Genetically engineered (GE) papaya threatens Thailand s farmers, consumers & the environment

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1 Greenpeace Southeastasia Room C202, 60/1 Monririn Building, Pahonyothin Soi 8 Road, Phayathai, Bangkok Genetic Engineering Campaign July 2003 Genetically engineered (GE) papaya threatens Thailand s farmers, consumers & the environment Farmers from Hawaii and international scientists warn Thai farmers and consumers of the risks July 2003 In September 1997, the US government approved the commercial release of genetically engineered (GE) papaya in Hawaii. After licensing agreements were completed with the universities and corporations (including the GE industry giant Monsanto) holding patent rights on GE papaya, the seeds were made available for commercial growing in May These were the seeds of disaster unleashing an uncontrollable genetic experiment that poses serious ecological risks. Over the past 5 years, the spread of GE contamination and corporate control has undermined farmers rights and continues to threaten the environment. Now the same companies and people who developed GE papaya in Hawaii are working with the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Science & Technology to create GE papaya in Thailand! GE papaya is a failed genetic experiment with disastrous results. The scientific evidence proves there are serious ecological risks. The lessons from Hawaiian farmers show that GE papaya will be a disaster for Thai farmers and their communities. So it s time to act and say NO! to GE papaya! Background to GE Papaya Backed by foreign corporations like Monsanto and the scientists who developed GE papaya in Hawaii, Thailand s Department of Agriculture and the Department of Science & Technology has created GE papaya in Thailand. This GE papaya is genetically engineered to be resistant to papaya ringspot virus. The Departments of Agriculture and 1

2 Science and Technology have grown GE papaya in open-air field trials in several locations in Thailand. Now they say they GE papaya is safe and is ready for commercial growing by farmers. But the scientists and government officials involved have not explained to the public how they know GE papaya is safe for the environment and for human health. Recent scientific research shows that GE papaya poses serious risks to the environment. And the experience of GE papaya in Hawaii the only place in the world where GE papaya is grown commercially - shows that farmers and rural communities suffer from GE contamination. This not only means economic losses, but also the loss of their right to protect themselves and their environment from GEs. The government departments concerned have failed to provide the Thai public with information about GE papaya and the risks involved. This pamphlet hopes to provide the public with more information so that the facts about GE papaya are known and the real risks are understood. GE Papaya is unnatural GE papaya is made by cutting a gene from the ringspot virus and forcing it into the cell of a papaya. This is done by randomly shooting the gene millions of times with a gene gun and hoping it gets into the plant cell. As part of this process another virus and a bacteria resistant to antibiotics gene or gene-sequence are added. This means that genes from living organisms are cut and pasted into papaya even though they are completely different living species. Scientists aren t even sure what they re doing: Scientists do not know why this gene from the ringspot virus makes papaya resistant to ringspot virus. They don t even know whether the inserted gene has any other effects! By cutting and pasting the genes of one species into another they are tampering with billions of years of genetic evolution. Because they don t really understand what these genes do or why, they re gambling with the future of Thailand s papaya. GE papaya is unpredictable Gambling with the environment and human health: Because the forced insertion of foreign genes into papaya is a random, unnatural process it is fundamentally unpredictable. In Hawaii they ve now found that the GE papaya called SunUp is more easily infected by new plant funguses and diseases, including blackspot fungus. This was discovered 5 years after GE papaya was approved for commercial growing in But scientists said they could not control which type of papaya to make into GE papaya because it is a random process, based on luck. So the scientists luck in getting SunUp to become GE is bad luck for farmers who now have a new plant disease problem. 2

3 Now the blackspot fungus is spreading among GE papaya. Farmers who grow GE papaya must spray toxic chemical fungicides on their papaya plants every 10 days. There is also scientific research showing that new types of ringspot virus may develop because of GE papaya. So there is no way of knowing how it will interact with the environment or other living organisms including humans. Supporters of GE papaya claim that it is safe for human consumption. But there is no evidence to support this claim. In the US, GE papaya never underwent any kind of testing for its long-term effects on human health. The US Food & Drug Administration has never conducted a health safety assessment of GE papaya. Concerns raised by scientists regarding possible allergenic effects, toxicity and antibiotic resistance in humans have been completely ignored by the authorities. In Thailand, field trials of GE papaya have not involved any safety assessment except to look at the papaya fruit to see if it looks okay! No scientific proof of its safety for human consumption has been provided. So if GE papaya is grown and eaten in Thailand, it will still be an ongoing scientific experiment and Thai consumers will be the guinea pigs! GE papaya is uncontrollable Once GE papaya is released into the environment there is no way of controlling it. Organic and non-ge papaya can be easily contaminated by GE papaya. Pollen from papaya flowers can be carried by the wind, birds and by bees. So there is a real risk that the pollen from GE papaya plants will cross with non-ge plants. Farmers fields may also suffer GE contamination if GE papaya seed gets into their fields without them knowing. GE papaya contamination is very real: In Hawaii, many organic farmers have suffered from GE contamination of their papaya trees. For some farmers GE papaya seeds got mixed into with their organic papaya seeds and they don t know how it happened. For other farmers pollen from their neighbours GE papaya trees mixed with their organic papaya trees, creating GE papaya fruit. So the farmers were forced to destroy all their papaya trees to stop GE contamination. Commenting on the corporate interests behind GE papaya and its contamination on conventional and organic papaya, one farmer said, These guys own the wind. Seed contamination is also widespread. John Caverly, an organic farmer, found GE papaya growing on his land and was forced to destroy all of his papaya plants to prevent further contamination. Caverly is still not sure how GE papaya seed got into his soil, but suspects they were mixed in with seeds that he believed to be organic when he bought them. The risk in Thailand is very high: 3

