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Monsanto's Terminator Making a
Comeback?
Enter the Zombie!
______________________
By
Barbara H.
Peterson.
Monsanto and its cohorts in crime promised us
that they would not be using Terminator
technology called GURT, or genetic use
restricted technology. In fact, the United
Nations actually issued a moratorium on the
project. So we’re safe, right? Wrong.
As usual, the boys in the little white lab coats
have not been idle. In spite of the moratorium,
not only are they working heatedly on Terminator
technology, but are getting ready to introduce
Zombie technology. Terminator, and Traitor or
Zombie technologies are just variations of GURT.
Whereas Terminator technology produces plants
with sterile seeds, Zombie technology carries
this a step further by creating plants that
could require a chemical application to trigger
seed fertility every year. Pay for the chemical
or get sterile seed. This is called reversible
transgenic sterility. They have been working
steadily on perfecting this technology, and are
now poised to introduce it to the world as a
solution to the current GMO contamination
problem. Move over Terminator, here comes the
Zombie.
If a field gets contaminated with seeds
containing the Terminator gene, the resulting
plants will have sterile seeds, so the the
reproductive cycle ends. If the contamination is
from the Zombie gene, the resulting plants will
most likely require a certain pesticide or will
be sterile.
Plants are engineered with sterility as the
default condition, but sterility can be reversed
with the application of an external stimulus
that restores the plant’s viability. In order to
bring the “zombie” seed back from the dead, the
farmer or breeder must use an external stimulus
(such as a proprietary chemical) to restore the
seed’s fertility. (Terminator the Sequel, 2007
PDF doc)
Either way, if you are a small farmer with a
contaminated field, your seed-saving venture for
the following year will be less than successful.
Planting sterile seeds takes the same amount of
work as well as monetary outlay that planting
good seeds does, but without the return on
investment. And, you cannot tell the difference
between the good, the bad, and the ugly seeds
until it’s too late. That is, if the patent
enforcement brigade doesn’t raid your property
first and force you to destroy your crops and
all of your seeds due to patent infringement.
Then you get nothing, and have to pay for the
privilege.
Oh, and did I forget to mention that Monsanto
announced in 2006, its takeover of Delta Pine &
Land?
http://www.banterminator.org/News-Updates/News-Updates/Monsanto-Announces-Takeover-of-Delta-Pine-Land
This would not be of much consequence, but for
the fact that Delta Pine & Land is a joint owner
along with the USDA of US patent # 5,723,765 -
GURT technology.
In March 1998 the US Patent Office granted
Patent No. 5,723,765 to Delta Pine & Land for a
patent titled, Control of Plant Gene
_Expression. The patent is owned jointly,
according to Delta Pine’s Security & Exchange
Commission 10K filing, ‘by DP&L and the United
States of America, as represented by the
Secretary of Agriculture.’ (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3082)
This makes, as of 2006, Monsanto and the United
States of America (Corp USA), as represented by
the Secretary of Agriculture (USDA), which is
currently Tom Vilsack, joint owners of the GURT
patent.
Kind of gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling all
over, doesn’t it?
~ Barbara H. Peterson
Read the following article from ETC Group
and download the full 28 page report here [PDF
1MB]:
etcomm95_tsequel_11june071
Here is another report on GURT technology from
Germany [PDF ]:
german_scientists_on_sst
Terminator: The Sequel
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/materials/publications.html?pub_id=635
Despite the fact that governments re-affirmed
and strengthened the United Nations’ moratorium
on Terminator technology (a.k.a. genetic use
restriction technology [GURTs]) in March 2006,
public and private sector researchers are
developing a new generation of suicide seeds -
using chemically induced “switches” to turn a
genetically modified (GM) plant’s fertility on
or off.
Issue:
Under the guise of biosafety, the European
Union’s 3-year Transcontainer Project is
investing millions of euros in strategies that
cannot promise fail-safe containment of
transgenes from GM crops, but could nonetheless
function as Terminator, posing unacceptable
threats to farmers, biodiversity and food
sovereignty. Terminator technology - genetic
seed sterilization - was initially developed by
the multinational seed/agrochemical industry and
the US government to maximize seed industry
profits by preventing farmers from re-planting
harvested seed.
Researchers are also developing new techniques
to excise transgenes from GM plants at a
specific time in the plant’s development, and
methods to kill a plant with “conditionally
lethal” genes. This new generation of GURTs will
shift the burden of trait control to the farmer.
Under some scenarios, farmers will be obliged to
pay for the privilege of restoring seed
fertility every year - a new form of perpetual
monopoly for the seed industry.
Impact:
Whether intended or not, new research on
molecular containment of transgenes will
ultimately allow the multinational seed industry
to tighten its grasp on proprietary germplasm
and restrict the rights of farmers. Industry and
governments are already working to overturn the
existing moratorium on Terminator technology at
the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
In the months leading up to the CBD’s 9th
Conference of the Parties (Bonn, Germany 19-30
May 2008), industry will argue that global
warming requires urgent introduction of
transgenic crops and trees for biofuels - and
that Terminator-type technologies offer a
precautionary, environmental necessity to
prevent transgene flow. Ironically, society is
being asked to foot the bill for a new
techno-fix to mitigate the genetic contamination
caused by the biotech industry’s defective GM
seeds.
Players: Taxpayer-financed research on
biological containment of GM crops subsidizes
the corporate agenda. A handful of multinational
seed corporations control biotech seeds and the
proprietary seed market as a whole has seen
unprecedented corporate concentration. In 2006,
the world’s top 4 seed companies - Monsanto,
DuPont, Syngenta and Groupe Limagrain -
accounted for half (49%) of the proprietary seed
market.
Policy:
Governments keep trying to find ways to make
GM seeds safe and acceptable and they keep
failing. They should stop trying.. There is no
such thing as a safe and acceptable form of
Terminator. The EU should discontinue funding
for research on “reversible transgenic
sterility,” and re-assess funding for other
research projects undertaken by Transcontainer.
Rather than support research on coexistence to
bail out the agbiotech industry, the EU should
instead fund sustainable agricultural research
that benefits farmers and the public. National
governments should propose legislation to
prohibit field-testing and commercial sale of
Terminator technologies. Governments meeting at
the 9th Conference of the Parties to the
Convention on Biological Diversity in Bonn,
Germany must strengthen the moratorium on GURTs
by recommending a ban on the technology.
To read the 28-page report, Download PDF (1 MB)
here:
etcomm95_tsequel_11june071
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