Associated Press | November 27, 1999 | By THAKSINA KHAIKAEW, Associated Press Writer
PHETCHABUN, Thailand - Thailand is blessed with a gentle climate, abundant farmland and modern agribusiness that have made the small Southeast Asian nation an unlikely but important food exporter, the world leader for rice.
But Thailand and politically weak nations are being held hostage by the dispute between the United States and European Union, the world's agricultural and consumer superpowers, over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.
The potentially intractable bone of contention will be one source of friction between Washington and Europe during the next round of global talks to be launched this week by the World Trade Organization in Seattle.
The Europeans say that altering genes of food - splicing in a fungus to make a tomato frost resistant, for example - presents a possible health hazard and that GMO foods should be labeled to alert consumers.
The United States, where companies like Monsanto have pioneered GMOs, claims the tinkering helps farmers and is harmless to consumers. Labeling amounts to a trade barrier against U.S. foods, Washington contends.
Thailand, with an agriculture sector worth to to dlrs 15 billion is stuck in the middle. The Thais import corn and soybeans from the United States for reprocessing into animal feed and cooking oil, while exporting food products all over the world.
The Thais worry that gene-altered products could contaminate their exports and close the doors to the EU market. But they also fear that banning GMOs will alienate another important partner, the United States.
"Labeling GMO food is sensitive, as it will affect import and export of food and raw materials," said Narong Chayakul, director of Thailand's Food and Drug Administration. "It's not an FDA issue alone. International trade measures must be taken into account."
Commerce Minister Supachai Panitchpakdi, due to lead the WTO in three years, has banned imports of seeds derived from GMOs for commercial aims, except for grain used in research or as animal feed.
But serious doubts already exist over the country's ability to control the spread of GMOs.
In Petchabun, 190 miles (300 kilometers) north of Bangkok, farmers are singing the praises of a new strain of cotton they've been planting over the past two years.
The seeds are sold from farmer to farmer, and none of them was aware until recently they could be gene-altered products.
Pisal Wongsenim, 36, was a taxi driver in Bangkok who returned to farming when the Asian economic crisis struck in 1997. He planted corn but lost money due to the need for expensive pesticides and fertilizers.
A friend introduced him to worm-resistant cotton and offered the seeds at dlrs 4 per kilogram (2.2 pounds): "He said the cotton would save me and my family."
Pisal covered his investment with the dlrs 615 earned from a first harvest of 3,520 pounds (1,580 kilograms). The second and third crops will be pure profit.
The spread of the cotton seeds also outrages anti-GMO activists, who claim they result from shipments brought into Thailand a few years ago by Monsanto for a bio-safety test and ended up being widely grown.
"We fear that the gene-altered cotton will spread into a wider area by crossbreeding with local species," said Dacha Sripatra of Ecological Friendly Agriculture, which promotes organic farming. "It also poses a threat to some predator bugs."
Monsanto has declined to comment on the allegations. Samphan Khampiranont, the company's representative in Thailand, said Monsanto had destroyed experimental cotton after completing tests two years ago.
More tests are being conducted by the Agriculture Ministry to assess whether the cotton used by Pisal and other farmers really came from the Monsanto strain. Results are not expected before next week.
Vithoon Lienchamroon of Biothai, a non-governmental organization promoting chemical-free cultivation, said Thailand should take warning from the experience of the promotion of mass use of pesticides and modern fertilizers in recent years.
"Farmers ended up using excessive chemicals as worms and disease developed resistance," Vithoon said. "They ran into debts and poorer health. We don't know what GMOs will bring us."
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
