Via Campesina
secretaria operativa/operative secretariat: Apdo Postal 3628 Tegucigalpa, MDC Honduras, C.A.
Tel & fax : + 504 235 99 15 E-mail: viacam@gbm.hn
To: the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture of the FAO (CGRFA) negotiating on the INTERNATIONAL UNDERTAKING on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
Subj.: position and call of Via Campesina to the meeting of the CGRFA in Rome, Italy (June 2001)
Date: 19th of June 2001.
Annex: Via Campesina position on Biodiversity, biosafety and genetic resources
Dear Sir, Madam,
After the meeting of the Contact group in April this year Via Campesina is still very concerned about the negotiation process.
In this letter we would like to ask your attention for the following points:
1) No IPR’s on plant genetic resources and other life forms
Via Campesina considers the administration of the world’s plant genetic resources as a crucial issue on which no bargains can be made: all plant genetic resources have to be seen as part of the Earth's gene pool that have to be considered as a global commons to be jointly shared by all peoples.
IPR’s can under no condition be accepted. This condition is seriously eroded by additions such as “in the form received” (art 12.3d of the text). This International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources has to define clearly as a basic condition that IPR’s on plant genetic resources are not allowed.
2) The issue of access to genetic resources
A negotiation is taking place on a list of crops that would fall under the multilateral framework.
At the moment around 30 crops are on this list. Although some consider this as a step in the right direction, Via Campesina thinks this position is unacceptable as it means that all other crops do not fall under the framework (varieties for food production but also for medical or other products) and leaves them in the current situation without protection against IPR’s.
3) The issue of benefit sharing
Via Campesina wants to reiterate its position as we have stated in our letter of 24-4-2001: We cannot accept IPR’s as a mechanism to redistribute the benefits derived from plant genetic resources.
Instead of creating mechanisms that give industry the possibilities to control these resources in order to commandeer the major part of these benefits, policies have to be defined that support and develop agriculture and food production with due respect to and recognition of the rights of the communities in such a way that people can benefit equally in the fruits of these resources. The International Undertaking has to protect plant genetic resources in order to keep such policies possible.
4) the issue of farmers’ rights
We want to reiterate our position that these rights go beyond the legal frameworks for intellectual property. They are accepted by the governments and peoples of the world through FAO Resolution 5-89, International Labour Organisation Convention 169, Clause 8-J of the Biodiversity Convention, and Point 14.60 of Agenda 21, signed by the heads of state of almost all the countries of the world. The current proposed text on Farmers Rights has not improved and remains a retrograde step compared to those other agreements, and a bleak lip service to what these rights entail.
5) the responsibility of the governments involved in the negotiating process and the role of industry
I has become clear that some governments in response to the interests of industry, especially the seed industry, try to obstruct the negotiations in order to avoid a decision on a multi-lateral juridical framework. Via Campesina thinks that this behaviour is unresponsible and unacceptable seen the important issues at stake.
ASINSSEL, world’s leading seed trade association, has adopted a statement in which it states that it “does not support the current IU text” and puts forward a number of demands that totally undermine it. Some governments who have in the past already blocked any progress on the IU negotiations because they do not want to find themselves to a multilateral sanctioned treaty, are now using the Asinssel positions to put forward further objections.
Via Campesina calls upon all governments to negotiate an International Undertaking that will give a juridical base to the protection of plant genetic resources against corporate interests, that will avoid that these resources will be turned into a mere source of profits for industry and that will guarantee free access to these resources as well as their sustainable use by farmers in food and agricultural production based on local resources.
Yours sincerely,
For Via Campesina
Rafael Alegria Prof Nanjundaswamy
Via Campesina
secretaria operativa/operative secretariat: Apdo Postal 3628 Tegucigalpa, MDC Honduras, C.A.
Tel & fax : + 504 235 99 15 E-mail: viacam@gbm.hn
Aspects related to our daily life and peasant activity are being discussed in the world at this time; such as the regulation and use of biodiversity, the use and preservation of genetic resources and the release of transgenic organisms affecting the health of the population, the rural environment and peasant economy. The international institutions responsible for such aspects are facing a great dilemma: To adopt the rational and intelligent use of the natural resources in order to achieve a sustainable development, or to adopt, under the pressure exerted by the free trade, the domination of the financial capital, and abandonment of food security.
