Address by the
Director-General of FAO to
The Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry
International Conference
Stockholm, Sweden, 14-15 May 2001
Genetically Modified Crops - Why?
Why not?
Mr. President of the Royal Swedish Academy of
Agriculture and Forestry,
Honourable Members,
Distinguished Guests,
Right now, at this very moment, as we gather here this
morning, more than 800 million people around the
world are going to bed without food or awaking from that
dreadful restless sleep of the hungry. Furthermore,
thousands of children suffering from malnutrition will
not live to see the end of this day. And so we are still
faced with the horrible scourge of Hunger and
Malnutrition and the pressing challenge of Food Security
for All.
As we open this Conference, scientists in many
countries around the globe are 'in conference', formally
or informally, addressing ways and means of reading,
understanding and manipulating that most fundamental
alphabet of life - the genetic code - the blueprint of
our very existence and of the world we live in. And so we
witness Science with its exciting and seemingly boundless
opportunities.
So too, as we speak, an ever-increasing number of
people around the world are focusing their energies to
address and express their worries and concerns that
scientific advance may change the safety of the food we
eat and pose risks to the environment in which we
live.
Therefore, we must engage further in a discussion on
the ethics of such dramatic change.
We also need to consider the reality that advances in
communication technologies are such that all of us
gathered here in this conference room could sit back in
our chairs and simultaneously observe, in virtual
reality, each of the three foregoing scenarios of
potential, risk and ethics being acted out as they occur
- it is simply a matter of audio-visual communication and
planned engagement. And so we must harness Information
Technology to the full in meeting the challenges we
face.
Mr. Chairman, these four statements on potential,
risk, ethics and communication technology encapsulate the
challenges and opportunities we face today. As
scientists, public servants, politicians or private
sector leaders, directly or indirectly engaged in the
management and use of our natural resources, we have an
inescapable duty to harness science not only to produce
more and safe food, to eliminate hunger and poverty, but
also to conserve the natural resource base we inherited
from our forefathers. This broad challenge embraces
Science, Ethics, Food Security and Food Safety. More
specifically, the challenge taxes us to build, monitor
and connect the strands of knowledge and understanding
that buttress the nexus where Science, Ethics, Food
Security and Food Safety meet. That, I feel, is the
substance of the debate in this most important
Conference.
What more appropriate setting to address this
challenge - within the hallowed walls of the Royal
Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry and the
birthplace of that famous 18th century Swedish botanist
and explorer, Carl Linnaeus, who was the first to
articulate the principles of taxonomy on which we
delineate the germplasm (Genera and Species) of plant and
animal life. And of course, in the birthplace of Alfred
Bernhard Nobel, that most illustrious Swedish chemist,
engineer and industrialist, it is most apt that ethics
and social justice guide us as we engage the Promethean
sciences in the quest of sustainable food security, food
safety and human welfare.
Last year, we witnessed the President of the United
States of America and the Prime Minister of Great Britain
jointly announce the mapping of the Human Genome, with,
may I add, a joint commitment that this information - a
most fundamental public good - must remain in the public
domain. As the year drew to a close, an international
team of scientists published the first complete genetic
map of a plant, the Thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) -
a small weed related to the mustard plant. In the first
three months of this year, very significant advances in
our understanding of the human genome and the mapping of
further plant and animal species (e.g., rice, the
laboratory mouse) have been published in Nature, almost
on a weekly basis. And global efforts to unravel the
bovine genome continue apace. What more appropriate time
to address the question of ethics in reference to these
rapid advances in genetic engineering.
That, in essence, is the question posed by the Swedish
Ministers of Justice, Environment and Trade, in their
joint statement of 10 December 2000, "No Monopoly on
Genes".
Biotechnology includes a large range of different
techniques, many of which are not controversial, as well
as the now widely discussed technique known as genetic
engineering. Central to genetic engineering is the
ability to identify and manipulate genetic material with
great precision and to transfer traits of interest from
one organism or species and express them in another.
