[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 40 (Thursday, April 14, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 14, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                     WORLD FOOD DAY TELECONFERENCE

                                 ______


                        HON. BENJAMIN A. GILMAN

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 14, 1994

  Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, for 10 years the U.S. National Committee for 
World Food Day has offered a teleconference on critical food policy 
issues to colleges and universities in the United States, and through 
the facilities of the U.S. Information Agency WorldNet service to 
embassies and institutions through the Western Hemisphere. In 1993, 
WorldNet also made it possible for the telecast to be received in 
Africa and Asia.
  The World Food Day Program dealt with the frightening pace of genetic 
erosion and its impact on food security. This danger is acknowledged at 
the level of scientific literature and international technical 
conferences but there is a general lack of public awareness. There is 
an urgent need for the international community, national governments, 
and citizen organizations to act quickly and forcefully to preserve and 
protect the world's genetic resource base.
  I want to thank the U.S. Committee for World Food Day and the 
Committee's National Coordinator, Ms. Patricia Young, for their efforts 
in bringing this important subject to public attention. I also want to 
thank the Agency for International Development and the U.S. Information 
Agency for their support of this program.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to read the executive summary of 
the World Food Day Teleconference, and request it to be printed in full 
in the Record at this point.

                 1993 Teleconference Executive Summary

       The tenth annual World Food Day Teleconference was 
     broadcast from the studios of George Washington University 
     Television in Washington, DC, on October 15, 1993. It linked 
     a distinguished international panel of experts on food, 
     agriculture and biological diversity to 1,000 receive sites 
     in the United States and throughout the Western Hemisphere. 
     There were also a number of passive sites in Asia and Africa. 
     The theme for the teleconference was ``Seeds of Conflict: 
     Biodiversity and Food Security.''
       After years of growth since the World Food Day 
     teleconference series began in 1984, the program is believed 
     to be the largest, single development education broadcast 
     ever organized in the U.S. The Spanish-language broadcast, 
     involving simultaneous interpretation from English, began in 
     1990 with a pilot project in Mexico through the cooperation 
     of the Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey, which relayed the 
     broadcast in Spanish to its 26 national campuses over 
     Mexico's Morelos II satellite. Outreach to the rest of Latin 
     America and the Caribbean was initiated in 1992 with the 
     support of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the 
     U.S. Information Agency WorldNet system.
       World Food Day, held for the first time in 1981 and marking 
     the anniversary of the founding of FAO in 1945, has captured 
     the imagination of people throughout the world. In the U.S. 
     the day is observed in virtually every community in the 
     country, with especially strong support in schools, worship 
     centers and food banks. The U.S. National Committee for World 
     Food Day has grown in membership to more than 450 private 
     voluntary organizations and works directly at the grassroots 
     through more than 20,000 community organizers.
       Serving on the teleconference expert panel in 1993 were 
     Jeffrey Bennetzen, professor of genetics and plant science at 
     Purdue University in Indiana, Jose Esquinas-Alcazar, 
     secretary of the FAO Commission on Plant Genetic Resources, 
     Geoffrey Hawtin, director-general of the International Board 
     for Plant Genetic Resources, and Hope Shand, research 
     director of the Rural Advancement Foundation International. 
     The moderator was CBS-TV Washington reporter Miriam 
     Hernandez. FAO Director-General Edouard Saouma and the 
     Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy also appeared on the 
     program through special videotaped messages.


                       the teleconference concept

       In the U.S. the World Food Day teleconference has become a 
     model for development education on global issues, in part 
     because of the enormous growth in interactive site 
     participation and the additional millions of viewers accessed 
     through collaborating networks and in part because of the 
     year-around use of the program's study materials and the 
     teleconference videotape itself in college-level courses in a 
     great variety of disciplines. The ``internationalization'' of 
     the program since 1990 has further increased its impact and 
     was broadly welcomed by participating colleges and 
     universities in the U.S. The main components of the 
     teleconference package are: (1) A Study/Action Packet of 
     print materials prepared by the non-governmental U.S. 
     National Committee for World Food Day and distributed to all 
     participating schools and other study centers (and 
     distributed in Spanish to the participating sites in Latin 
     America); (2) the three-hour satellite telecast on World Food 
     Day composed of three hour-long segments for expert panel 
     presentations, site consideration of the issues and a site-
     panel question and answer interchange; (3) publication of the 
     teleconference report including written responses by 
     panelists to questions that were not taken up on the air for 
     reasons of time; and (4) analysis by selected site organizers 
     after each year's program to make recommendations for the 
     year to follow. All of the main teleconference components are 
     designed as college-level curricular aids.


