USDA SAYS YES TO TERMINATOR

"USDA's decision to license Terminator flies in the face of international public opinion and betrays the public trust," said Hope Shand, Research Director for the Canadian based Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI). "Terminator technology has been universally condemned by civil society; banned by international agricultural research institutes, censured by United Nations bodies, even shunned by Monsanto, and yet the US government has officially sanctioned commercialization of the technology by licensing it to one of the world's largest seed companies," Shand said.

The Terminator technology is a genetically manipulated system that will make the seeds of a plant sterile. Following a long controversy the United States Department of Agriculture announced at its August 1, 2001 Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology that the Terminator Technology will be licensed to Delta Pine and Land Company. Delta & Pine Land, based in Mississippi, USA, is the world's 9th largest seed corporation, with revenues of $301 million in 2000. Although other seed companies could commercialize the technology on D & LP have said they plan to go ahead.

The USDA developed the technology in partnership with DP&L. USDA claims that the Terminator technology will keep GMO genes from other genetically modified crops from contaminating non-GMO and crops and wild plants. Organizations such as RAFI contend that sterilization of seeds threatens the seed saving efforts of over a billion farmers around the world. Instead of saving seed grown by themselves on their farms farmers will be forced to return to the commercial seed market year after year.

'USDA's recent announcement on the licensing of Terminator technology is perceived internationally as a 'declaration of war' against Third World farmers,' explains Julie Delahanty of RAFI. An estimated three-quarters of the world's farmers routinely save seed from their harvest to re-plant the following season.

RAFI http://www.rafi.org is not alone in this opinion.

In 2000 the Food and Agriculture Organization's Panel of Eminent Experts on Ethics in Food and Agriculture concluded that Terminator seeds are unethical.

"In keeping with its image as a rogue, isolationist state in international treaty negotiations on global warming and biological weapons, the US also appears to stand alone on Terminator," wrote a recent issue of Organic Newsline http://www.organicts.com .

Less than a month after the USDAv announced that it would license the Terminator technology to Delta Pine and Land the company, which controls approximately three-quarters of the U.S. seed market, fell on financial hard times. In late August DP&L announced it was laying off seven percent of its work for, closing a facility in Arizona, and that it was hiring a new president. A RAFI press release speculated the company may become a takeover target.

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