Biotechnology also encompasses the development of cloned
organisms, such as Dolly (the famous cloned sheep), and
the modification of reproductive mechanisms in farm
animals and fish. A further field of rapidly advancing
application of biotechnology is represented by the food
processing industry, where modern molecular techniques
are currently being applied in a number of sectors,
including fermentation and the production of starter and
separation technologies.
There have also been rapid and very significant
advances in the application of modern biotechnology to
food and forest crops over the past decade. Important
advances have been made in each of the following areas of
research: (i) Advances in plant propagation techniques,
(ii) Advances in the diagnosis of pests and diseases,
(iii) Advances in the construction of transgenic plants
with improved yields, disease, pest and stress resistance
and/or nutritional quality, and (iv) Advances in the use
of genetic markers, maps, genomics and informatics in
marker- assisted and gene-assisted selection.
From the mid-90's, as a direct result of advances of
genetic engineering, we have witnessed a substantial
cultivation of the first generation of new genetically
engineered, or transgenic, plant varieties. In the year
2000, more than forty-four million hectares of land were
planted with transgenic varieties of more than twenty
plant species; the most commercially important were
soybean, corn, rapeseed, and cotton. These new varieties
were planted in 13 countries, including Argentina,
Australia, Canada, China, Mexico, South Africa, and
Uruguay and most predominantly in the United States.
However, it is worth noting that 24 percent
approximately were grown in developing countries. The
value of the global market in transgenic crops has grown
from US$75 million in 1995 to US$ 1.64 billion
in 1998.
The specific characteristics these new transgenic
varieties were bred for include: insect resistance,
herbicide tolerance, delayed fruit ripening and virus
resistance. Still further GM-based improvements are
currently under field-testing. Interestingly, a new
emphasis is now being directed to improving the
nutritional value of foods and food crops that may have
direct and tangible benefits for the consumer - that is
where the concern and GM debate is most strongly
engaged.
While there is as yet no reported commercial -scale
production of genetically modified forest trees,
considerable research is underway, including here in
Sweden, especially for timber-producing species grown in
intensively managed plantations. Traits for which genetic
modification can realistically be contemplated in the
near future include insect and virus resistance,
herbicide tolerance and modified lignen content
The World
Food Summit highlighted the importance of
agricultural research, and biotechnology in particular,
as most important elements in the fight against hunger
and malnutrition. The products of biotechnology research
and genetic engineering can help in a number of ways.
First of all, let us remind ourselves that we can no
longer depend on bringing significant new areas of virgin
lands into the food production chain and that further
expansion of food production must come from increased
yields on the lands already farmed by the poorest of
small farmers and the larger farms alike. This raises the
twin challenges of raising productivity on the more
fertile lands farmed by the better-off farmers together
with an improvement in the output and range of food crops
that can be grown on the less well-endowed fragile
marginal lands.
In this latter context, the possible genetic
modification of plant germplasm opens up new and exciting
approaches to tackle many of the widely recognised
constraints on tropical agriculture such as plant
tolerance to drought, salinity and low soil fertility.
Taken together, these potential advances coupled with the
effective use of information technologies can underpin
the development of sustainable food production on
marginal lands based on Integrated
Soil-Water-Nutrient-Germplasm-Pest Management
technologies; in other words, Precision Agriculture for
the tropics.
As to increasing yields of the major food staples, it
is now widely recognised that we are at a post-Green
Revolution standstill and that yield ceilings of the main
food crops have already been reached in conventional
breeding programmes. Certainly, we must look to genetic
engineering to help to move beyond these plateaus, and
the current research with rice gives us a basis for
well-founded expectations in this regard. Biotechnology
and genetic engineering also raise the possibility of
enhancing tropical livestock production - a much needed
development as we witness the accelerating pace of
urbanisation and the changes in dietary patterns.
