The Truth about Genetically Modified Food At almost every public lecture I give, someone asks me my opinion on genetic modification—whatever be the topic of the lecture. Genetic modification (GM) has the power to save lives through its use in medicine, such as the production of insulin for diabetics or the treatment of genetic disorders. The current outcry comes when it is used to produce food. Some of these public concerns reflect real problems, but others are fuelled by misinformation and overdramatisation. There is nothing new about crop modification; plant breeders have been doing it since agriculture began. The wonderful range of apples or potatoes we now enjoy is the result of crossing different varieties. Cabbages, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kohlrabi, kale and broccoli all originated from one botanical species. Modern molecular biology has enabled us to go much further. We can now isolate the gene for a particular characteristic of an organism and transfer it to another species. It is this practice of transforming a plant with alien genes—perhaps from an animal or bacterium—that is causing all the controversy. There are three main concerns. Scientists can now take a gene for resistance to a particular herbicide and transfer it to a crop: when these plants are sprayed with weed-killer, the weeds are destroyed while the crop is unharmed. A prime concern is the harmful effect this could have on the biodiversity of farmland, where so many insects, birds and other animals depend upon “weed” species. Another fear is that alien genes from a GM plant could escape into a wild population of a related species. Since plants are fertilized by pollen that is carried through their, often for great distances, this is entirely possible. A wild species modified in this way with pesticide resistance could become a “super-weed”, while a species that becomes unnaturally resistant to animals that feed on it could disrupt the food chain. The third worry concerns a proposal to produce seeds for cereals that cannot germinate to produce next year’s seeds. This “terminator technology” would be of obvious advantage to seed companies, since farms would be forced to buy new weed annually. But the same technology could be devastating to some farmers in the developing world who depend upon saving some seeds for next year’s crop. Fortunately this technology is not yet in use and there has been strong pressure to abandon it. I would not hesitate to eat a GM vegetable—it is most unlikely that the current modifications are harmful to the consumer, despite what we read in the press. However, the introduction of animal genes into food plants presents considerable ethical difficulties to vegetarinsarians and member of religious that forbid the eating of certain animals. This is one of the reasons people are demanding that tall genetically modified food products be clearly labeled. The public have a fight to know what they are eating and a fight to choose. I believe that in my own nation GM is well regulated, but this cannot be said for some other countries. One of the problems is that at the moment this technology is commercially motivated. Because the compositions developing GM food want to introduce it as quickly as possible, in my opinion, it is being rushed into without adequate research or precautions. Genetic’ modification is here to stay, and there is no doubt it will save lives. But ,like so many other scientific discoveries, such as splitting the atom, it can be seriously misused. Instead of condemning the technique, we, should ensure it is used wisely. We need to evaluate each application carefully, from environmental and ethical standpoints, and we must urge governments and companies to use it for good rather than for greed.
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Research published in May 1998 by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) showed that reducing coastal and river pollution and ensuring a reliable water supply were among the top environmental priorities for the public. All discharges to water in the UK require the consent of the appropriate regulatory authority. In England and Wales the Environment Agency’s principal method of controlling water pollution is through the regulation of all effluent discharges, including sewage, into groundwater, and inland and coastal waters. The Agency maintains public registers containing information about water quality, discharge consents, authorizations and monitoring. Applicants for consents to discharge have the right of appeal if they are dissatisfied with the Agency’s decision; most of these appeals are dealt with by the Planning Inspectorate, an executive agency of the DETR. In Scotland control is the responsibility of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), and most appeals are dealt with by the Scottish Office. In Northern Ireland the Environment and Heritage Service is responsible for controlling water pollution. In 1997, there were 4,717 cases in England and Wales of discharges exceeding their consented limits, including a number of offences by water companies discharging insufficiently treated sewage. The majority of these breaches did not cause any significant environmental damage. However, the Environment Agency did bring 65 cases to court, of which 61 were successful, resulting in fines ranging from ￡ 440 to ￡ 12,000 and one prison sentence of two months. In Scotland, there were 2,734 pollution incidents in 1997; SEPA seeks prosecution in all significant cases. In 1997 and 1998, the Government introduced statutory Environmental Quality Standards (EQSs) for 33 substances in water. The new regulations give legal force for the first time to standards for some of the most dangerous pollutants found in the aquatic environment. In the UK, 96 percent of the population live in properties connected to a sewer, and sewage treatment works serve over 80 percent of the population. In England and Wales, the water industry is committed to an investment programme of some ￡ 11,000 million over ten years for improvements to water quality. Progressively higher treatment standards for industrial waste effluents and new measures to combat pollution from agriculture are expected to bring further improvements in water quality. In Scotland, responsibility for the provision of all water and sewerage services lies with three Water and Sewerage Authorities, covering the north, east and west of the country.
