Biopesticides join the pesticide treadmill

Until recently, many people hoped that farmers could replace many of the more dangerous chemical pesticides with the careful use of biopesticides. But that hope is now being dashed by the genetic engineering industry which is actively exploiting the regulatory mess created between the US and the European Union. Robin Jenkins reports.

In their struggle for world domination of the pesticide market, the two great global competitors—Monsanto (US) and Novartis (Switzerland)—have launched a new breed of genetically engineered plants containing biopesticides. These biopesticide crops are now being grown in the US and the EU in the certain knowledge that the targeted insects will quickly become resistant. 
    The two companies and the regulatory authorities have acted with a mixture of irresponsibility and stupidity—irresponsible because their policies place biopesticides on the pesticide treadmill, and stupid because this is not even in the longer term interests of the companies, let alone farmers or the human need for a sustainable food system. Luckily, this extraordinary behaviour has not passed unnoticed and there are NGOs on both sides of the Atlantic vigorously opposing their plans.
    The drama centres on Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a soil bacteria which is fatal when ingested by a range of insect grubs, including many butterflies, moths, weevils and beetles. It was first isolated in 1913 and it has been commercialised in the past 50 years by a large number of companies which market it as a dry spray or liquid emulsion. Used sparingly, Bt promised to provide a sustainable tool for the management of insect pests in organic, integrated crop management (ICM) and integrated pest management (IPM) strategies. 
    Bt was being used indiscriminately even before the genetic engineers moved in. The majority of crops such as globe artichokes and aubergines were already being regularly sprayed with Bt in the US in 1992. 
    Routine use of Bt is not sustainable and it remains urgently necessary to monitor and regulate its use much more carefully than current laws require. The same applies to all other biopesticides.
    Although the genetic engineers have inserted Bt into some relatively minor crops, their main target is the major world crops that are grown on millions of hectares every year. At present there are 18 Bt crops being field tested in the US but the commercially important ones are cotton, maize, potatoes and rice. It is no accident that these are the four Bt crops already in commercial production.

Where are the regulators?
Faced with this new breed of plants, one might have expected the regulatory authorities on both sides of the Atlantic to consult on how to develop adequate policies within the existing legislation, or if that proved impossible, to propose new legislation or an international code of behaviour via the FAO. In practice, the Americans and the Europeans have taken different regulatory paths which are now in direct conflict, not only with one another, but with other legislation within the US and the EU. The result is a legal and regulatory mess of some proportions which the companies are actively exploiting. In the absence of clear laws, both Monsanto and Novartis are pushing ahead with their Bt crops and selling millions of tons of seed to farmers.

Is Bt a food or a pesticide?
The regulatory authorities in the US have classified Bt crops as pesticides, thus placing responsibility with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rather than the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) which is responsible for genetically engineered organisms. However, Bt crops are not any old pesticide. The Bt poison is not an application like a chemical pesticide but a poison that is produced throughout the life of the plant. In practice, neither the existing pesticide nor the genetically engineered organism legislation is up to the task. The latest consequence of this shortcoming is an undignified row between the EPA and the FDA now that the first Bt potatoes are in US supermarkets. The FDA is responsible for labelling genetically engineered food but refuses to label the potatoes because they are classified as a pesticide. The EPA says that it cannot label the potatoes because they are being sold as a food. This is no doubt good news for Monsanto but hardly helpful to consumers who might understandably object to eating a pesticide when they thought they were buying a food.

Resistance management panic
Whilst millions of tons of Bt cotton, maize and potatoes are now in the US market the EPA ruminates about regulating the crops. In February 1998 the EPA convened a panel of 14 entomologists to advise on how to delay the problem of resistant insects. Delay rather than prevention, because everyone, including the genetic engineering industry admits that resistant insects are inevitable. Twelve of the entomologists had worked for or received research grants from Monsanto or Novartis or both. Some nine months later they have not been able to agree a policy. The disagreements centre on the necessary size of the refuge that needs to be sown alongside the Bt crop so that the genetic advantage of Bt resistant insects is reduced and they take longer to dominate the insect population. The industry, anxious to get a return on massive investments, was eager to agree a refuge of 5% but some entomologists were arguing for 50%.
    A few months later, faced with rather more criticism than they expected, and evidence of farmers taking no notice of the voluntary refuge recommendations made by the companies themselves, the industry has suddenly panicked. Novartis is now proposing financial rewards for farmers who comply with their recommendations and they are now talking about the need for 40% refuges. One can only presume that the company economists have done their arithmetic and discovered that there will be a better return on the capital invested in Bt if they can delay insect resistance longer on smaller annual sales than if they allow resistance to set in quickly by maximising sales. 
    Monsanto and Novartis are also no doubt influenced by the fact that the European Commission is back-tracking over the marketing consents that they so desperately need. Bt has become the focus of major conflicts between the unelected officials of the European Commission on the one side, and the Council of Ministers, Member States and the European Parliament on the other side. 
    The European Commission classified Bt crops as genetically engineered organisms rather than pesticides. This means that the EU legislation (90/220) on the deliberate release and marketing of genetically engineered organisms has been applied rather than the pesticide legislation. The EU pesticide legislation demands an explanation and justification for the introduction of any new pesticide—the need for it has to be demonstrated. Under the 90/220 legislation it is not necessary to demonstrate need, merely necessary to convince any one of fifteen national committees, most of which are stacked with industry appointees, that it will not harm the environment. The UK Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment has always worked with an incredibly narrow definition of environmental harm and its track record speaks for itself—it has agreed every one of the 500 plus requests that the industry has made since it was set up.
    There is one thing that the genetic engineering industry and its critics agree upon—the 90/220 legislation is contradictory, contains loopholes and hidden hurdles and it does not work. It has been under revision for five long years and the reason is simple: it has proved impossible to draft a law that is acceptable to both the industry and society at large. In the early 1990s, when genetic engineering was on very few NGO agendas, the industry might have got away with deregulation. It is clear now that deregulation would result in a further politicisation of the issues, to mass direct action against genetically engineered crops across Europe and to popular rejection of the technology. However, the industry seems to lack any sense of public sensibilities or their own economic interests, and still pushes for deregulation.