Perhaps, the most significant genetic engineering
breakthrough which has direct relevance to malnutrition
and food insecurity across the developing world is the
modification of the rice genome to produce a new variety
called Golden Rice. Golden Rice is a transgenic rice
variety that produces pro-vitamin A and has increased
levels of iron. There is strong and justifiable interest
to make this transgenic plant available to farmers in
developing countries, especially to combat premature
death and blindness arising from Vitamin A deficiency. It
is estimated that 180 million people throughout the
world are Vitamin A-deficient, and that each year two
million of them die, hundreds of thousands of children go
blind and a significant number of women suffer from
anemia, which is a major cause of death in women of
childbearing age.
Hopefully we can look forward to more technological
advances of this nature, not only to increase the
nutritional quality of our food but also to effect
improvements in food storage qualities and shelf
life.
Most of the major advances in biotechnology and
genetic engineering have been realised by the large
multinational Life Science companies independently or in
collaboration with the Advanced Research Institutes
(ARIs) in the industrial countries. Certainly, a number
of developing countries (such as Brazil, Argentina,
China, India, Malaysia and the Philippines) have
significant Research and Development programmes in
biotechnology but in general, the vast majority of
developing countries have not been able to devote
adequate resources to support research in this field.
Developing countries need assistance, not only in
laboratory facilities and know-how to undertake the field
testing of GM crops and the other products of
biotechnology research; they also need assistance in
Research Policy and Management issues pertaining to
biotechnology and genetic engineering research. The
application of modern biotechnology to agricultural
research systems across the developing world calls for
new investments, changes in resource allocations and new
responsibilities for policy makers, research managers and
scientists alike.
In this context, the National Agricultural Research
Systems (NARS) must be supported more firmly by their
Governments and by the international donor community. The
Private Sector, and in particular the large Multinational
Life Sciences companies, have a very important role to
play in this regard, not only in openly sharing the
results and products of their research but also in
engaging in specific partnerships (Research and Training)
with the national research systems so as to harness
advances in biotechnology and genomic research in the
fight against poverty and food insecurity.
The ownership and use of genetically modified
germplasm is a fundamentally important question of equity
that is being widely debated in fora concerned with
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). A primary determinant
of who will gain or lose in the development of GMO
technology is the IPR legislation and agreed protocols
that govern the use of GM products.
One key issue is the extent to which "farmer's rights"
and "breeders' exceptions" will be recognized under the
newly emerging IPR schemes. The first gives farmers the
right to re-use seeds from protected patents whereas the
second allows third parties to make use of patented
varieties for breeding under certain restricted
conditions. These two rights exist under some currently
existing systems (e.g. UPOV-Union internationale pour la
protection des obtentions végétales) but
are not clearly guaranteed under others, which are being
adopted in response to the TRIPS (Trade Related aspects
of Intellectual Property rights) agreement concluded
under the WTO.
Despite the fact that over the past few decades new
biotechnologies have opened up exciting avenues and
opportunities in a wide range of sectors, from
agriculture to pharmaceutical production, the scale of
the negative global debate about GMOs is unprecedented.
This debate, which is very intensive and at times
emotionally charged, has polarized scientists, food
producers, consumers and public interest groups as well
as governments and policy-makers.
Some ethical aspects of GMOs fall within the context
of the right
to adequate food, which is derived from the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. At the 1996 World Food
Summit, the Rome
Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food
Summit Plan of Action reaffirmed the right of
everyone to adequate food - and, most recently in April
of this year, the Commission on Human Rights reaffirmed
"that hunger constitutes an outrage and a violation of
human dignity". Other important human rights issues that
have a bearing on the GMO debate are the 'right to
informed choice' and the right to 'democratic
participation'.
The right to informed choice derives from the ethical
concept of the autonomy of individuals. This principle
can be applied, for example, in the debate on labeling
food derived from GMOs to ensure that consumers know what
they are consuming and are able to make informed
decisions.
The right to democratic participation addresses the
need for justice and equity. There are very many men and
women (particularly the poor and powerless) with little
education and no social entry point to influence
decisions about GMOs. Their concerns and well being must
be reflected in the debate about the impact of GMOs on
their lives and livelihoods, and about any benefits or
risks involved. Also of concern is the fact that future
generations have no voice in decisions about GMOs.
