[Thanks to Dan Doering, who gives a very clear appraisal of the appropriateness of biotechnologies to aquaculture in developing countries in this message, and to Glenn Ashton, who focuses on the question of introducing exotic and/or genetically modified fish into the environments of developing countries in the next message.

A REMINDER: We are now entering the last week of the conference, so we especially encourage those who have not already participated to do so and to share their views/experinces with us on the appropriateness of biotechnologies in the fisheries sector of developing countries...........Moderator]

I am Don Doering, Senior Associate at the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Washington, D.C. Before coming to WRI, I spent over five years developing technologies for aquaculture both in my own company and as a consulting scientist. This included both specialized health and nutrition technologies and planning genetic improvement programs. Part of my work at WRI addresses biotechnology and food security in developing countries.

The background discussion for this conference gives an excellent overview of the applications of biotechnologies to fishery issues that in my experience is accurate and well balanced. My comments relate particularly to aquaculture. I find that positions on this issue vary greatly with one's view of the future. My assumption is that some form of modern 'domesticated' production of seafood will be part of regional solutions to providing high quality protein without the environmental damage of either today's capture or aquaculture seafood supply chain.

When speaking on this subject, I often showed the contrast between a wild turkey and a domestic turkey with the reminder that aside from carp and some improvement in tilapia and a few salmonids, today's cultured species are wild animals. I believe that there are enormous gains to be made in increasing the productivity, growth rate, and survival in aquaculture and in reducing environmental impacts through intensive selective breeding assisted by modern molecular techniques. In addition to uncertainties about containment and sterilization, transgenic aquatic animals are not sensible or cost-effective in the genetic background of a wild animal and the enormous productivity gains to be made by intensive selective breeding.

This relates to developing countries in several ways. There are great gains in aquaculture productivity and reduction of negative impacts through the improvement of water management, culture techniques, feed and feeding techniques, and simple measures of disease control. This is both good news and bad news in that low-tech methods do not receive private sector or often public sector investment. (I'm reminded of the province in Thailand where with a simple flag system to indicate the days on which to do water exchange, shrimp farmers greatly reduced the mortalities created by pumping in the effluent of neighboring farms. This increased survival and reduced chemical use and waste production.) In order for biotechnologies to be productively applied in developing countries there has to be greater standardization of production practices and production inputs - at least on regional levels.

One of the challenges of developing a genetic improvement program is to conduct the selection under the same conditions as the actual culture - which is very hard in today's developing country environment. Another precondition for a genetic improvement program is a program that has a significant number of independent families upon which to base the breeding program. This requires disease-free animals, separate holding conditions, family histories, quarantine facilities, reliable management and data-tracking, and highly-trained geneticists. The goal of a good program in aquaculture will be to both improve the genetic background and have high diversity to create strains appropriate for different culture techniques, water conditions, and even to respond to new disease outbreaks. Breeding can be very much a garbage-in/garbage-out system in which years of well-managed selection can be wasted through mismanagement. Along with good selective programs there absolutely must be intensive work on sterilization techniques and containment techniques.

My point is that along with considering appropriateness of biotechnologies for aquaculture we must also consider the essential capacity to be created for the safe, equitable and effective use of those technologies. I have found that in the enthusiasm for molecular techniques, policy makers and scientists can become 'blinded by science' and miss the capacity that must be built that formed the foundation for use of these methods in beef, swine, and poultry. Many of today's problems in aquaculture have fairly low-technology solutions around the sourcing of juveniles, water management, feed and feeding, and the education of farmers. The time and risk of genetic improvement is so significant that private sector investment has been lacking and many of the private breeding programs are unsophisticated or began from an already limited genetic base.

I believe that marker-assisted (at the simplest level just for family identification and later for traits) selective breeding is a very appropriate biotechnology for developing countries yet it will only yield its benefits with significant investment in basic tools such as sterilization and cryopreservation and investment in the infrastructure for good breeding farms and the standardization and improvement of farming practices.

