Terminator and genetic contamination

Terminator Technology and Genetic Contamination

http://www.banterminator.org

October 2005

The biotechnology industry is vigorously asserting that Terminator technology ­ genetic seed sterilization technology - offers a means of preventing the unwanted flow of genes from genetically modified (GM) crops. The industry argues that Terminator offers "biosafety" benefits. However, the truth is that Terminator would not stop GM contamination, but would itself pose a serious biosafety risk. Industry¹s goal is to win acceptance for a technology that is designed to protect corporate patents and maximize profits by stopping farmers from saving harvested seed and forcing them to buy new seed every season.

What is Terminator? Terminator technology refers to plants that have been genetically modified to render sterile seeds at harvest (through an inducible molecular mechanism, which means that the gene for seed sterility or germination can be turned on or off from the outside ­ by treating the plants with a chemical or other factor). It is technically known as a Genetic Use Restriction Technology or GURTs. Terminator technology was developed by the multinational seed/agrochemical industry and the United States government to prevent farmers from saving and re-planting harvested seed developed by biotechnology and seed corporations. Terminator has not yet been commercialized or field-tested but tests are currently being conducted in greenhouses in the United States.

The biotechnology and seed industry is promoting Terminator as a "biosafety" solution to disguise its true role as a biological means of preventing farmers from saving and re-using proprietary seed. Terminator has been widely condemned as a threat to food security for the 1.4 billion people who depend on farm-saved seed.[i]

Genetic Contamination

In many areas of the world, gene flow (including through cross-pollination and seed dispersal) from genetically modified plants is causing unwanted genetic contamination ­ even in the South¹s centers of genetic diversity (the areas where our major food crops originate or where genetic diversity is greatest). In essence, GM contamination is a new type of industrial pollution that involves living, replicating organisms. This genetic pollution cannot be controlled or recalled, and contamination can increase over time.

Corporations are increasingly worried about legal liability and bad public relations resulting from the unwanted spread of genetic material from GM crops and the contamination of conventional and traditional seed stocks with GM seeds. The realities of contamination threaten to stop the approval of new GM crops that are potentially lucrative for corporations, including ³pharma² crops (plants modified to produce pharmaceutical compounds) and genetically modified trees. The biotechnology industry is eager to persuade the public that biotechnology can fix the GM contamination problem it has caused.

It is ironic that, in response to heightened concerns about genetic pollution, the industry is promoting Terminator technology as a "biosafety" tool, which requires even further genetic modification and the introduction of additional modified genes. The argument put forward is that engineered sterility offers a built-in safety feature: if modified genes (whether pharma genes, herbicide resistance genes or Terminator genes) from a GM Terminator crop get transferred to related plants via cross-pollination, the seed produced from such pollination would be sterile ­ it would not germinate, thus contamination would not spread. However, this scenario fails even in its design to offer any protection against transgene contamination of harvested seed used as food or feed, since the genetic sequences, and possibly proteins, from engineered genes (both trait genes and Terminator genes) would be present after cross pollination, irrespective of intended seed sterility.