4 In Thailand papaya is grown everywhere. It s not like the large papaya plantations in Hawaii. The spread of GE papaya seed cannot be controlled. And the pollen of GE papaya cannot be controlled. Government laws and farmers barbed-wire fences cannot control the movement of the wind and bees! Since GE contamination can spread easily, Thai people will not be able to know whether GE papaya is in their fields, gardens or in their food. This means that Thai farmers will lose their right to choose not to grow GE papaya. And Thai consumers will lose their right to choose not to eat GE papaya in their Som Tam! GE papaya is unwanted No markets for GE papaya: When Hawaiian farmers started growing GE papaya they lost their biggest export markets. Hawaii s largest export market for papaya is Japan, accounting for 40%. But GE papaya is banned in Japan because the government is questioning the environmental and health risks involved. So GE papaya farmers could not export to Japan. Instead, Japan started importing from other countries to get non-ge papaya. As a result, GE papaya farmers in Hawaii have suffered economic losses. The selling price of GE papaya is 30-40% below production costs. In April 2003 the price that GE papaya farmers could get for their fruit was 600% lower than the price for organic papaya. Even if the ban is lifted in Japan, survey research shows that over 80% of Japanese consumers do not want GE food anyway. Big companies in Japan that import papaya know that their customers don t want to eat GE papaya. So they require certification of non-ge papaya from Hawaii based on a complex segregation system. If the ban is lifted, they will still not buy GE papaya. This kind of market rejection of GEs is growing globally. So countries that can guarantee non-ge papaya are increasing their exports. Farmers who grew GE papaya now feel cheated. They were promised GE papaya would solve the ringspot virus problem, but now they have a serious economic problem. Kitchen of World Reputation at Risk: These are very important lessons for Thailand. The possibility of increasing Thailand s fresh papaya exports will be lost because we will be marked as a GE contaminated country. Thai food exporters will have to prove there is no GE papaya in their food products. New strict laws in the EU will make this even more difficult since exporters of canned papaya and processed food products must provide full information on every papaya fruit used, right back to the trees they were picked from! But GE contamination will make this very difficult, and maybe impossible. So in addition to the environmental 4

5 risks, GE papaya puts Thailand s international reputation as a world-class food exporter at risk. Corporate control of the food chain: GE papaya is another example of growing corporate control of the food chain. Like GE papaya in Hawaii, GE papaya in Thailand is secretly controlled by transnational corporations and overseas universities who own over a dozen patents on GE papaya. When GE papaya was approved for commercial growing in Hawaii, the government s Papaya Administration Committee was forced to sign commercial licensing agreements with the patent holders such as Monsanto Company, Asgrow Seed Company and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Any farmers who grow GE papaya must sign an agreement that recognizes the patent rights of these corporations and must follow their rules. This means seeds cannot be saved or exchanged. And all GE papaya fruit and GE papaya seeds are treated as corporate products. Although Hawaiian farmers were promised in 1998 that GE papaya seeds would be free, there are now new measures being taken to sell seeds and to impose fees on farmers. According to Mike, a farmer sued for unwittingly growing GE papaya without an agreement with the Papaya Administration Committee, the patent holders act like God - they have way too much power over nature. Three years ago the University of Hawaii and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced plans to destroy all non-ge papaya trees in Puna. The reason they gave was that the ringspot virus is spreading because farmers are refusing to grow GE papaya. The USDA has the authority to destroy farmers crops in order to destroy pests and was going to use this power to bulldoze non-ge papaya fields. However, farmers realized the real aim was to force everyone into growing GE papaya. So they formed the Papaya Freedom Fighters and stopped the destruction of their crops. There are up to 20 US and international patents that could be applied to GE papaya in Thailand, including patents held by the global GE giant, Monsanto. These corporate patents undermine farmers rights and fundamentally change farming practices, especially the way farmer save and replant seed. In Thailand this is not just an economic threat. It is a cultural and social threat to all farmers and communities who grow papaya. GE papaya is unnecessary The government officials, scientists and transnational corporations who are pushing for GE papaya to be grown in Thailand claim that is it necessary to deal with the problem of ringspot virus. The government often claims that GE papaya is an economic necessity because ringspot virus is affecting Thailand s papaya exports. Yet there is no evidence at 5

6 all that Thailand s papaya exports are affected by this disease. It s just another attempt to impose a corporate solution to a false problem. Consumers are not affected by it because it is only a problem of how the skin looks. Farmers can isolate and manage papaya trees that are infected with the ringspot virus. The reality is that farmers already have methods to deal with ringspot virus, and that the spread of this plant disease is the result of bad farming practices especially industrial mono-cropping. With 30 years experience of sustainable agricultural farming in Big Island, Hawaii, Jon Biloon argues that, There are practical solutions to ringspot virus that are friendly to the environment and better for farmers. This makes GE papaya totally unnecessary. Jon has developed an organic system to deal with ringspot virus and is organizing training workshops and helping other farmers to introduce ecologically sustainable methods for managing plant diseases like ringspot. Farmers in our country already have many ways of dealing with ringspot virus. This includes multi-cropping to prevent the spread of the plant disease. Insects, such as aphids, are the main cause of the spread of ringspot virus. So controlling aphids with the use of ecologically friendly methods is the best solution. Organic farmers plant papaya with other kinds of plants that attract aphids away from papaya, or spray herbal non-chemical pesticides to keep aphids away and reduce their movement. These farming solutions deserve more attention and support by the government. Instead of spending million on developing risky GEs and giving foreign corporations greater control of our food and agriculture, the government should be working together with farmers to promote the most environmentally sound farming practices to deal with plant diseases like the ringspot virus. To be truly environmentally sound, these solutions must be natural. GE papaya is not only unnatural, but threatens to create more problems! It s time to say NO! to GE papaya 6

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