Legal challenges
The European treatment of Bt crops has shown up the inadequacy of the legislation. Novartis asked for and got a marketing consent for its Bt maize from the previous French (right wing) government. Other Member States objected. When the matter was finally voted by the Council of Agriculture Ministers, 13 were against, one (the German) abstained and only the French Minister voted unhappily for Bt, trapped as he was by the decision of the previous government and with no legal means of escape. Despite this overwhelming opposition to a Bt crop, the European Commission used a loophole in the legislation to give a marketing consent to Novartis on 19 March 1998. 
    If Novartis had any sense of ethical responsibility, they would have been able to distinguish between legal and social legitimacy and they would have held back. By racing to sell their Bt maize to farmers for the 1998 growing season, they courted the widespread accusation that they behaved in the same cowboy manner that Monsanto is famous for. It now also seems that Novartis also acted illegally by selling its maize to farmers ahead of the French government authorisation on 30 July 1998; the EC itself insists that maize is sown by 15 April if it is to be accepted for the area payment subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy.  
    The impasse over Bt crops is now creating work for lawyers, as NGOs and the European Commission take the Member State governments to court, on the one hand for allowing Bt crops into the field, and on the other hand, for refusing to allow the same crops into the field. 
    Members of the French small farmers union, Confederation Paysanne, started by mixing stocks of Novartis Bt maize with maize and getting heavy fines and suspended prison sentences for their efforts. It is worth noting that a few months later, Novartis is advocating such mixtures as part of their resistance management strategy. 
    Greenpeace then filed a charge against the French Minister of Agriculture for not treating the Novartis Bt maize as a pesticide. The case has been accepted by a higher court but will take some time to decide. Greenpeace has now filed a similar charge against the German Minister of Agriculture. The French government (which inherited the Bt maize decision) initially showed contempt for the Greenpeace action by approving a Bt maize from Monsanto on 30 July. Just two months later, on 25 September, the French Council of State rejected the government’s position as illegal and banned both the Novartis and the Monsanto Bt maize. On 2 October the European Commission stated that the French decision was illegal, thus placing a third Member State in the same category as Austria and Luxembourg, which have both banned the Novartis Bt maize despite threats of EC legal action. The decision also created a practical problem for the French government because some 15,000 hectares of the Novartis maize had already been sown in France, Germany and Spain. On 7 October the French Government demanded the total segregation of Bt and non Bt maize and stated that the Bt maize could not be sold. This further action was also condemned as illegal by the European Commission.
    Meanwhile, it turns out that Monsanto was testing its Bt potatoes in Georgia without applying any of the standards it had voluntarily agreed with the EPA in the US. Worse, the Georgian tests were subsidised to the tune of US$ 350,000 by the EU Technical Assistance Programme, which seemed incapable of asking anyone what the money was being used for. In fact the tests were a failure because most of the plants died of blight but the surviving potatoes are still around and no one knows quite where.
    Evidence that Bt maize could pollute other maize crops has now come in from Germany, where an organic farmer found his neighbour had sown the Bt maize alongside his own even though Novartis recommend an exclusion zone or barrier of at least 200 metres. Evidence that Bt crops are directly or indirectly poisonous to beneficial insects such as lacewing is also coming in.
    On 11 September 1998 Greenpeace harvested some 4.5 tons of Novartis Bt maize and on 14 September it was returned to the company headquarters in Basle, Switzerland. On 9 November Novartis lost its court case claiming widespread property rights to Bt maize under US patent laws. Novartis had attempted to cut Monsanto and deKalb out of the game.

Conclusion
In summary, there are two global companies fighting for world domination of agriculture. Their weapons are patents, genetically engineered crops and the libel laws. Their main allies are within the regulatory bodies of the US and the EU. Their critics are organised in a range of environmental, consumer, development and animal welfare NGOs. Novartis and Monsanto are engaged in a reckless race for market share, irrespective of the genetic pollution of the environment this might entail. They have ruined a useful biopesticide and show every sign of ruining more. Photorhabdus luminescens is the next biopesticide to be commercialised and unless something changes, it will be rendered biologically useless by exactly the same short term greedy motives as those that are now ruining Bt.

Sources
Greenpeace on http://www.greenpeace.org/~geneng/
Genet News on genet@agoranet.be
Union of Concerned Scientists, Now or Never by Mellon & Rissler, UCS, Washington, 1998
Seedling 9/98, GRAIN, Barcelona, Spain.

Robin Jenkins is a consultant on food and agriculture policy matters. 

Campaign against genetic engineering

 Pesticides Action Network (PAN) Asia and the Pacific has launched a campaign on the dangers of genetic engineering in agriculture and food production as part of its safe food campaign. PAN points to the threats to human health and the environment and the negative impact on farmers, particularly in developing countries. 
    They are concerned about the implications for increased pesticide use in a region where the detrimental effect on women and men farmers’ health is widely documented. 
    In addition to the moral and ethical implications of technology based on ownership and manipulation of life processes, PAN fears that with aggressive marketing of GE seeds farmers will be unable to avoid their use, and become dependent on the related package, rather than using local markets and exchanges of farm-saved seed.

Say NO to Genetically Engineered Food is available from PAN Asia and the Pacific, Email panap@panap.po.my  

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No.42, December 1998, pages 6-7]