By: Lucia Vásquez Celis IATP PAST INTERNS

Traslate to english by Katryn Clements IATP (Agriculture and Environmental Program)

Summer 1997

In no way do we oppose scientific research to develop new technological options, to create more efficient medicine, and/or to develop new technologies, particularly now that we understand that dynamic movement and change are the vital principles of evolution and that human existence has, through all times and in all cultures, been intricately linked with the invention and production of understandings.

It is because we believe in a diverse and real life for all: humans, plants, animals and microorganisms, that we look bewilderingly at the new "scientific" occurrences that upon not being regulated could lead us, as in some science fiction films, to lamentable situations, but with the unfortunate difference that the consequences that may be produced would not be fiction, as in film, but real.

The scientific occurance we are referring to is biotechnology, the techniques that are based "...on the manipulation of DNA and the regulatory processes that guide genetic functions...î NOTE. More specifically, we are discussing genetic engineering that mediates the transference of genes of one organism to another, from bacteria to plants or from humans to cows or fish, etc. This manipulation breaks the species barrier, and results in vegetable, animal or human products, desirable only from the purely economic perspective of multinational corporations, the same companies which, in many cases, disregard the ethical rules acknowledged by humanity and formally expressed as the fundamental rights established in the International Convention on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights of the United Nations.

In this initial reflection, we claim a dissonance between the possible implications that may result from the release and indiscriminate use of transgenic organisms, on social, economic and cultural rights. In a previous paper, this analysis is used in relation to implication of the Intellectual Property Rights. These IPR we understand to be intimately bound with biotechnology, the theme of our interest.

A detailed analysis of the International Convention of Social, Cultural and Economic Rights convinces us that biotechnology contradicts articles 2, 6, and 11 because of the possible impacts that the release and indiscriminate use of transgenic organisms, including: crops, microorganisms, foods, will have on the Human Rights that this International Convention recognises.

Number 2, Article 1 of the Convention says, "All peoples shall dispose of their natural riches and resources without damage of their obligations of cooperation based on the principles of mutual benefit and international laws. In no case shall the means of subsistence of a people be privatized."

If multinational corporations truly have an unobjectionable right to produce and sell their products and/or merchandise, it is also an unobjectionable obligation that they be subjected to the principles of cooperation and mutual benefit established in the Convention, similar to the obligation of the member States. For as much as the multinationals are subjected to the National States and too the norms that the International Right established, notwithstanding the supranational character of their economic activity. From their viewpoint, bad shall be called cooperation and/or mutual benefit the freeing/loosening from situations of social, food and/or cultural insecurity that shall be derived from the release and/or indiscriminate use of organisms, crops and/or foods with long-term impacts regarding: food product resources, environment, and the health of national populations are unknown in some cases, but in others predictable with negative impacts.

Some preliminary investigations have shown that the use of transgenic crops and/or the release of microorganisms into the soil shall have long-term negative impacts on subsistence crops, on one hand because the transgenic crops can cross-pollinate with other species, the which don't exclude to the foods from open pollination. On the other hand, negative consequences occur because the microorganisms in the soil can generate biochemical changes which could impact the dynamic equilibrium of ecosystems. A similar situation could occur in aquatic ecosystems with the release of fishes species or others. These releases will impact species valuable for human consumption (fish, mollusks, crustaceans, etc.) through the risks to the population dynamics of the species within the dynamic equilibrium of said ecosystems.

A look at the case of rapeseed (colza) (Brassica campestri spp) proves/ensures us elements which support the prediction of negative impacts, similar to those enumerated above. Notwithstanding, Monsanto, the multinational, says that their research fields of transgenic crops are risk free, some studies have demonstrated that the crops of transgenic rapeseed can pollinate with traditional or wild species with risks of genetic pollution. Investigations of the Riso National Laboratory in Roskilde, Dinamarca, that worked with rape production through genetic engineering, found that wild species and the Brassica campestris spp, spontaneously crossed (cross-fertilization) and in some immediate generations. The resulting plants not only contained the new genetically engineered rapeseed genes, they also were capable of passing the genes on to subsequent generations. The occurrence of fertilization between transgenic plants through two following generations suggests a possible rapid propagation of the rape genes to those of Brassica campestris spp, and indicates that the liberation of transgenic plants will have consequences, over short and long term, that cannot yet be measured.

