DOCUMENT PRESENTED BY THE PVEM AT THE GRASSROOTS GATHERING ON GENETIC

ENGINEERING, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, USA

From Malthus to Biotechnology

More than a century ago, Malthus posited that the capacity of nature to maintain the human population is limited. That is to say, if the amount of available food is restricted, living species will have to fight to obtain it and, in this struggle, only the strongest, "the most successful reproductively", will succeed in surviving. For Malthus, the solution was to let the poor die of hunger or deliver them a bomb.

Dominated by the economic interests of the great Western industries, in recent years the biotechnology industry has tried to convince us that through their main weapon, genetic engineering, they will resolve the food supply problem. In this regard, there are two great contradictions:

12. The model currently being developed has never contemplated nor has any interest in improving the quality of life for the most marginalized communities.

(2) The solution to this problem does not rest in science or technology, which in the final analysis point to a dying system. The solution must integrate ecological, cultural and social aspects of each region, considering global solutions and acting locally.

Quite the contrary, biotechnology is displacing other approaches that minimize ecological damage and is monopolizing the productin of food and patenting genes, which imposes grave economic and ethical implications for the less developed countries and puts both health and the balance of nature at risk.

Mexico, like any other developing country, would experience a great disadvantage upon permitting their own resources to be sold back to them genetically modified and at higher costs, as this would generate a dependence not only on the product but also on the entire package required to create the product. Taking into account the lack of honesty of government institutions, the dearth of information about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), the lack of effective protections against unexpected outcomes with regard to health and the environment, the introduction of these organisms would pose a serious risk.

It is in this sense that it is a false notion that there could exist some mutual benefit between technologically developed countries and the developing countries that have the natural resources, an idea similar to the solution proposed by Malthus regarding a prospective insufficiency of food to maintain life—only in this case, it would be a time bomb that would probably deliver more environmental problems than solutions.

The Greens of Mexico believe that:

(l) Regulations concerning GMOs have great limitations, because, in the first place, we do not yet have the ability to know what interactions will take place in the highly complex system where natural and genetically modified organisms co-exist. Neither is it known what new interactions and genetic changes could occur within an individual organism.

(2) Patents granted through the legal system for intellectual/industrial property rights protect the owner of the patent, excluding all others from possible economic uses of the patented matter, which is to exclude persons having the natural resources but not the biotechnological expertise, that is to say, the developing world. It is for this reason that we cannot permit the patenting of our own natural resources, the patenting of our genes.

(3) The solution to the threat of plagues does not lie in making plants more tolerant to pesticides in order to be able to use ever more of these harmful chemicals. The solution lies in understanding the natural biological processes involved in order to control diseases in a traditional and sustainable fashion.

Given the risk that their genes could be patented, the PVEM supports the call of the Green Parties of the Americas to cease the plunder of the natural resources of indigenous regions for use in genetic engineering.

The PVEM further calls for:

• a halt to research on artificial human fertilization and to the production of fertility drugs and urges that all resources from these efforts be redirected towards developing effective birth control programs and to resolving the plight of street children (or: children without families).

• labeling of all products that contain genetically engineered components.

• all nations to refuse to issue patents for life forms and to not even consider life forms as a patentable commodity. (Or, instead of the phrase beginning "to not even consider...", use: to refuse to recognize life form patents issued elsewhere.)

The PVEM affirms the right of any country to restrict or ban the imporatation or sale of any merchandise based on the individual country’s assessment of the dangers inherent in that merchandise or the conditions under which it was produced and calls for the incorporation of this principle in every international trade agreement, which will, in effect, require a revision of NAFTA.