                        the study/action packet

       The Study/Action Packet is designed as an integral part of 
     the teleconference package, but also serves as a separate 
     study resource for groups planning World Food Day observances 
     but not participating in the telecast. More than 1,500 copies 
     of the packet were distributed on request in the months prior 
     to the broadcasts to colleges, other institutions, community 
     study groups, schools and individuals. All or part of the 
     packet materials were reproduced by many of the participating 
     sites.
       Again in 1993 the Study/Action Packet was translated into 
     Spanish and reprinted by the FAO Regional Office for Latin 
     America and the Caribbean and distributed throughout the 
     region by the network of FAO country representatives. Copies 
     of the English version were also distributed to U.S. 
     embassies on request.
       The 1993 packet was developed by the U.S. National 
     Committee for World Food Day with the cooperation of several 
     institutions and organizations which contributed material 
     from their own research and analysis. The theme for the 1993 
     teleconference, exploring the effect of the global erosion of 
     plant genetic resources on present and future world food 
     security, offered a specifically Western Hemisphere 
     perspective of the worldwide World Food Day theme selected by 
     FAO--``Harvesting Nature's Diversity.'' The Study/Action 
     Packet, although not intended as a comprehensive analysis of 
     all the issues raised by biodiversity loss, served as an 
     overview on these issues. Special viewpoint paper included in 
     the packet and donated by their authors came from R. David 
     Simpson and Roger A. Sedjo of Resources for the Future, 
     Jeffrey A. McNeely of the International Union for the 
     Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Stephen A. 
     Vosti of the International Food Policy Research Institute 
     through the courtesy of Diversity Magazine, Dr. Juan 
     Izquierdo of the FAO Regional Office for Latin America, and 
     Vice-President Al Gore as author of the book ``Earth in the 
     Balance.'' The vice-president (then senator) was a World Food 
     Day teleconference panelist in 1989. For the fourth year the 
     packet also included a special ``manual of modules'' for 
     integrating the teleconference and study packet into college 
     curriculum and continuing education programs. Twelve specific 
     course outlines and study activities contributed by 
     university professors using the materials in their own 
     teaching were included as well as an organizing plan for 
     arranging the teleconference site programs.
       This was the tenth study/action packet prepared in 
     conjunction with the teleconference series and the fifth to 
     be undertaken directly by the U.S. National Committee for 
     World Food Day. Previous packets were prepared by the Center 
     for Advanced International Studies at Michigan State 
     University and by the Office of International Agriculture at 
     the University of Illinois. Funding for the 1993 packet was 
     partially provided by the Agency for International 
     Development. General funding for the teleconference program 
     was provided by the U.S. National Committee for World Food 
     Day, FAO, Covenant Presbyterian Church of Scranton PA and the 
     Xerox Foundation.


                        teleconference outreach

       The WFD teleconference has grown each year since it was 
     begun in 1984. Teleconference impact continued to grow in 
     1993 in at least three other ways. For the eighth year the 
     program was used by professional organizations for continuing 
     education credits. These credits (or professional development 
     units) were offered again in 1993 by the American Dietetic 
     Association, the American Home Economics Association and 
     through the Catholic University of America to clergy and 
     social service professionals. Beginning in 1989 there has 
     been a steady rise in teleconference participation by high 
     school students, initiated by both individual schools and 
     school systems. The audience of home television sets accessed 
     by cooperating networks is believed to be in the millions, 
     reached through the Catholic Telecommunications Network of 
     America, AgSat, Vision Interfaith Satellite Network, PBS 
     Adult Learning Satellite Service and individual PBS and cable 
     stations.


