Groups Want UN To Ban Genetic Engineered Rice From Asia

by Marwaan Macan-Markar

(IPS) BANGKOK -- A coalition of Asian environmentalists and grassroots activists intensified their drive against genetically engineered (GE) rice by calling on the UN food agency to ban such grain from the continent.

The 17 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from ten major rice-growing countries in Asia submitted their petition Oct. 14 to the Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Asia-Pacific regional office here.

"GE rice cannot be a solution to hunger, since the causes of hunger are the lack of access to productive resources to produce food, or lack of income to buy food," the petition declared. "Genetically engineered rice poses unacceptable risks to human and animal health and to the environment."

The push by transnational biotechnology companies to promote their artificially created rice grains in Asia would also undermine the cultural, social and spiritual life of farming communities that have been the heart of this region's rice-growing culture for centuries, said the activists.

"Asia is the cradle of rice, from where rice was given birth, and you cannot fool around with the home of rice," Suman Sahai, director of Gene Campaign, a New Delhi-based research and advocacy group, told reporters. "It is reckless and irresponsible to tamper with rice."

Farmers need to have control of the seeds and conserve them like they have done traditionally, but that way of life will be "taken away from them" if GE rice is introduced, added Paul Borja, of the Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment (SEARICE), a Manila-based NGO.

The appeal to the FAO came ahead of World Food Day, marked every year on Oct. 16.

Such pressure on the Rome-based UN agency comes amidst concern among activists about a shift within the UN system toward GE foods. In 2004, for instance, the FAO's annual global food security report mentioned for the first time that GE crops have a role to play in the battle against hunger.

It followed on the heels of another report by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which also appeared more receptive to GE crops.

The campaign to keep the Asian rice fields free from contamination by GE seeds was launched last year after the United Nations recognized 2004 as the "International Year of Rice."

Asia is the world's largest producer of the grain, which tops the list of staple foods consumed by people across all regions. More than 3 billion people eat it daily.

According to the FAO, this region has been harvesting more than 500 million tons of rice in recent years. China leads the list of rice-growing nations, followed by India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand.

But it is also in China, which has an estimated 15 million hectares of paddy, that the impending threat of GE rice has begun to take shape. "Experiments are being conducted on a pest-resistant form of GE rice in the (central) Hubei province," says Lam Chi Kwong, a food and agriculture campaigner at the China office of Greenpeace, the global environment lobby.

"This is being done by GE scientists in China without approval from the government," he said during an interview. "China has not approved new commercial cultivation of GE crops since 1999."

Yet, were that to change, activists like Lam fear it would create a ripple effect across the region, since "policy-makers in other countries like Vietnam or even India may want to follow China's lead."

"We need rice diversity for food security and for our health," Sahai, of the Indian advocacy group Gene Campaign, told IPS. "Studies on other GE foods like potato, tomato and corn have shown severe organ damage, lesions in (the) liver and the kidney and the collapse of the immune system."

The current drive by these Asian activists is part of a broader battle they have waged against the campaign by rice research bodies in the region to promote hybrid rice varieties developed by their respective scientists.

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), based in Los Banos in the Philippines, has been a primary target, given the lead it has taken in producing high-yielding hybrid rice. Over the past decade, 23 hybrid rice varieties were developed by IRRI and distributed to nine Asian countries, including India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam.

The IRRI also claims credit for the Green Revolution, when high-yield varieties of rice were distributed to increase the rice output by 42 percent from 1968-81 to meet Asia's food needs.

But that has come at a heavy cost to a region where nearly 70 percent of the population lives in rural areas and where rice growing is more than a source of food, but a part of the local culture and livelihood, say activists.

In Bangladesh, for instance, hybrid rice varieties have resulted in the decimation of the local farming tradition to develop new and diverse varieties of rice. The South Asian country currently has only 1,500 varieties of rice, compared with some 50,000 varieties in the past.

Internationally recognized rice varieties such as the fragrant and tasty basmati from India and jasmine from Thailand are but two of the many examples of rice that have been developed through indigenous knowledge and farming methods.

"Due to the Green Revolution, we lost traditional knowledge and traditional rice varieties in Thailand," said Supanee Taneewut, of the Reclaiming Rural Agriculture and Food Sovereignty Action, a Bangkok-based NGO. "With GE rice we will lose much more."