In addition, the impacts on human health that could result from the consumption of foods produced through genetic engineering are very far from the context of the principle of mutual benefit that must be conditions the free disposal of the riches and natural resources. Vandana Shiva, along with other scientists, affirm that the foods produced through genetic engineering can reach dangerous levels as much as of control over the same like over the foods that they consume. "The processes of combination of genetic material of unrelated species could lead to the production of new toxins in foods and to the production of allergies until now unknown en the consumers."

And like we can talk of cooperation and/or of the principle of mutual benefit if "The markets of the South are confronted with the difficulty of evaluating the potential impacts of the new production with inadequate information. They are deprived of basic information from which they could do a real calculation of the implications that could result when the substitution of their agricultural products by vegetable components specifically produced in bioreactors of the North begins."

WHICH WILL BE THE DIMENSIONS OF THE DISASTER IF A TRANSGENIC CROPS IMPACTED BY POLLINATION AND/OR VIRAL INFECTION CROPS OF LOCAL AND/OR WORLD CONSUMPTION LIKE RICE, CORN, OR OTHER CROPS FUNDAMENTALLY FOR FOOD SEGURITY?

Article 6, Number 1 of the Convention reads,"The State members of the current Convention recognize the right of access to work, those which include the right of each on to the opportunity to earn their livelihood through the work which they have freely chosen or accepted and to take appropriate means to safeguard this right."

If we are broken of which forty per cent of all the processes of production in the world is based on biological materials and that now these materials, that could be controlled exclusively through the multinationals who are utilizing the genetic engineering to manipulate the life material and the systems of patents, they reclaimed like exclusive lords of said materials, we are before a socioeconomic panorama sufficiently ruined characterized by the excessive concentration of the means of production, the use of new technologies and through the limited force of work, required.

Initial estimations of the International Labor Organization (ILO) suggest that we potentially will lose more than 50% of jobs in the Third World as consequences of the application of biotechnology. Moreover, there must be an accounting for the impacts of the imposition of biotechnology on the activities of already vulnerable sectors of the population, like that of the women. Activities in which these groups are engaged in, like the manual control of weeds, contribute to approximately 30% of the labor by volume in agriculture in the Third World and assure a mostly secure income for the involved women.

Let us not forget that increasing use of biotechnology is not exclusively impacting the South. The countries of the North will also face a significant loss of jobs through the increasing monopolization of economies that will be generated through a side of the crossing of small businesses and medium sized that will not be able to compete with the large transnational companies with the subsequent loss of jobs and through other the necessity each mall time of hand of work through part of happinesses industrial biotechnologies.

Article 1, Number 11 reads, "The States of the current Convention known the right of each person to a stand adecuande of live for their own and for the family, including food adecuade, dressed and living and to the continual betterment of the conditions of live. The States will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, known for the impacts of the same, the essential importance of the international cooperation based in the free consent."

The Right to adequate food is a concept medular in the International Pact of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The concept should extend as an integral right that goes much farther than the mere right to food. It is implied in the Convention that the States should guarantee to each one of its citizens: a) the freedom to food without dependence on government hand-outs, without constant interference from the government, but also without degrading dependence due to the private monopolization of resources; b) the access to: appropriate ecosystems and resources for food production and agriculture; food ecological and cultural in harmony with need of the local and national peoples; c) the exercise of practices and sustainable technological production, with those which produce food and d) the conditions for production of and access to adequately nutritious and culturally appropriate food.

The new biotechnological processes, affected entering the sector of production of food, and foresees the proliferation of food produced through genetic engineering as resulted of the monopolization of resources in part from the biotechnological businesses; the imposition of foods that don't respond to the conditions of biological and cultural diversity only respond to the interests of Multinational Corporations.

"If there is an accounting of the high level of the investment that the transnationals have on the development of research and in the perfection of technological options, especially in the fields of technologies of enzymes, the potential range of the production of food, substitutes for natural products will increase incrementally. Thus the same the technology creates increasing opportunities and possibilities for reducing natural food products to their central components (carbohydrates, dyes, etc.. These said components are being sold as new industrial foods or products on the world markets and especially in the countries of the Third World, "...the transnational companies compete through control of agricultural exportation of their new products to the countries of the Third World considerate markets enough valuable.î

This situation should be disembarked in the fondness of the right to food known from ample sectors of the populations, if there is taken into account that almost 90% of the food requirement of the South is satisfied by local production and that 2/3 are based on agricultural systems developed through local communities.

In the context of the International Convention on Human Rights and specifically of the Convention of Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, it is be illegal to negate the right to adequate food from peoples because of the interests of the ten largest food producers in the world.