The consumers' primary concern about GMOs is food
safety. Quite logically consumers seek assurances that GM
foods reaching the market have been adequately tested and
that these foods are being monitored to ensure continued
safety. Because of the complexity of food products,
research on the safety of GM foods is more difficult than
carrying out studies on components such as pesticides,
pharmaceuticals or industrial chemicals. Through the
Codex
Alimentarius Commission and other fora, countries are
discussing standards for GMOs and ways to ensure their
safety.
The potential of GMOs to upset the balance of nature
is another concern of the public. GMOs are "novel"
products which, when released, may cause ecosystems to
adjust, perhaps in unintended ways. There is also concern
about the possibility that genetic "pollution" will
result from out-crossing with wild populations.
Ideally, in forming their views about GMOs, consumers
should weigh the perceived benefits of accepting a new
technology against the perceived risks. Since only a few
of the currently available plant or animal GMOs present
obvious benefits to consumers, they question why they
should assume possible risks. It is said that consumers
take the risks while the producers (and/or the
multinational supply companies) reap the benefits.
Clearly, risk assessment and risk management
methodologies are critical in this context.
Science-based risk analysis seeks to enable experts to
make decisions that minimize the probability of hazards
in the food supply system and the environment. Consumers,
however, may also wish for more transparency to protect
their right to exercise informed consent on their own.
Obviously, informed consent and labeling foods of GMO
origin are the most important issues in this debate.
At present there are very few fora available to the
public to discuss the wide range of issues relating to
GMOs. The absence of such fora can lead to advocates
concerned with one aspect of GMOs, such as environmental
impact, pushing their concerns into a forum set up to
deal with another aspect, such as labeling for example. A
related issue is how to credibly bring the private sector
transparently into public fora and, subsequently, how to
hold public and private sector agencies accountable.
Consumers' choices in the market cannot be ignored: if
they choose not to, they do not have to buy. However, the
market is not the only place where consumers can express
their views or preferences. Increasingly, consumers are
forming different lobby/protest groups seeking a more
direct "say" in how their food is produced. This must be
understood in the context that consumers throughout the
world now live and work far from the locations where
their food is produced. This lack of direct involvement
in the production process can result in consumers' views
on the agri-food system and its products being ill
informed, misled and often largely ignored. The media
have a very important and responsible role to play in
this context.
Clearly, there is much concern and confusion about the
risks of GMOs in terms of food safety and the
environment. Regulatory agencies base their standards on
science-based assessments of risk. Scientists, economists
and policy makers are now using Risk Analysis
methodologies to structure their evaluation of the
effects of genetically modified organisms. Risk analyses
consist of three components: risk assessment, risk
management and risk communication. Risk assessment and
risk management are largely self- evident.
Risk communication deserves special mention, as it is
the element least practiced or highlighted in the GMO
debate. Risk communication involves the interactive
exchange of information and opinions among assessors,
risk managers, consumers, industry, the scientific
community and other interested parties throughout the
risk analysis process.
Regulatory issues, especially those relating to
quarantine, invasive species and biosafety become very
important when GM crops are traded internationally.
International organizations supporting conventions such
as the
International Plant Protection Convention, the
Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartagena
Protocol on Biosafety are actively engaged in
constructing workable regulatory frameworks. More
specific regulatory mechanisms include a code of conduct
on biotechnology as it affects the conservation and use
of genetic resources for Food and Agriculture; this is
currently under development by FAO member countries
within the Commission
on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.
Commissions and fora within FAO are facilitating
discussion among member countries on a wide range of
issues relating to the debate on genetic engineering and
GMOs in agriculture, forestry and fisheries. At the
international level, there are mechanisms to establish
standards for Food Products, for Plants, for Animal
Health and for Fisheries; In addition, in March of last
year FAO launched an Electronic
Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture to
assist developing countries in debating these issues.