                  The Teleconference Broadcast Summary

       The telecast opened with a brief background statement by 
     the moderator on the importance of protecting the world's 
     plant genetic resources and the alarming rate of genetic loss 
     in recent decades. FAO Director-General Saouma, in his 
     statement, then noted the long history of FAO in protecting 
     agricultural biodiversity and the expansion of programs in 
     recent years falling under the concept of sustainable 
     agriculture. The moderator then introduced the panel and 
     posed the first question to Dr. Esquinas, asking him to 
     explain how the biodiversity issues are linked to the world's 
     daily food supply. Esquinas noted that world food problems 
     were still very serious, with someone dying of hunger causes 
     every two seconds, and that genetic resources were vital to 
     food crop improvement. He also noted the emergence in recent 
     years of a number of international organizations and programs 
     to deal with genetic resources, especially issues had 
     evolved, specifically under the aegis of FAO.
       Geoffrey Hawtin, whose organization monitors the global 
     network of ``genebanks'' where genetic resources are stored, 
     pointed out that people in general were aware of only a small 
     part of the biodiversity represented in their food, comparing 
     the few kinds of apples sold in stores to the more than 
     80,000 types of rice held in seed storage by the 
     International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. The 
     genebanks, he said, had been able to save the huge number of 
     plant species that otherwise would have been lost through 
     agricultural modernization in past decades, and that these 
     seeds were the basic stock used by plant breeders to create 
     new and better food varieties.
       Dr. Bennetzen noted that storage in genebanks has to be 
     complemented by conservation of wild relatives of crop seeds 
     in a state of nature. Seeds of crop plants, he said, 
     represented only a tenth on one percent of the total genetic 
     materials extant and that more needs to be done to protect 
     these natural preserves as well as building up the genebank 
     network.
       Hope Shand then pointed out the vital link between genetic 
     diversity and sustainable agriculture and the contribution 
     made by farmers over millennia in plant selection and 
     breeding. It is critically important, she said, that the 
     small individual farmers around the world maintain control of 
     their own seeds and plant varieties but that this control is 
     being lost with the introduction of ``high yielding 
     varieties'' sold by international seeds companies. Shand 
     defined biodiversity as the total diversity of life on earth, 
     including all living organisms, genes and species and the 
     ecosystems of which they are a part. Bennetzen added a point 
     on the importance of biodiversity to biotechnology, noting 
     that genes cannot be created in a laboratory but only 
     modified. Biotechnology, he said, is simply a tool by which 
     biodiversity is utilized more efficiently.
       The panel then discussed the causes of biodiversity 
     shrinkage, with each panelist analyzing the impact of modern 
     high-yield plant varieties in the previous decades. Esquinas 
     noted that the slow, farmer-based evolution of crop seeds 
     over hundreds of years had suddenly given way to modern 
     science, mass production and commercial distribution, and 
     that the substitution of traditional varieties had been very 
     rapid. Shand added that the new varieties were very uniform 
     genetically and more vulnerable than the older traditional 
     varieties which held greater genetic complexity. Hawtin noted 
     that these problems needed to be balanced by the enormous 
     increase in production introduced by the new varieties which 
     has enabled farmers to keep up with world population growth 
     and even to reduce the cost of basic foods, which he said was 
     especially important in poor regions. In response to a 
     question from the moderator, Hawtin also noted that a number 
     of countries had been able to introduce high production 
     systems (seed, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.), but still make 
     a major effort to protect biodiversity.
       The panel then turned to national and international issues 
     of biodiversity protection. Esquinas noted as a starting 
     point the difficulty of incorporating biodiversity value into 
     modern economic terms. Market economies, he said, can only 
     give a value based on current supply and demand, but the 
     needs of future generations are left out of the economic 
     equation. Shand then added that the teleconference theme was 
     ``seeds of conflict'' in part because genetic diversity is a 
     natural resource of the poor countries of the world, but is 
     most needed and most used by the rich, without 
     compensation. As an example, she noted that the only food 
     crop of any major importance originating in the U.S. was 
     the sunflower, while all the major crops came from other 
     parts of the world and our plant breeders and genetic 
     engineers are still dependent on these genetic resources 
     for vital plant improvements. The early plant breeders in 
     the Third World are given no return for centuries of work, 
     she said, a fact leading to the concept of ``farmers' 
     rights'' now under discussion in UN agencies such as FAO. 
     Esquinas agreed, asking why it should be that a new 
     variety always is based on the combination of natural 
     resources and new technology, but compensation is provided 
     to the side with the technology but not to the supplier of 
     the raw materials (i.e., the genetic resources). It was 
     for this reason, he said, that FAO member countries had 
     agreed to the concept of compensation to the genetic 
     suppliers under the term farmers' rights.
       The panel then turned to the issues of plant patents and 
     how farmers' rights could be implemented. Bennetzen noted 
     that the issue went beyond agricultural seed companies and 
     had to include pharmaceuticals, which have developed the 
     concept of patenting even faster. There was a history, he 
     said, for both pharmaceutical and plant protection patents. 
     The issue is complicated, he said, because there is no doubt 
     that the technology side reaps greater rewards than the 
     genetic material suppliers, but that the argument is also 
     made that patents and plant protection are vital incentives 
     to plant breeding, at least in the private sector. Shand 
     disagreed that the patenting systems were that old, 
     especially in comparison with the centuries taken by farmers 
     in their plant selection and breeding. For people in the 
     Third World, she noted, they find themselves in the position 
     of playing royalties on products that are based on their own 
     knowledge and their own genetic resources.
       Hawtin noted that part of the concern is the use of patent 
     legislation per se over new life forms, which is very new. 
     Plant protection rights are older, he noted, and have very 
     different characteristics from plant patents. Plant 
     protection, he said, still allowed farmers to produce and 
     store their own seed and allows researchers to use a seed as 
     a parent in new research and development. Plant breeders 
     traditionally use previous years' new lines as the starting 
     point for further development. Patents, he said, call all of 
     this into legal question--even the right of farmers to store 
     seeds from year to year. It is using a host of legislation 
     not originally meant for life forms, and that leads to 
     untenable positions.
       Shand noted that all of this was going on without 
     consideration of the international consequences. A system of 
     industrial-like patents over life forms, she said, is leading 
     countries to restrict availability of genetic resources under 
     their sovereignty. Hawtin added that this was, in fact, 
     already beginning. He said further that an unfortunate side 
     effect of the Rio Biodiversity Convention has been to give 
     many Third World countries huge expectations of profit from 
     their genetic resources, which will almost never be the case. 
     Esquinas added that there was a further danger of great 
     importance in that the main stimulus of scientists in the 
     past to do research and to publish findings was recognition. 
     With patent systems will come to kind of secretism, he said, 
     whereby research will be kept hidden until a monetary profit 
     is assured. Hawtin noted that when the debate over genetic 
     resources began the most often used understanding of 
     ownership was ``the common heritage of mankind,'' that a good 
     was owned jointly by all people on earth. Now, he said, the 
     common heritage has been given over to national sovereignty. 
     Bennetzen said he wanted to return to the needs of 
     biotechnology. Genetic diversity is of no value unless it is 
     utilized, or if it is stored and there is no effort to use 
     what is stored. The genetic engineering industry cannot 
     function unless there is a profit to be made, and the same is 
     true of seed companies. Repaying farmers in the Third World 
     is a good concept and worthwhile pursuing, he said, but we 
     also have to recognize the realities of modern industry.
       The moderator then asked where the international community 
     finds itself now in the search for a consensus on all these 
     issues. Esquinas said that for the first time they were at 
     the point of a meeting of views. He noted that he and 
     Geoffrey Hawtin had recently attended a meeting of the 
     Biodiversity Committee in Geneva where a general framework 
     for international cooperation was nearly complete, including 
     a fund for the compensation of farmers' rights and a 
     number of components now being put in place, using the 
     genebanks as an example. Twenty years ago there were fewer 
     than 10 properly functioning genebanks in the world, he 
     said, while now there are more than a hundred. The 
     genebanks work with the Consultative Group on 
     International Agricultural Research, which is now, in 
     turn, working with FAO to create a truly global, 
     interactive resource network. Shand agreed that there had 
     been great progress, but that some of the hopes of the 
     Convention on Biological Diversity were not yet fulfilled, 
     including implementation of the concept of farmers' 
     rights. She said many colleagues were concerned about a 
     new tendency toward bilateral agreements--between one 
     company and one government--rather than realization of a 
     truly global system under auspices of an appropriate UN 
     agency.
       With time short for further discussion, the moderator asked 
     each panelist to give site participants one important point 
     to take away with them. Hawtin said the overriding lesson of 
     the genetic diversity problem is that no country can be 
     independent and all are interdependent; therefore, 
     cooperation and consensus were absolutely in the interests of 
     all. Shand said her point would be that it wasn't enough just 
     to rescue the genetic diversity and put it into a bank, but 
     that it was even more important to recognize the need to 
     continue the evolution of indigenous farmer knowledge 
     systems. Bennetzen suggested that the key point was that 
     biodiversity is absolutely vital, not just to future crop 
     breeding but to basic science as well, and that this resource 
     has to be protected. Esquinas made two points: one, that 
     protecting biodiversity was not a matter for international 
     charity but international cooperation and the sharing of 
     benefits; and two, that the world has to find a way to 
     understand that the cost of a product must include the cost 
     of preserving the natural resources that will allow future 
     generations to consume the same product.


                    third hour questions and answers

       As in previous years, the third hour of the teleconference 
     program was devoted to questions directed to the panelists by 
     the participating sites. All questions received were answered 
     either on the air during this third hour segment or by the 
     panelists in writing afterward. These written answers are 
     part of this teleconference report. Questions were received 
     from Canada, the U.S. and countries of Latin America and the 
     Caribbean.
       Subjects in which there tended to be the greatest interest 
     among the participating sites included: How food production 
     and biodiversity conservation could be maintained in the 
     light of rapid world population growth; What kind of system 
     can reward those who develop new seeds, products, drugs, 
     etc., but without patents; Is it ethical or moral to conceive 
     of patenting life forms; How will farmers be compensated in 
     practice for their contributions under the concept of 
     farmers' rights. In general, all the panelists agreed on the 
     need to find solutions to these questions while admitting 
     that the issues were extremely complex and none of the basic 
     problems could be said to be solved at this time.

                          ____________________