09.11.2000

I think it is crucial that we analyze very carefully the underlying causes of 'lagging productivity,' hunger and poverty in the South before we prescribe a cure. If the underlying causes are largely tied to genotype constraints, then we can accept that genetic engineering (GE) might be a logical part of the solution. However, the constraints are largely structural and policy-related in nature, making GE tangential at best. If we add in the potential risks that GE seeds pose in the complex, diverse, and risk-prone agriculture of the poor, then it becomes clear that the balanced is tipped against GE. I explain this in much greater detail in my paper at the following web site.

http://www.foodfirst.org/progs/global/biotech/belgium-gmo.html

Peter M. Rosset, Ph.D.
Co-Director
Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy
398 60th Street
Oakland, California 94618 USA
tel: +1-510-654-4400 x224 fax: +1-510/654-4551
e-mail: rosset@foodfirst.org
http://www.foodfirst.org

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-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2000 9:39 AM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Re: Vitamin A deficiency // GM rice

This is from Petra Frey. I am a postdoc with Dr. Lemaux at the University of California, Berkeley, working on outreach in the field of gene technology. I did my PhD in the lab of Ingo Potrykus in Zurich, Switzerland, in the area of virus resistance strategies in cassava.

I would like to respond to Michel Ferry [8 November], to his 2 sets of questions at the end of his message about the Golden Rice. I have talked to both Ingo Potrykus, one of the inventors, to the person responsible for Golden Rice at Zeneca and to other experts of vitamin A deficiency.

Questions 1)
The question is how many different varieties will be transformed. I don't know if they plan to transform different varieties - more likely, they will just cross this plant with the local varieties. This is the same as what would be done if a gene was introduced from a wild relative: introducing a new gene and trying to eliminate most of the foreign genome by backcrossing. I think one of the lessons learned from the green revolution is that narrow genetic diversity is something we should avoid in the future, so they will try to put these genes into as many different varieties as necessary. It is also clear that it would be useless to grow the same variety in many different locations - farmers like their local, well-adapted varieties and will stick to them if they can. Other varieties wouldn't do as well.

Questions 2)
So how many farmer will be able to buy these seeds? The inventors of this rice patented it and now have an agreement with Zeneca. Zeneca will be able to market the rice in the developed countries and they will take care of the different patents involved, but will give it away for free in the developing countries. Developing countries' farmers will be able to make up to US $10 000 profits per year without having to pay any royalties to Zeneca.

A humanitarian board consisting of the two inventors, a representative from Zeneca, from the World Bank, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), the Rockefeller Institute (part of the financing of this project) and International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) each, will act as an advisory board, supporting developing countries with the import, the crossings and the necessary safety testing.

The plants are still in the lab now and more testing is still necessary, so they won't be found in the fields yet. (By the way, the numbers cited in the original paper published in Science [Ye et al., Vol 287, pages 303-305 on January 14, 2000...Moderator], are the original numbers from the FAO and WHO - the cited reporter of 'Le Courrier' must have gotten her numbers somewhere else, but not from the scientists involved in this project.)

Of course, golden rice won't make the problem of vitamin A deficiency go away. This is not a new problem and many other projects have tried to solve it - some were very successful, other not at all. The fact is, that we still have children going blind every year, or even dying - vitamin A rice might not be the perfect solution for everybody, but it can help some people and it would be immoral not to try our best to help these people by ignoring this possibility.

Petra M. Frey, Ph.D.
Dpartment of Plant and Microbial Biology
111 Koshland Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Phone: 510-642-1589
FAX: 510-642-7356
pfrey@nature.berkeley.edu
Web address: http://plantbio.berkeley.edu/~outreach

-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2000 3:38 PM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Biotechnology and hunger/food security

This is from Delphin Koudandé. I am a holder of doctor in veterinary medicine and have been working as a researcher in Animal Health till 1996. For the last four years, I have been involved in research related to marker-assisted introgression, with a focus on trypanotolerance genes. I am a finishing PhD student. Native from Africa (Benin), I am interested in this debate about the subject: 'Can agricultural biotechnology help to reduce hunger and increase food security in developing countries ?'

As Peter Rosset (9 November) pointed out this morning, the cause of 'lagging productivity' observed in developing countries is more structural and policy-related. More precisely, I would say it is related to soil and water management, the sun being available in those countries. Strictly speaking, biotechnology is not a solution to hunger and food security in developing countries.

That said, and before attempting to answer the main question, I would like to make a point: biotechnology does not mean genetic engineering (GE) and people tend to confound those terms. As far as I understood, GE concerns manipulation of the genome (or genes), whether it is within or between species, the most prominent being between species. The reproaches to GE, which results in the well-known GMOs, are already given by Peter Rosset (2 November ) and Michel Ferry (8 November), the main reproach being the safety of these products for human health.

Coming to the main question, biotechnology can contribute to reduce hunger and increase food security. In fact, for a long time, conventional quantitative geneticists have improved yields of different species of plants and animals, or increased the resistance of these species to different stresses by using selection on observed characters. By means of biotechnology, selection can be done by identifying genes related to those characters instead of measuring or observing them. Such a use of biotechnology may speed up the process of selection. Further, it can be used in introgression by applying a backcrossing programme as mentioned by Petra Frey this morning (9 November). For example, selecting for drought resistance for crops in Africa will be beneficial for the population. If genes associated with drought resistance are found, their introgression through marker-assisted breeding will result in a new type of plant or animal which I think is not a GMO.

Delphin Koudandé
Animal Breeding and Genetics Group
Wageningen University
P.O. Box 338
6700 AH Wageningen, The Netherlands
Tel. 00 317 484627
Fax. 00 317 483929
Delphin.Koudande@Alg.VF.WAU.NL

[Thanks to Delphin Koudandé for these very relevant points. The point that "biotechnology does not mean genetic engineering (GE)" is an important one, that we have also tried to emphasise in this Forum. The descriptions of currently-available biotechnologies in the Background Documents to Conferences 1, 2, 3 and 4 (dealing with the crop, forestry, animal and fishery sectors respectively) make the separation clear....Moderator]

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