The Working Group on Agricultural Biodiversity of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB) agreed to strengthen the moratorium on Terminator Technology established in 2000. The decision at the Convention means an encouraging victory for social organizations all over the world denouncing the immorality and the high risks of genetic engineering technologies aiming to create sterile seeds.

The Working group on Agricultural Biodiversity Chair announced this morning in a meeting in Curitiba the support to ratify the decision adopted at the Convention in 2000 was approved unanimously by all representatives. This text, which was sanctioned after long negotiations and consulting, strengthens the moratorium on Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURTs or Terminator) and rejects a proposal to allow trials on a «case-by-case» basis, which damages its effectiveness. This decision is to be formally adopted by all Secretaries for Environment Affairs of the 188 countries composing the CDB, who would meet on March 31.

A case-by-case assessment would have meant in practice to give the green light to this kind of technology, confining it to a merely technique approach. However, a ETC Group's report presented before the Convention meeting in Brazil shows that socioeconomic repercussions arising from Terminator trading would be devastating, specially to the Third World. Suicide programmed seeds development not only entails very serious risks but it is immoral and unacceptable and, therefore, it should be banned all over the world.

As Ecologistas en Acción sees it, this representatives» decision in Curitiba means a great success for the whole Society and for the future of the Planet.