This commission's work leans on three subjects, basically: Biodiversity, Genetic resources and Biosafety and these are the proposals of our organization.
For VIA CAMPESINA, biodiversity has as a fundamental base the recognition of human diversity, the acceptance that we are different and that every people and each individual has the freedom to think and to be. Seen in this way, biodiversity is not only flora, fauna, earth, water and ecosystems; it is also cultures, systems of production, human and economic relations, forms of government; in essence it is freedom.
Diversity is our own form of life. Plant diversity gives us food, medicine and shelter; just as human diversity, with people of different conditions, ideologies and religions, give us cultural richness. This shows that we must avoid the imposition of models in which just one way of living or model of development predominates.
Biological and cultural wealth is concentrated in the so-called developing countries, located mainly in the tropics and always protected by peasant or indigenous communities. Culture and biodiversity always develop together.
Peasant women and men and small-scale farmers, together with fisherfolk and artisans, indigenous peoples and black communities, are the ones who have historically preserved, created and sustainably managed the agricultural biodiversity, which was, is and will be the basis of all agriculture.
Therefore, VIA CAMPESINA proposes:
The Importance and Evolution of Genetic Resources
For us, seeds are the fourth resource that generates wealth for us from nature, after land, water and air. Genetic resources are the basic element for producing food, clothing, shelter, fuel, medicines, ecological balance and rural aesthetics - all of great importance to us and to consumers.
Since human beings created agriculture, more than 10,000 years ago, we the peasants have been protecting and preserving genetic diversity; we have selected more productive varieties and improved less efficient ones.
Conservation, storage and development of new varieties has been carried on from generation to generation, thus genetic resources were considered a responsibility of rural producers. After the Second World War and the middle of the century, when the urban population underwent enormous growth in relation to the rural population, food became a theme and domain for international organizations, and food production was also dealt with by governments and institutions. In short, the so-called "Green Revolution" came about; agri-business companies grew rapidly; everything related to the production of inputs and seeds began to acquire greater value as it became a profitable enterprise.
Later, new uses were found for genetic resources; the Human Genome Project was created and biotechnology encroached into the genetic manipulation of plants, animals and human beings.
These different historical stages were accompanied by corresponding concepts of property for genetic resources. Before the incursion of transnational corporations, genetic resources were considered humanity's heritage, and this was reflected in international agreements, granting producers the concept of Farmers Rights over genetic resources. Later, the seed and input companies, along with some plant breeders, pressed for recognition and protection of "plant breeders' rights", and created the International Union for the Protection of Authors' Rights over Plant Varieties (UPOV). At the present stage, a great deal of the work in biotechnology is being conducted under a scheme of protected patents by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO?) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), under which living materials come under regimes similar to those controlling industrial property.
As peasants we know we have the sovereign right to use our resources while ensuring that they are handled in an environmentally healthy way. We therefore consider that we have the supreme authority to decide in the regulation of access to genetic resources.
The Rights of Farmers and Rural Communities
Full recognition of Farmers' Rights is a right which we can only explain through history and diversity. This right goes beyond the legal frameworks for intellectual property. It is accepted by the governments and peoples of the world through FAO Resolution 5-89, International Labour Organization Convention 169, Clause 8-J of the Biodiversity Convention, and Point 14.60 of Agenda 21, signed by the heads of state of almost all the countries of the world. Thus, as peasants, indigenous people and communities, we claim the right to ownership of life; we recognise the great plant and human diversity which exists in the world; we support the development of the necessary relevant national regulations and legislation to defend genetic resources through respect for and implementation of farmers' rights.
1. Farmer’s Rights have a profound historical character. They have existed ever since human beings created agriculture to meet their needs; we have kept them in force through our conservation of Biodiversity; we ratify them with the continuing development of new resources and their improvement. We are the ones who protect genetic resources, who assist in the evolution of species; we are the repository of the effort and knowledge of the generations that created the biological richness. Therefore we demand that our rights be recognised.