My own experience - learned the hard way trying to develop a high-technology business in this field - is that the species appropriate for culture in developing countries generally do not have the production economics to justify many high cost inputs such as vaccines and artificial larval feeds - though those costs are being reduced. Some of the technologies developed for aquaculture are driven by scientific interests and scientist's ambition, rather than a close connection to the needs in the field. Aquaculture science has a history of trying the latest techniques from other areas of animal science without having a fraction of the foundation of scientific knowledge that exists in other fields. For example, it is in only rare cases that the protective antigens in aquaculture are known, much less the mechanisms of protection and this is largely for bacterial rather than viral threats. There is generally such variation in field conditions and growing seasons that efficacy data is highly suspect.

My intuition is that investments in developing countries on farmer education, reducing culture stress and improving water quality as well as domestication will yield higher returns than investments in high technologies.

Don S. Doering, Ph.D.
World Resources Institute
Washington, DC
USA
DSD@wri.org

[To contribute to this conference, send your message to biotech-room4@mailserv.fao.org For further information on the FAO Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture see http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp ]

-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod4
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 9:39 AM
To: 'biotech-room4@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Southern Perspectives on GE aquaculture.

Following the threads of the debate, I agree that much of the discussion around the issue of the relevance of GE fish to developing nations is missed. That said, the debate on the technical issues of diploid and triploid fish, sterility and so forth are essential. For all the technical discussion that has taken place in this forum, it is clear that inducing sterility is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to guarantee. Therefore the threat of introducing exotic species must be comprehensively assessed before the introduction of any genetically engineered (GE) or non-GE non-native species.

The experience of introduction of non-native species into foreign habitats has generally been negative, this being noticeably so in the case of fish. Dr. Mair's comments [15 September] about the environmental impacts of introduced species being perceived as having less weight in food scarce nations than in the north illustrates precisely the attitude (of which the results are borne by our children and future generations) that has already impacted disproportionately on the south.

The south is already staggering under the triple loads of environmental degradation, resource depletion and indebtedness caused largely through unsuitable, usually high technology solutions being applied, with inadequate supervision or follow through by the introducers, be they the World Bank or aid donors. This is the same logic given for rushing the introduction of GE crops into food scarce areas; by using guilt, mock philanthropy and Machiavellian scheming whilst glibly ignoring the risks.

In Africa existing threats to aquatic systems by multiple environmental factors mitigate against the introduction of further alien species. Interregional movement of African fish species has already caused serious disruption, e.g. Oreochromis mossambicus (tilapia spp) and the voracious Clarias gariepinus in the SW Cape. The introduction of Procambarus clarkii (American crayfish) in Lake Naivasha, Kenya has devastated the invertebrate community. To further complicate the situation by introducing GE fish into a new habitat seems a recipe for disaster.

Before any fish, GE or not, are introduced into southern nations, management systems which secure the protection, husbandry and sustainability of native species must be first be instituted. These management/regulatory systems must be proven to work before any introductions. I strongly support the precautionary approach of Prof. Muir [e.g. 5 September..Moderator] and Dr. Hans Magnus Gjøen [5 September].

To institute such a management system is costly and carries low economic priority in the south. Further, it is likely that most introductions of these fish will come either from the commercial sector or from government/NGO/Private sector partnerships. If there are not strong restraints and liabilities are not defined, problems are inevitable. There are also concerns over the number of qualified persons to monitor these technologies, exacerbated by migration of experts from southern to northern nations for economic reasons.

To repeat a point I made [19 May] in Conference 1 of this Forum, which dealt with the relevance of GE crops to the south: It would be irresponsible of the developed north to unleash the unquantifiable risks and dangers of GE on the south if there are not adequate bio-safety protocols, legal instruments, liability procedures and a clear thread of responsibility for any damage that may be caused to these nations. The south cannot afford to rectify many of their present problems. Sort out the misgivings science has with GE fish farming in the developed world before experimenting in the environments of southern nations.

To sum up: Before introducing exotic and/or GE fish into our environments southern nations must first investigate and maximise the local possibilities (there are many possibilities extant which carry less risk than GE fish) and have, literally and figuratively, watertight regulation of the aquaculture industry.

Glenn Ashton, South Africa
Director; Ekogaia Foundation, a non-profit, non-aligned think tank based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Spokesperson on GE and biotechnology for the Green Party of South Africa
ekogaia@iafrica.com

[To contribute to this conference, send your message to biotech-room4@mailserv.fao.org For further information on the FAO Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture see http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp ]