An Open Letter to QUT’s Dr James Dale, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Convention on Biological Diversity

No GMO banana republic - stop banana biopiracy!

Mantasa

13/10/2014

Opinión

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Dear Dr Dale, QUT, Gates Foundation and CBD Delegates,

The Gates Foundation has invested 15 million dollars in Dr James Dale's GMO so-called 'super-bananas' developed at QUT in Australia. The project is being touted as philanthropy with a humanitarian purpose in combating micronutrient deficiency. The GMO bananas, grown in Australia, are currently in Iowa in the US undergoing what Scientific American calls 'Market Trials' - trials that have been designed for marketing purposes, NOT thorough clinical trials. It is not clear the GMO 'super-banana' is truly a humanitarian project, it is however a clear case of biopiracy.

Fe'i bananas (Musa troglodytarum L.) are a traditional food across the Asia-Pacific, found in an area ranging from Maluku in Indonesai to Tahiti and Hawaii in the Pacific. In 1788, Daniel Solander, accompanying botanist Joseph Banks and James Cook on the voyage of the Endeavour, noted several varieties of Fe'i bananas used in Tahiti. Artist Paul Gauguin's paintings Le Repas (The Meal), La Orana Maria (The Virgin Mary) and Tahitian Landscape, painted in 1891, depict these red-orange bananas. In Indonesia they are known as pisang tongkat langit (sky cane bananas) because of the distinctive upright fruiting stem. There are Fe'i banana varieties that are delicious when eaten raw, and others when baked or boiled. Federated States of Micronesia have in recent years had an ongoing program to promote and encourage the cultivation and consumption of these nutritious local banana varieties - use of which had been displaced by imported food cultures - for their high beta-carotene content. The Island Food Community of Pohnpei in FSM has seen the use of these varieties widely adopted in a campaign called 'Let's Go Local!' The program has been so successful that the 'Karat' banana - so called for its orange flesh and high beta-carotene content - has been adopted as the state emblem of Pohnpei and stamps have been issued featuring the Karat banana.

Nutritional surveying of pacific Fei banana cultivars in Australia held in collection by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries that were collected 25 years earlier from Papua New Guinea included the high beta-carotene Asupina variety of Fei banana from which Dr Dale has taken the banana gene for beta-carotene. The Asupina is not a wild variety as Dr Dale has claimed - it is a domesticated Fei cultivar from PNG. Dr Dale's globe trotting GMO bananas are a globe trotting case of biopiracy. Their gene for beta-carotene comes from the PNG Asupina variety. The traditional knowledge they have used comes from Micronesia and across the region. The Q-DPI collection from which they have sourced the Asupina variety should have been a collection held in public trust. Moreover, their gene for disease resistance comes from Maluku in Indonesia. Their GMO 'super banana' project on which Dr Dale holds multiple patents for 'banana transformation' now proposes to sell these purloined treasures back to the world as their patented product from which they can derive royalties and to which they can determine access is being offered up as an act of charity. Rather this is an act of biopiracy. It is an act of biocolonialism.

Dr Dale has given lectures in Indonesia supported by the Australian Embassy in Jakarta where he has claimed bananas are going extinct, selectively ignoring the many hundreds of biodiverse varieties of banana that are the collective living cultural heritage of Africans, Asians and Pacific peoples, the very diversity on which he has have based his GMO bananas, while his real purposes appear to be bioprospecting of local banana varieties. Gates Foundation has accrued its wealth from Microsoft's aggressive pursuit of patent infringement and piracy of their software and technology, however, they do not hesitate to participate in the biopiracy of the banana biodiversity and traditional knowledge that is the cultural and biological heritage of generations of local communities and farmers in PNG and Micronesia.

Dr Dale and Gates Foundation must surely be aware that previous human feeding trials of so-called 'Golden Rice' in the US and in China have been plagued with violations of research ethics and are currently mired in international scandal. In Boston, Tufts University's Institutional Review Board has suspended the lead Chinese researcher from the Tufts human trials of 'Golden Rice' from her permission to conduct human subject researcher after admitting there were serious irregularities and violations of ethics in the human feeding trials of 'Golden Rice' carried out in Hunan. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which published the Tufts study is reportedly retracting the article due to these violations of ethics. Nevertheless the Tufts study is positively referred to in the Australian government's OGTR risk assessment for the GMO 'super-bananas'.

Dr Dale himself admits that the GMO bananas are a door-opener designed to facilitate the uptake of many more GMO crops in Africa and globally. The GMO 'super-bananas' are an expensive distraction away from real solutions for vitamin A deficiency. We do not need to waste time and millions on GMOs when we have viable existing solutions based on biodiversity and available right now, not in 2020. Mantasa's work with local communities has shown that there are many diverse sources of vitamin A to be found in local biodiversity. In Indonesia these include purslane Portulaca oleracea, 43 gm of which provides 568 IU of vitamin A, which is 11% of daily required intake of vitamin A as well as providing 15% of daily vitamin C and 1% of daily folate requirement. The leaves of Moringa Moringa oleifera provide 7564 IU of vitamin A which is 252% of daily vitamin A requirement, per 100 grams of fresh leaves. In fact, Tanzania, Uganda's neighbour, has a program promoting the use of Moringa leaf in local diets to eliminate vitamin A deficiency. Ugandans also grow sweet potato, a staple food which is rich in vitamin A. The GMO banana project aims at 20 IU of vitamin A per gram of banana, a quite high amount, while Ugandans consume banana as a staple food. Excessive amounts of vitamin A can also be damaging to health as vitamin A is fat soluble and stored in the liver, excessive amounts can result in health problems such as liver damage. Moreover, bananas are widely used as an infant weaning food. GMO ingredients in baby food are a contentious issue in the West - why should Africans and Asians or any peoples be made to forcefeed their children with their patented GMOs?

A 2011 article in the New Yorker on the GMO bananas, in which the vitamin A bananas barely rate a mention, suggests that the GMO banana project's larger ambition is to enter the international banana trade, setting itself up as the United Fruit Co. of the 21st Century. Perhaps that is why the GMO banana project is focused on India and Uganda - the first and second biggest producers of bananas (See: 'We Have No Bananas' in The New Yorker by Mike Peed, January 10, 2011). The New Yorker article suggests the real intended market for the GMO banana is the rich western consumer for whom bananas remain one of the most popular fruits. The problem of expensive patented medicinces hindering access to affordable healthcare in poorer nations is serious. Packaging the fight against malnutrition in the form of a patented GMO 'super-banana' on which millions of dollars have been wasted owned by a few rich white men only threatens to exacerbate this problem. Moreover, malnutrition is a complex problem that cannot be solved by monocultural solutions whether of the mind or of the field, not by 'Golden Rice' nor the cartoon solution of GMO 'super-bananas'.

This is why on Oct 2, 2014, Gandhi's birthday Mantasa have launched a pledge of non-cooperation with the GMO 'super-banana' We say, 'No GMO Banana Republic. Stop Banana Biopiracy!'

Mantasa http://mantasa.org/

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/164696