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Green Gene Technology For the past 10,000 years humans have influenced the plants they use at first unknowingly, later by design. Today’s crops have been created by a process of selection and classical breeding. More specific improvements in breeding will be possible in future. Science has cracked the genetic information code. Green gene technology is an effective tool in crop breeding, enabling us to develop new crops even more rapidly and specifically. We can make them more efficient, optimizing their contents and valuable substances to suit the wishes and requirements of customers and the processing industry. Their metabolism can be individually modified, making them produce starch, protein and fats with special properties. Through gene transfer plants can be made more resistant to viruses, bacteria, harmful fungi and insect pests. Genetically modified plants can be cultivated to possess improved stress behavior, with the result that they absorb water better in dry locations and can make more efficient use of soil nutrients. We can also optimize weed control. To do so, we make crops tolerant to environmentally sound and easily degradable herbicides. This is not as simple as it sounds. But we have been successful: Innovator has been on the Canadian market since 1995. This is the first oilseed rape variety to contain the glufosinate tolerance gene, facilitating the use of AgrEvo’s broad-spectrum herbicide liberty. We are committed to green gene technology, with which we aim to make crop breeding even more efficient and environmentally friendly. Before being brought on to the market these genetically modified plants are researched and tested for years until the questions posed regarding their safety have been answered. This is a great opportunity for us to realize our vision: the use of faster methods to breed varieties which will continue to provide us with sufficient food and raw materials in future. Our fossil reserves will soon be exhausted. Experts estimate that we only have enough oil for another 43 years and natural gas for less than 60. This means we must rethink and act accordingly, using new crop varieties to step up the move to replenishable sources of raw materials and energy. In other words, green gene technology is the key technology for sustainable agriculture.
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Globalization What exactly does globalization mean? Concepts related to globalization include “internationalization”, “multidomestic marketing”, and “multinational or transnational marketing”, suggesting that the basic criterion is transactions across national boundaries. In the marketing and strategic management literature, globalization is conceptualized as a means to gain competitive advantage by locating different stages of production in different geographic regions according to the particular region’s comparative advantage. This conceptualization focuses only on the economic aspects of globalization; social, cultural and political factors are only considered in the context of achieving economic advantage. Thus, being “culturally sensitive” in global markets is being able to sell one’s product with enough ingenuity to avoid possible pitfalls arising from the seller’s ignorance of local customs. International marketing textbooks discuss such cultural pitfalls in great detail; however, the cultural contest of globalization is always framed by the economy. Broader conceptualization of globalization can be found in other disciplines such as sociology and anthropology. Waters defined globalization as “a social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding.” This conceptualization with its much broader scope, allows for the examination of a number of consequences of globalization, not jut economic but social, cultural and political ones. While there are a few different conceptualizations of globalization, researchers seem to be in agreement that there are at least three dimensions of globalization: economic, political and cultural. The economic aspects of globalization stem from the spread of the capitalist world economy and the resulting expansion of goods and services. The need for cheap raw materials, cheap labor and new markets saw the expansion of the capitalist world economy from one that was primarily Eurocentric to one that encompassed the entire world. This process was achieved by various means and often involved overcoming political resistances in the new markets. The political aspects of globalization involved establishing control over markets and raw materials through either the use of direct military power or the establishment of international institutions that control such markets. The rise of the nation-state is an example of the political aspect of globalization, although it is argued that advances in telecommunications and information systems and the resulting constructions of institutions that transience territorial boundaries are making the nation-state obsolete. If the economic and political aspects of globalization involve material and power exchanges, the cultural of globalization involves the expression of symbols that represents facts, meanings, beliefs, preferences, tastes and values. In fact, these symbolic exchanges are increasingly displacing economic and political exchanges in the spread of global mass culture. Traditional barriers of language pose no problems to modem means of cultural production such as satellite television and film. However, the new “global culture”, despite its manifestations through consumption of global products and symbols in different part of the globe, is essentially the culture of dominant groups centered in the West.
