Monsanto drops the terminator.

Responding to nearly two years of protest from farmers, environmental groups, and development agencies, the Monsanto Corporation announced in October 1999 that it will not commercialize the so-called "terminator" technology--which would prevent harvested seed from germinating and, thus, prevent farmers from saving seed for future planting. The decision was officially announced in a letter from Monsanto's CEO, Robert Shapiro, to Gordon Conway, the President of the Rockefeller Foundation. In a speech to Monsanto's Board of Directors in June, Conway had expressed concern about the technology, including the potential adverse effects on the estimated 80 percent of farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America who depend on saving seed, and had urged the company to abandon work on the technology.

Farmers have always saved some of their harvest for planting the next year, a practice that is critical for food security as well as for the husbandry of crop diversity, since the saved seed is generally selected from those plants that have done best under local conditions. The terminator--still in the developmental stage and at least five years from any possible commercialization--would prevent this practice by rendering harvested seed sterile, assuring that farmers need to purchase seed each year. In wealthier nations, the sellers of proprietary seed currently rely on seed contacts signed by the farmer, which forbid the re-planting of patented seed. The terminator would make such legal agreements a biological reality. Melvin J. Oliver, a U.S. Agriculture Department molecular biologist and the primary inventor of the terminator, explains that his technology is "primarily designed to open up new markets for seed companies in Second and Third World countries, where patent laws are weak or non-existent."

Although the move by Monsanto was welcomed by biotechnology critics, all major biotechnology interests, including Monsanto, continue to pursue terminator-like technologies. According to Hope Shand of the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), the group that first used the word "terminator" to describe the industry's "gene protection technology," more than a dozen companies and public institutes hold at least 31 patents that involve seed sterilization. These patents are pending in more than 80 nations.

Moreover, seed sterilization technologies, like the terminator, are only part of a larger research agenda that would allow companies to regulate plant traits, such as seed germination or disease resistance, using a chemical inducer to "switch on" certain behaviors. Trait control may ultimately be of far greater consequence than the terminator itself. Novartis, a Swiss biotech firm and the world's top seller of agrochemicals, was recently awarded a patent for a gene technology that would tie a whole set of plant development processes, including germination, flowering, and fruit ripening, to externally applied chemicals--perhaps even to Novartis's own proprietary chemicals. Industry experts suggest such technologies could be available within a few years.