death on the regular scale we sadly witness in Africa" Oh, please ! Have you ever heard of the Irish potato famine??? Your statement only holds true if one adds the qualifier "IN THIS CENTURY, Europe has not experienced mass hunger,..." Moreover, part of the reason Europe has not experienced mass hunger in this century is because England, France, Belgium, etc. colonized a large portion of the world during that time, and established export-oriented systems of agriculture to overfeed themselves and their meat animals, to the detriment of Africans and other people of color.
Your opening paragraph perpetuates the lie that genetic engineering will solve all of Africa's ills. As Dr. Michael W. Fox states in Superpigs and Wondercorn, "to even speculate that genetic engineering could mean the end of all human suffering from famine, pestilences, and plagues is going too far. It reflects a NAIVE 'genetic determinism' that IGNORES the fact that these problems are CAUSED BY MANY FACTORS that have little to do with genes."
5. Her Perpetuation of Myths regarding the First "Green Revolution"
Almost midway through her essay, Ms. Wambugu laments that "Africa missed the green revolution, which helped Asia and Latin America achieve self-sufficiency in food production. Africa cannot afford to be excluded or to miss another major global 'technological revolution' It must join the biotechnology endeavour."
That's just so touching, ... and so patently false.
According to Kristin Dawkins, author of Gene Wars: The Politics of Biotechnology (Seven Stories Press, 1997) (http://www.sevenstories.com/gene.htm), "the first Green Revolution was certainly successful, in so far as its goal was to substitute high-yielding commercial varieties of wheat, rice, and other basic grains for the traditional crops of much of Asia and parts of Latin America...(it) also substituted chemicals, tractors and combines, irrigation systems, and other capital-intensive technologies for labor in these regions, sending many peasants to the slums of the cities to eke out a living as best they could...Sound good? Sound like the solution to world hunger? Well, as time went on, Miracle Rice (planted in the Phillipines) began to seem like less of a miracle. The monocultural environment became a perfect incubator for the Brown Planthopper (insect)...Over the years, some 4,000 Filipino rice farmers have died of pesticide poisoning and two-thirds of the Philippines' rice paddies are now chemically degraded. Fertilizer use quintupled over the past few decades, and even the much-touted high yields are now in decline."
6. Her Insinuation that Transgenic Crops are the Only Way to Control Viral Plant Diseases
Why the need to jump to transgenic technology as the only possible solution to viral plant diseases? How extensively have traditional organic farming remedies been employed against these problems? What was the exact "improvement" you were looking for in sweet-potato production that "could not be achieved by traditional means"?? How much funding have low-tech solutions received? Are Novartis, Agvevo, Pioneer, Monsanto, or the Rockefellers interested helping organizations like the Kenya Association of Forest Users (KAFU) (http://www.ftpp.or.ke/kafu/kafucvr.htm) with non-biotech solutions?
Throughout her essay, we read that adoption of transgenic technologies will automatically "increase local grain production", "improve food production", "certainly benefit ...seed quality and resistance to pests...". All of these assumptions are flawed. Yields are not guaranteed; the technology is itself imprecise. Plus, nowhere do she mention the perils associated with the production of virus-tolerant crops. One environmental peril that has been noted by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is the creation of new or worse viruses.
(http://www.ucsusa.org/agriculture/gen.risks.environment.html) According to UCS, recombination between the plant-produced viral genes and closely related genes of incoming viruses can "produce new viruses that can infect a wider range of hosts or that may be more virulent than the parent viruses."
7. Her Insistence that Any Critics Are Trying to Hold Africa Back
No one is recommending that Africans perpetuate a "victim mentality". To the contrary, Africans must determine what's in their best interests, long-term. No matter how philanthropic the Rockefeller, McKnight, and Hitachi Foundations are, they do not operate from an Afrocentric worldview, and do not have the eternal well-being of African people as their guiding vision. They operate from a Western model and, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, these institutions take the approach that they have "everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them."
Let me digress for a moment and give an example that shows the strengths of traditional (precolonial) African systems in another sphere of life (justice/crime & punishment).