Mr. President,
Honourable members,
Distinguished Guests,
Certainly, it should be stated that the use and
implementation of traditionally improved organisms and
technologies would be sufficient to permit developing
countries to achieve the goals of the World Food Summit
1996. But the evidence to date clearly shows that genetic
engineering technologies and GMOs have the potential to
significantly raise levels of efficiency and productivity
in plant and animal production in a world where
population will increase from the present level of six
billion to nine billion and where the best agricultural
land is diminishing through urbanization,
industrialization and infrastructure for transport
development, while deforestation and expansion of
agriculture in marginal land constitute serious blows to
fragile ecosystems. All our efforts must be directed to
ensure that the potential benefits of biotechnology with
the necessary safeguard measures for health and
environment are brought to within the reach of everybody,
including the poor and the most disadvantaged. Nor can we
ignore food safety as an integral and most critical part
of this research and development process.
Clearly, it is not possible to make sweeping
generalizations about GMOs; each application must be
fully analyzed on a case-by-case basis. Through complete
and transparent assessments of GMO applications, and
recognition of their short- and long-term implications,
the debate can be less contentious and more constructive.
The scientist has a fundamental ethical responsibility in
this regard.
While scientists, governments and the agri-food
industry are increasingly recognizing the need to inform
the public about GMOs, there is still relatively little
information available to enable the layperson to make
decisions. Widely communicated, accurate and objective
assessments of the benefits and risks associated with the
use of genetic technologies must be made available to all
stakeholders.
This, all the more, highlights the ethical
responsibilities of the scientist to be more proactive
and to communicate their findings in terms that can be
understood by the layperson. Scientific professional
associations have a greater role to play in this regard -
education of the general public on GMO technologies and
their consequences.
The right to adequate food, as discussed today,
carries with it obligations on the part of Governments to
protect individuals' autonomy and their ability to
participate in public decision-making fora, especially
when issues relating to that most basic of all
necessities - food - are being discussed. These
obligations can include the provision of public resources
to ensure that the fora are effective and are conducted
in a spirit of fairness and justice.
Whereas GM technologies offer a great opportunity to
develop a world that is truly food secure, we must not
forget that we all- the Scientific Community, the
International Community, the Multinational Life Science
Companies and the Donor Community together with National
Governments - bear a fundamental responsibility to ensure
that the developing countries can equitably share in
these exciting advances that science offers in a way that
is safe for their population and environment. This calls
for a more open, integrated and collaborative involvement
of all the stakeholders engaged in developing country
agriculture and food production.
Honourable Members of the Academy,
Throughout history, man has continually sought
advances in knowledge and enlightenment to meet his needs
for food, shelter and safety. Over time, each era brought
its own set of Promethean changes and associated risks.
Following the industrial revolution, the science of
change became more profound, more excitingly challenging
and more potentially dangerous as technologies became
increasingly potent and risky; in turn, each new
perceived risk-prone development invoked calls for the
control of science and scientific paradigms in terms of
assured safety in the management of scientific
advance.
Paradigm shifts are interesting moments in science,
because they force us to rethink the rationale of our
actions as scientists. They are particularly interesting
when we can perceive the outcomes, not of mutually
exclusive approaches but of possibilities for acceptable
broad-based developments for the common good. At the dawn
of this new millennium, the Science of Food and
Agriculture has reached another milestone in its history
that heralds significant and exciting possibilities to
build a New Green Revolution - a much needed set of
changes to which hundreds of millions of food insecure
people bear witness today, and on which sustainable
development can and will build for this and for future
generations to come.
To the scientist, to the development community and to
all of us, this is a tremendous challenge that requires a
more comprehensive, transparent and inclusive research
paradigm involving the sharing of decision-making and
research outputs in ways that we have not done before.
The effective, transparent and equitable use of
increasingly accessible Information Technologies can help
us to build that much needed inclusive framework of
scientific investigation for the food needs of today's
poor and tomorrow's world.
But as scientists we should always keep in mind the
warning of Einstein "Technological progress is like an
axe in the hands of a pathological criminal".
Mr. President, therein lies the challenge of this
conference.
