AID AGENCIES SAY BIOTECHNOLOGY WON’T END HUNGER Agnet Sept 25,

September 25, 1998 Reuters Claudia Parsons Long Ashton, England

According to this story, biotechnologists are mounting a major effort to persuade reluctant Britons that they can learn to love genetically engineered foods. But one of their key claims, that the new products could help alleviate world hunger, are dismissed as exaggerated and misleading by aid agencies working in famine regions.

The story notes that Monsanto is spending one million pounds ($1.68 million) on an advertising campaign to win over British consumers. "Worrying about starving future generations won’t feed them. Food biotechnology will," reads the headline on full page advertisements in several national newspapers. Company spokesman Dan Verakis was quoted as saying that did not mean Monsanto was claiming biotechnology would "feed the world. Biotechnology is one effective tool at addressing that bigger issue of a global food source that is both stable and sustainable."

Professor Peter Shewry, whose independent research is largely government-funded, the story says, also sees potential for genetic engineering to help developing countries. At the Institute of Arable Crops Research in Long Ashton in southwest England he is trying to improve wheat for bread making. With 800 million hungry people in the world today, and global population likely to rise by 2.5 billion in the next three decades, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation says food production must rise by some 75 percent in that period.

But Isabel McCrea, head of campaigns at one of Britain’s largest overseas development agencies, ActionAid, was cited as saying biotechnology could only ever play a minor role and that genetically engineered crops, as they are currently being designed, are for use in intensive agriculture which was not in the interests of small farmers growing a variety of crops for their own consumption, adding, "It’s not to say that there is no way one could genetically engineer crop varieties that would be of use. Our point is that by and large this is a TECHNOLOGY THAT’S BEING DEVELOPED FOR PROFIT. It is not to any degree going to help with world poverty. We are appalled by the cynical use of that argument by the industry to convince northern consumers that this is a technology that they should accept." Clive Robinson, a spokesman for Christian Aid, was cited as saying the key flaw in the biotechnology companies’ argument was the assumption that world hunger was caused by scarcity of food, adding, "The world already grows more than enough food to feed all the people in it. The problem is that many people in developing countries don’t have access to food or to the resources they need to grow more food for themselves. Farmers in Africa need more or better versions of seeds that have been used in their own fields rather than the sort of hi-tech or external hybrids peddled by the international seed companies."

David Cooper, a specialist on plant genetic resources at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, was cited as saying biotechnology would NEVER REPLACE CONVENTIONAL PLANT BREEDING, adding, "In these difficult environments, the environment is so varied and so specific you need solutions that are tailored to those particular areas. A one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to be the optimum approach in terms of production.

We’re also worried about a jamming up of the free flow of access to genetic resources. There’s no proper mechanism for sharing of benefits. We have a concern with intellectual property rights and patents when they limit the rights of the farmer to resow his own seed. This will interfere with the

need of farmers to selectively improve what they have."