Liability and Compensation for Biosafety
Eyvette Flynn / Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy N.21 30jan98

Information About Intellectual Property Rights, Biotechnology and Biodiversity

Unintended negative consequences of genetically engineered organisms are already being felt around the world. Adequate provisions for liability and compensation are needed in the Biosafety Protocol to create incentives for responsible corporate behavior, and to create disincentives for premature releases of GMOs that have been inadequately tested for the effects on biodiversity and human health.

Beneficial insects are being killed.

• Researchers at the Swiss federal research station Zuerich-Reckenholz have found that beneficial insects have been killed by genetically modified food crop plants. Bt corn not only killed European cornborers, but also killed the larvae of green lacewings, beneficial insects that feed on the cornborers. Additionally, the Bt toxin "jumped over" a food chain when an insect pest, the African cottonworm, survived after being fed Bt corn, but the beneficial green lacewings that fed on the cottonworms died.
• In Thai field tests of Bt cotton, 30 percent of the bees around the test fields died. The bees are necessary for the pollination of flowering plants and the production of honey. Officials at the Institute of Traditional Thai Medicine worry that the surviving bees may have contaminated the country's honey supply with the Bt bacteria. Traditional healers, agriculturists and environmental lawyers are also concerned about the health and safety effects of using Bt cotton in the medicines.
• In Scotland, researchers at the Scottish Crop Research Institute found that the lifespan of ladybugs, a beneficial insect, was reduced to half when they ate aphids that fed on genetically altered potatoes. The affected ladybugs also laid fewer eggs.

Transgenic seeds are performing poorly; farmers' economic status is threatened.

Early field trials and on-farm plantings of transgenic cotton and oil seed have shown more production-related problems compared to conventional seed including low seed vigor, reduced yields and poor plant health, in addition to high economic costs.

• Farmers in seven U.S. southern states report problems with Monsanto's Roundup Ready cotton seed and many are seeking damage payments to cover their crop losses.
• The Australian Research Development corporation has announced that Monsanto's transgenic "Ingard" cotton seed performed consistently worse than conventional cotton in recent field trials.
• In Canada, inconsistent performance with the transgenic "Innovator" herbicide tolerant canola seed has led the Saskatchewan Canola Growers Association to call for an official seed vigor test.

Unapproved releases are occurring.

• In Canada, after some 600,000 to 750,000 acres were already planted with the seed, Monsanto was forced to recall its canola seeds containing an unapproved gene.

Human health concerns grow.

• German researchers have found that glyphosate, the active chemical in Monsanto's Roundup, which is applied to its Roundup Ready soybeans, can increase the level of plant estrogens. Plant estrogens are known to affect mammals including humans. Feeding experiments done on cows with transgenic and ordinary soybeans developed by Monsanto found a statistically significant difference in the daily milk fat production. Those cows fed RR-soybeans produced more fat per day than those fed ordinary soy. Scientists are concerned that the increased milk fat production by cows fed RR-soybeans may be a direct consequence of higher estrogen levels in these RR-soybeans.