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Tourism, Globalization and Sustainable Development Tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors of the global economy and developing countries are attempting to cash in on this expanding industry in an attempt to boost foreign investment and financial reserves. While conceding that the uncontrolled growth of this industry can result in serious environmental and social problems, the United Nations contends that such negative effects can be controlled and reduced. Before getting into the cold facts of global economics, let me begin with another story to warm up. I was perplexed when I recently read in the newspaper that Thailand’s forestry chief had said: “Humans can’t live in the forest because human beings aren’t animals. Unlike us, animals can adapt themselves to the wild or any environment naturally.” This was to legitimatize the government’s plan to remove hundreds of thousands of rural and hill tribe people from protected areas. This man, who is in charge of conserving the forests, is at the same time very strongly pushing to open up the country’s 81 national parks to outside investors and visitors in the name of “eco-tourism”. Can we conclude, then, that the forestry chief considers developers and tourists as animals that know how to adapt to the forest and behave in the wild naturally? While authorities want to stop the access to forest lands and natural resources of village people, another group of people—namely tourism developers and tourists with lots of money to spend—are set to gain access to the area. While authorities believe that local people, who have often lived in the area for generations, are not capable of managing and conserving their land and natural resources—under a community forestry scheme for example—they believe they themselves in cooperation with the tourist industry can properly manage and conserve “nature” under a national eco-tourism plan. Taking the above quote seriously, cynics may be tempted to say there is obviously a gap between “human rights” and “animal rights”. How is this story linked to globalization? First of all, that humans cannot live in the forest is—of course—not a Thai concept. It is a notion of Western conservation ideology—an outcome of the globalization of ideas and perceptions. Likewise, that eco-tourism under a “good management” system is beneficial to local people and nature is also a Western concept that is being globalized. In fact, Thailand’s forestry chief thinks globally and acts locally. A lesson that can be learned from this is that the slogan “Think Globally, Act Locally” that the environmental movements have promoted all the years, has not necessarily served to preserve the environment and safeguard local communities’ rights, but has been co-opted and distorted by official agencies and private industries for profit-making purposes. The tourism industry is demonstrating this all too well Many developing countries, facing debt burdens and worsening trade terms, have turned to tourism promotion in the hope that it brings foreign exchange and investment. Simultaneously, leading international agencies such as the World Bank, United Nations agencies and business organizations like the Word Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) have been substantially involved to make tourism a truly global industry. However, tourism in developing countries is often viewed by critics as an extension of former colonial conditions because from the very beginning, it has benefited from international economic relationships that structurally favor the advanced capitalist countries in the North. Unequal trading relationships, dependence on foreign interests, and the division of labor have relegated poor countries in the South to becoming tourism recipients and affluent countries in the North to the position of tourism generators, with the latter enjoying the freedom from having to pay the price for the meanwhile well-known negative impacts in destinations.
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One Number Gets It All—Phone, Fax or Voice Mail Tired of having to remember different numbers for your office phone, fax, pager or mobile phone? No room on your business card for the raft of numbers that are now part of everyday business contacts? The answer is at hand—or rather in a number. One number can now be used for all your different devices and communications, thanks to a new system devised by a technology company which uses the science available in the high-growth, hi-tech modem world. Instead of numbers belonging to different devices, the company assigns you one number belonging to you, the person. You have one number for phone, fax, pagers and mobile phones. All your calls and contacts come to this one number so that you can divert unwanted callers politely to your voice mail if you want. Voice messages that come into the same personal number can be turned into emails for delivery to the desktop of your computer or to another person’s computer. You can have trouble-free call-forwarding anywhere in the world. Those are some of the features of Bloodhound, a new service offered by Auckland-based computer telephony integrator—Powercall Technologies Ltd. General manager Nick Little said the company, a subsidiary of the Brocker Technology Group, came to the new one-number system when they wanted to set up in a new office. It would have cost $US 250 (RMB ￥2,000) a month to lease a small phone switchboard. To avoid the capital outlay or the hardware in the office, they set out instead to develop a switchboard based on a PC computer. Then, realizing the market was awash in such products, the company looked at ways to use its experience in voice mail, interactive voice response and unified messaging to develop new subscriber-based services. Mr. Little said Bloodhound, which costs $US 20 (RMB ￥160) a month for full phone, fax and messaging, side-stepped the number portability issue (whether phone owners can use the same number in different phone company systems or not) because subscribers were given not a telephone number, but their own personal number. “The number we issue is a virtual number belonging to the person. It does not terminate on a physical device," Mr. Little said. "The subscriber sets up devices behind the scenes." Bloodhound runs on NT servers and subscribers pay their telephone carriers for line connection and any toll charges. They also pay for calls received on mobile phones via Bloodhound at US$ 25c (RMB ￥2) a minute. But they can change phone carrier company or exchange without having to change all their stationery. Callers are greeted by an automated "virtual assistant", which locates the Bloodhound subscriber or takes messages. Calls can be screened, with known callers announced to the subscriber who can choose to accept a call or divert it to another person or voice mail. Fax can be forwarded to any location for printing, without the cellular charges associated with cellphone-based fax services. And if users have a sudden inspiration, they can call Bloodhound and dictate a message for recall later. Simon Morgan from advertising and direct marketing agency Carpe Diem has been a pilot user of the service throughout the year 2000. He said Bloodhound helped his five-person company present a consistent and professional face to the world. "One of our staff works from home part-time, but with a Bloodhound number available to the world as her office number. As far as the world is connected, she works in the office. It’s also useful if I’m working at a client site. I can use the ‘I am Here’ feature and get calls forwarded through."