2. Farmer’s Rights include the right to the resources and their associated knowledge, inextricably joined together; this means accepting traditional knowledge, respect for cultures and the recognition that cultures are the foundations of knowledge.
3. The right to control, the right to decide the future of genetic resources, the right to define the legal framework of ownership of those resources.
4. Farmer’s Rights are eminently collective; they should therefore be considered as a different legal framework from those of private property and intellectual property.
5. These rights must apply at the national level; there must be a commitment to promote the enactment of the corresponding legislation, respecting the sovereignty of each country to establish local laws based on these principles.
6. The right to the means to conserve Biodiversity and achieve food security, such as territorial rights, the right to land, water and air.
7. The right to decide in defining, formulating and executing policies and programs related to genetic resources.
8. The right to appropriate technology, and the right to participate in, designing it and to carry out research programs.
9. The right to define the control and use of benefits derived from the use, preservation and management of the resources.
10. The right to use, choose, store and freely exchange genetic resources.
11. The right to develop models of sustainable agriculture which protect Biodiversity, and to influence policies which promote them.
We oppose intellectual property over any form of life. We want to elevate to a universal principle the fact that genes, as the essence of life, cannot be owned. The only owner of life is the holder of that life, who lives it, sustains it, feeds and preserves it.
It is an aberration that genetic materials which peasants and indigenous people have kept alive, cared for and protected for more than 10,000 years could now be the property of corporate business. And that we have to pay royalties for those seeds which were gathered from our lands and homogenized or modified abroad.
Ownership of knowledge about forms of life carries a grave risk; the monopolization of patents. This phenomenon could be beyond the control of governments, and the inappropriate use of genes by the transnationals could cause severe problems of biosafety by promoting the use of large homogeneous populations susceptible to pathogens.
We oppose, not advances in knowledge, but its monopolization and inappropriate use.
To show the dimensions of how the ownership of knowledge is concentrated and how inequities are growing, suffice it to mention that 95% of the world's food patents are held in only 7 countries, all of them OECD (developed countries), and the other 5% of patents is distributed among the more than180 remaining countries.
In the field of health, it has been shown that 74% of the curative knowledge of medicine, principally from plants, comes from popular and traditional knowledge; that is, it was not created in a laboratory, only gathered and patented. But so far the transnational pharmaceutical companies have not remunerated or recognised this knowledge to the communities.
Patenting of plants, animals and their components means that peasant and indigenous communities lose control of the resources that we have traditionally used and known. This means limited and controlled access to genetic resources which no doubt will impose new forms of control over nations and their human populations. Use of patented (material) by farmers can mean that purchased seed comes with a technological package which leads to a lack of sustainability in the agricultural ecosystems and in the family economy. That is not all; it also breaks rural traditions like the keeping of seed for later cycles of cultivation, exchange of seeds among farmers and communities, and the development of knowledge linked to practice in the management of natural resources.
We are opposed to the cloning of human beings, for it is an attack on the dignity of our species; it favours the homogenization of people; it promotes the formation of perfect prototypes; and it revives racist and xenophobic phobias which we believed had been overcome. The Human Genome Project has been developed in various institutions and universities of the world and is encountering problems related to the ownership of the research. For example, the United States Health Office patented plasma from Papua New Guinea indigenous people without their consent. It is estimated that the Office of Patents and Trademarks has already delivered more than 1250 patents on human genetic sequences.
Genetic Contamination (Transgenic or GMO Food)
A large number of tests are being carried out across the world with transgenic organisms, in plants, animals, micro-organisms and human beings; a significant proportion is being mass-produced for commercial distribution.
These are plants, animals, micro-organisms or human beings in which one or more genes from another species have been inttroduced; for example, plants with genes from animals, humans or micro-organisms, or vice versa. With this, the dynamic evolutionary and reproductive systems of life are broken. The former barriers, where it was only possible to crossbreed members of the same species, are now non-existent.
