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Risks and Benefits of Modern Biotechnology!
Modern biotechnology is not a silver bullet for achieving food security, but, used in conjunction with traditional or conventional agricultural research methods; it may be a powerful tool in the fight against poverty that should be made available to poor farmers and consumers.
It has the potential to help enhance agricultural productivity in developing countries in a way that further reduces poverty, improves food security and nutrition, and promotes sustainable use of natural resources. Solutions to the problems facing small farmers in developing countries will benefit both farmers and consumers.
The benefits of new genetically improved food to consumers are likely to vary according to how they earn their income and how much of their income they spend on food. Consumers outnumber farmers by a factor of more than 20 in the European Union, and Europeans spend only a tiny fraction of their incomes on food. Similarly, in the United States, farms account for less than 2 percent of all households, and the average consumer spends less than 12 percent of income on food.
In the industrial countries, consumers can afford to pay more for food, increase subsidies to agriculture, and give up opportunities for better-tasting and better-looking food. In developing countries, poor consumers depend heavily on agriculture for their livelihoods and spend the bulk of their income on food.
Strong opposition to GI foods in the European Union has resulted in restrictions on modern agricultural biotechnology in some countries. The opposition is driven in part by perceived lack of consumer benefits, uncertainty about possible negative health and environmental effects, widespread perception that a few large corporations will be the primary beneficiaries, and ethical concerns.
Potential Benefits:
There are many potential benefits for poor people in developing countries. Biotechnology may help achieve the productivity gains needed to feed a growing global population, introduce resistance to pests and diseases without costly purchased inputs, heighten crops’ tolerance to adverse weather and soil conditions, improve the nutritional value of some foods, and enhance the durability of products during harvesting or shipping. New crop varieties and bio-control agents may reduce reliance on pesticides, thereby reducing farmers’ crop protection costs and benefiting both the environment and public health.
Biotechnology research could aid the development of drought-tolerant maize and insect-resistant cassava, to the benefit of small farmers and poor consumers. Research on genetic modification to achieve appropriate weed control can increase farm incomes and reduce the time women farmers spend weeding, allowing more time for the child care that is essential for good nutrition.
Biotechnology may offer cost-effective solutions to micronutrient malnutrition, such as vitamin A- and iron- rich crops. Research focused on how to reduce the need for inputs and increase the efficiency of input use could lead to the development of crops that use water more efficiently and extract phosphate from the soil more effectively. The development of cereal plants capable of capturing nitrogen from the air could contribute greatly to plant nutrition, helping poor farmers who often cannot afford fertilisers.
By raising productivity in food production, agricultural biotechnology could help further reduce the need to cultivate new lands and help conserve biodiversity and protect fragile ecosystems. Productivity gains could have the same poverty-reducing impact as those of the Green Revolution if the appropriate policies are in place.
Policies must expand and guide research and technology development to solve problems of importance to poor people. Research should focus on crops relevant to small farmers and poor consumers in developing countries, such as banana, cassava, yam, sweet potato, rice, maize, wheat, and millet, along with livestock.
Health and environmental risks. Genetically improved (GI) foods are not intrinsically good or bad for human health. Their health effect depends on their specific content. GI foods with a higher iron content are likely to benefit iron-deficient consumers.
But the transfer of genes from one species to another may also transfer characteristics that cause allergic reactions. Thus, GI foods need to be tested for allergy transfers before they are commercialised. Such testing avoided the possible commercialisation of soybeans with a Brazil nut gene.
GI foods with possible allergy risks should be fully labeled. Labeling may also be needed to identify content for cultural and religious reasons or simply because consumers want to know what their food contains and how it was produced. While the public sector must design and enforce safety standards as well as any labeling required to protect the public from health risks, other labeling might best be left to the private sector in accordance with consumer demands for knowledge.
Failure to remove antibiotic-resistant marker genes used in research before a GI food is commercialised presents a potential although unproven health risk. Recent legislation in the European Union requires that these genes be removed before a GI food is deemed safe.
Risks and opportunities associated with GI foods should be integrated into the general food safety regulations of a country. International agencies and donors may need to assist some developing countries build the capacity to develop appropriate regulatory arrangements. These regulatory systems are needed to govern food safety and assess any environmental risks, monitor compliance, and enforce such regulations. The regulatory arrangements should be country-specific and reflect relevant risk factors.
Progress on achieving a global agreement on biosafety standards is urgently needed. The development of a public global regulatory capacity has lagged far behind the pace of economic globalisation.
The ecological risks policymakers and regulators need to assess include the potential for spread of traits such as herbicide resistance from genetically improved plants to unmodified plants (including weeds), the buildup of resistance in insect populations, and the potential threat to biodiversity posed by widespread monoculture of genetically improved crops.
Seeds that allow farmers the option of “turning off” genetic characteristics, mentioned earlier, offer great promise for assuring that new traits do not spread through cross-pollination. Both food safety and biosafety regulations should reflect international agreements and a given society’s acceptable risk levels, including the risks associated with not using biotechnology to achieve desired goals. Poor people should be included directly in the debate and decision-making about technological change, the risks of that change, and the consequences of no change or alternative kinds of change.
Socioeconomic risks:
Unless developing countries have policies in place to ensure that small farmers have access to delivery systems, extension services, productive resources, markets, and infrastructure, there is considerable risk that the introduction of agricultural biotechnology could lead to increased inequality of income and wealth. In such a case, larger farmers are likely to capture most of the benefits through early adoption of the technology, expanded production, and reduced unit costs.
Growing concentration among companies engaged in agricultural biotechnology research may lead to reduced competition, monopoly or oligopoly profits, exploitation of small farmers and consumers, and extraction of special favours from governments.
Effective antitrust legislation and enforcement institutions are needed, particularly in small developing countries where one or only a few seed companies operate. Global standards regarding industrial concentration must also be developed; international public policies in this area have not kept pace with economic globalisation.
Effective legislation is also required to enforce IPRs, including those of farmers to germplasm, along the lines agreed to within the WTO and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Ethical questions. A major ethical concern is that genetic engineering and “life patents” accelerate the reduction of plants, animals, and micro-organ-isms to mere commercial commodities, bereft of any sacred character.
This is far from a trivial consideration. However, all agricultural activities constitute human intervention into natural systems and processes, and all efforts to improve crops and livestock involve a degree of genetic manipulation. Continued human survival depends on precisely such interventions.