In her recent book A Sin Against the Future: Imprisonment in the World (Northeastern University Press, 1998), author Vivien Stern explains that prison systems were brought to Africa (and the Caribbean) by the European colonizers and she describes how these prison systems face severe problems and pressures. In her last chapter, titled "A Better Way?", she shows how traditional African ways of responding to crime, prior to the arrival of Europeans, operated on the better reparative model which emphasized a respect for human beings, reparation of damage, personalizing the relationship between the offender and the victim, and the involvement of the community in finding justice. In short, African traditional law was a non-coercive, less formal, and more positive approach. While Ms. Stern does say that "there can be no simple attempt to restore pre-colonial traditions", she argues that "the values and processes of traditional African law... (are) worth resurrecting." Indeed, she gives the example of the National Committee on Community Service in Zimbabwe, which "is perhaps particularly successful and relevant to developing countries because it is low cost. It does not attempt to emulate the structures of the West...It establishes a penal model based on productive work and fruitful relationships between offender and community, rather than unproductive time and ruptured relationships."
Now, you'd probably never hear about African traditional law from a executive at Corrections Corporation of America or Wackenhut. First, I would assume that few of these corporate executives are aware of African traditional anything. Secondly, they would probably regard such a return to traditional methods as a threat to their continuing profits from expansion of the Western-style prison "industy" (refer to "The Prison-Industrial Complex" by Eric Schlosser, The Atlantic Monthly, 12/98 theatlantic.com) Yet that would be a shame, because as Vivien Stern notes "(these countries) may be poorer economically, but they are not necessarily poorer in terms of their criminal justice traditions."
Well, the same caveats apply to those who seek to import the Western agricultural systems to poorer countries. African nations may be poorer economically (and here one cannot minimize the harmful effects of civil war in Angola, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Sudan, Mozambique, Congo, Rawanda, etc.in creating and maintaining poverty) BUT THEY ARE NOT NECESSARILY POORER IN TERMS OF THEIR AGRICULTURAL TRADITIONS.
As the late African-American historian John Henrik Clarke said in his book Notes for an African World Revolution (Africa World Press, 1991) "African people will have to take a three-way look at themselves using the past to evaluate the present and using the present to prophesy the future. In our long journey on this earth, we have had few friends, if any. All non-Africans who have come among us or been associated with us have clearly shown that they would betray us any time it was in their self-interest...If there is one thing that can be said about black people that has caused a lot of pain, and yet it is historically true, it is that politically we are one of the most naive of people. We have been taken in by practically everything and everybody that has come to us...The main point here is that we people really need to take a good look at ourselves and begin to exercise the essential selfishness of survival...We will have to ask questions and make alliances that are based on our self-interest. If it is not to our self interest, to hell with it, no matter how good it sounds."
Everyone acknowledges that this new technology will never go away. Yes, Africa should strengthen its capacity to deal with various aspects of biotechnology ; yes, Africa should create and sustain gene banks; yes, Africans should definitely understand biotechnology. But, as Canadian geneticist David Suzuki points out in Episode 4 of his CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) Ideas series "From Naked Ape to Superspecies"
(http://newsradio.cbc.ca/suzuki/series.html), transgenic techniques ARE UNNATURAL! (They are NOT "simply an added-value improvement to...hybrid (seeds)"). Therefore, we should be extremely cautious about using them. Every effort should be employed to utilize natural remedies to plant problems first and foremost, and to avoid the search for quick fixes. Perhaps Africans like yourself should spend a few months away from these rich foundations and agri-biotech corporations, and study both African traditions -which according to Prof. Horace Campbell of Syracuse University's Dept. of African Studies, regard plant and animal life as common resources that involve a combination of rights and responsibilities among its users - and the traditions of Westerners such as the Amish who always test the social impact of new technologies and only adopt now technologies after a trial period in which they assess the effects ("Technology Amish Style", by Eric Brende, Technology Review, Feb/Mar 1996). You could also insist that these foundations and corporations you've partnered with demand that the U.S. government SUPPORT a strong international Biosafety Protocol that would insure corporate responsibility. It seems to me that would be a better use of their time and money at this stage. But I doubt they'd be interested. |