To produce these transgenic organisms, they use techniques like bombardment with micro-particles of gold or tungsten covered with the DNA, which they are trying to introduce, or the microinjection of DNA into germ cells or embryos. Another technique uses biological vehicles like viruses or bacteria to introduce the new genes through artificial chromosomes, or even the creation of synthetic DNA.
Transgenic Foods
Worldwide there are 37 million hectares sown to transgenic crops, which compared to the world's agricultural area of 1,400 million hectares is 2.6%. From this area is obtained a considerable quantity of food whose use is not regulated.
Transgenic products are basic materials for a large amount of foodstuffs, the majority of which are manufactured. On the label there is no proper notification that this is a transgenic food, nor is the massive import or export of these foods regulated.
a) Impacts on Health: For human health the main risk that has been identified is that GMOs become carriers of the trans-genes which they have received from other species, presenting a secondary mobility which enables them to integrate themselves into human cells. This is highly possible, since in order to produce GMOs, they use fortified genes, mainly with resistance to antibiotics. For example, Novartis's transgenic maize uses Penicillin G which is a medication no longer used by humans and capable of producing the enzyme penicilaze which degrades penicillins. In the case of Calgene's transgenic tomato, they used genes resistant to Kanamycin and Geomycin. Monsanto's transgenic cotton is resistant to streptomycin which is widely used as a mediciine.
The Scientific Committee of the European Union has recently determined that milk and meat produced with Bovine Growth Hormone (Bovine Somatotrophin, rBST) has a carcinogenic effect, principally fostering prostate and breast cancers.
It has been found that consumption of Monsanto's transgenic "Round-Up Ready" soy, treated with the herbicide Round-up (glyphosate), has the effect that glypohosate causes the production of phyto-estrogens which can provoke severe reproductive disturbances; transgenic soy can also cause allergy problems.
b) Effects on the Peasant Economy: GMOs can mean the loss of peasant autonomy and greater dependency on the transnational corporations, both technologically and economically. Proof of this is that the companies which promote GMO varieties demand a contract with the farmer in which, in addition to the seed, there is also a commitment to buying inputs. As well, penalties are established if the farmer lends this seed to someone else, and the responsibility for possible ecological risks that the GMOs may entail is assigned as the farmer's responsibility.
The most important effects on the peasant economy and on national production have to do with the genetic manipulations carried out to substitute raw materials which the industrialized countries need from the Third World. In this respect we cite the following cases:
A). "A technology has been produced which incorporates into plants a sweet substance called Thaumatina, which could displace sugarcane crops and negatively impact economies dependent on this crop."
B). "The Calgene company has produced a compound which is an alternative to cocoa butter in colza, which is a temperate zone crop. The product could displace from the market thousands of third world peasants and farmers, and lead to the collapse of the economies of various countries which depend on exports of cocoa."
c) Impacts on the Environment: Transgenic plants have alien genes which could cause genetic pollution. But moreover, since it is a question of plants which are resistant to herbicides, they become potential plagues which would be difficult to control. Because of this, we can anticipate that a transgenic plant would be dominant over traditional crops; it could also establish itself in regions of wild flora, altering the ecosystems. They could also transfer their genes horizontally to other organisms and make them into potential plagues.
1. That a moratorium be declared on the release and trade of transgenic organisms and their derived products. The Precautionary Principle — described in Agenda 21 of the Earth Summit — should be applied. It establishes the right not to authorize transgenic organisms until there exists complete evidence of their safety and absence of risk. Societies must have had the opportunity to understand and debate in an informed manner the potential risks and impact of these technologies, and to exercise the right to decide about their use. This is the right of future generations.
2. Given that genetic manipulation constitutes a risk which could unleash unpredictable and irreversible impacts, all decisions related to the use, handling and release of transgenic organisms should be the subject of consultation and informed participation by all sectors of society which could be negatively affected,
3. Evaluation and risk management must be carried out, taking into account in a holistic way all aspects of biosecurity. This includes investigating interactions with the environment, biodiversity, socioeconomic and cultural aspects, human health, and food security.
4. There must be guarantees of effective protection of local and traditional agricultural systems and food security, and assurance of human and collective rights.
5. Agreements and considerations of Biosecurity and multilateral agreements on the environment must overide trade agreements and policies.