The World Council of Churches (WCC) is opposing “terminator technology”. In a communiqué released on 15 May, the Rev. Samuel Kobia, WCC general secretary, calls on member churches and ecumenical partners to take action to stop the creation and production in the laboratory of sterile seeds (permitting a single harvest only), better known as “Terminator technology” which, according to the WCC “would turn life, which is a gift from God, into a commodity”. “Preventing farmers from re-planting saved seeds will increase economic injustice all over the world and add to the burdens of those already living in hardship”, said Kobia. Terminator technology would transfer food sovereignty, “once the very backbone of community, to the hands of technologists and large corporations”. It is estimated that some 1.4 billion people depend on farmer-saved seed as their primary seed source. “Brazil and India – Kobia reports – have already passed national laws to ban Terminator, while in Germany Protestant Churches are lobbying “for a national law and EU legislation to ban terminator seeds” and the patenting of terminator technologies.
