| |
Pakistan opens doors to GM
seed
By Nadeem Iqbal
ISLAMABAD - Seeing how hard it is to curb the
smuggling of genetically modified (GM) seed, Pakistan
hopes that its new approach - lifting a ban on the
importation of such seeds and going for better
regulation instead - will give it more control over the
use of genetically altered products.
Officials
at the department of agriculture say that by the end of
this month, the government's ban will be lifted on
genetically modified seed imports that have been deemed
legal in their countries of origin.
"We know
that the 'unidentified' genetically modified organisms
[GMOs] are landing on the Pakistani market from
Australia, the United States and neighboring China - and
could be hazardous," an agriculture ministry official,
who asked to remain anonymous, said. "So the only way to
mitigate against damage is to regulate, by asking the
importers to get a certificate from the seed department
after disclosing the name of the manufacturer and other
characteristics of the seeds," the official said.
This will allow the entry of seeds from key
producers of GM products, including the United States
and China, and officials say that obliging importers to
show the source of their GM seed imports would at least
allow the government to keep track of what is coming
into the country.
Today, the black market in GM
seeds is thriving. GM corn, wheat, cotton and vegetable
seeds - which have a reputation of producing a
high-yielding crops that require no outlays on
pesticides or fertilizer - are readily available in
Pakistan. A packet of genetically altered cotton seeds
can be bought for about US$2.
However, activists
worry that the Pakistani government is easing up on GM
rules at a time when its budding biotechnology sector is
still without comprehensive guidelines to regulate the
commercial use of GMOs. For almost two years, food
rights activists and government scientists have been
urging the government to introduce regulations to
control the commercial use of GMOs and GM products in
the country.
These regulations, they say, would
control not only imported GM material but boost
Pakistan's indigenous research into genetically modified
organisms and allow scientists to release them into the
field.
Biotechnology experts - who have been
working on indigenous GMOs at the National Agriculture
Research Center and the National Institute of
Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering - have been asking
Islamabad to enact biosafety laws under the UN
Convention on Biological Diversity, which Pakistan
ratified in 1994.
Government scientists say that
delays in introducing guidelines will leave Pakistan
behind in research, which they see as vital for its food
security needs. "At the laboratory level, Pakistan has
developed GMOs of cotton, sugarcane, soyabean and
tomatoes, but these cannot be declared in the absence of
biosafety laws. Moreover, quantification of benefits
cannot be ascertained unless these GMOs are released,"
the chairman of the national Commission on
biotechnology, Dr Anwar Nasim, said.
Rights
activists and non-government groups also say that the
government's rules for GMOs need to go beyond laboratory
or transportation handling as outlined in UN
instruments.
Aftab Alam of Action Aid says that
the guidelines do not cover the trade in GM products or
identify and evaluate potential adverse effects on the
environment or human health. Attempts by the government
to thrash out biosafety guidelines earlier this year
stalled, and the costs of the delay in drawing up these
regulations are already being felt.
In early
September, farmers in Pakistan's Hydrabad district
complained to the agriculture ministry that 1,600
hectares of planted cotton had been hit by an unknown
disease that had turned the otherwise white flower of
the cotton plant red.
Following an inspection of
the site, government scientists declared that
genetically engineered cotton, or Bt cotton, smuggled
from Australia in hand luggage, had been sown on the
land despite a government ban on such imports. The exact
cause of the reddening disease is still being
investigated.
In Goth Allah Wasayah village in
southern Sindh province, farmer Muhammad Ramzan, who
planted Bt cotton in a 14-hectare field, found that in
the space of two months an unknown reddish disease had
destroyed his crops. Bt cotton is grown from cotton
seeds spliced with genes taken from the bacterium
Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which is deadly to the
bollworm pest.
It was amid such reports that
Pakistan decided in September to lift the ban on
importing GM seeds. More than 20 million of Pakistan's
143 million people depend on cotton for their
livelihood, and the country gets 60 percent of its
annual foreign exchange earnings from the crop. Failures
of Bt crops have also been reported in recent months in
neighboring India, and some states there have banned the
sale of Bt cotton seeds.
Government research
work on GE cotton in Pakistan began in the mid-1990s by
the Nuclear Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic
Engineering after successive cotton harvests were hit by
pests, causing extensive damage to the cotton-based farm
economy.
Despite the ill effects recently
attributed to GE cotton, Pakistani scientists have long
held that GE cotton varieties could be created to ensure
a disease-free crop that would result in low costs for
farmers and greater predictability in export earnings.
Nasim says cotton curl-leaf disease alone causes
$120 million in losses every year, but scientists cannot
release resistant varieties unless biosafety laws are in
place.
(Inter Press Service)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
