Ban Terminator
The Ban Terminator campaign is being coordinated by CBAN – the Canadian Biotech Action Network – which coordinates anti-GE work in Canada.
On May 28 2007, Alex Atamanenko, the NDP Federal Agriculture Critic, will be tabling a Private Member’s Bill on Banning Terminator. We will update this site with information about the Bill, or for more information go to the websites below.
What is Terminator?
Terminator Technology genetically engineers plants to produce sterile seeds at harvest. It was developed by the multinational seed/agrochemical industry and the US government to prevent farmers from re-planting harvested seed and force farmers to buy seed each season instead. Terminator seeds have not yet been field-tested or commercialized—but trials are currently being conducted in greenhouses in the US. In August 2006, Monsanto announced it would buy the company (Delta & Pine Land) that owns this advanced Terminator research.
Terminator is sometimes called Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURTs) - the broad term that refers to the use of an external chemical inducer to control the expression of a plant’s genetic traits.
Why is Terminator a problem?
The top 10 largest seed companies control half the world’s commercial seed market. If Terminator is commercialized, corporations will likely incorporate sterility genes into all their seeds. That's because genetic seed sterilization would secure a much stronger monopoly than patents — instead of suing farmers for saving seed, companies are trying to make it biologically impossible for farmers to re-use harvested seed.
Canadian farms of all sizes save seeds and this practice is growing as the farm income crisis gets worse each year. Across the world, over 1.4 billion people, primarily small-scale farming families in the developing world, depend on farm-saved seed as their primary seed source. Terminator seeds will force dependence on external seed sources and disrupt the age-old practice of farmer seed selection, exchange and breeding - centuries of Indigenous and farmer seed variety development is the foundation of the Canadian seed stock.
GE Free BC has been working on the national Ban Terminator campaign since November 2006. We have collected signatures and met MPs in 16 of the 36 BC Federal Ridings, and the Yukon. If you would like to get involved in the campaign in your riding, we have contact points across the Province: e-mail gefreebc@yahoo.ca for details. For campaign materials and further details on the campaign, go to the CBAN website: http://www.banterminator.org/take_action//canadian_campaign http://www.banterminator.org//canadian_campaign/sample_letter
or to the Right on Canada website: http://www.rightoncanada.ca/site//Home.htm
From both of these sites you can download campaign material, petitions, and send messages direct to politicians.
You can find our complete campaign materials collection in the resources section of our site.
