by Project Sunshine
"The U.S. is playing roulette with biocultural diversity."
Thirty years after the use of the toxic herbicide Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, the US is planning to enlist a new biological poison called "Agent Green" to fight the Drug War.
The Agrias butterfly. |
The American government has proposed using deadly fungi created in laboratories to kill opium poppies, coca, and cannabis plants in Southeast and Central Asia, Mexico, Central, and South America.
On May 2, the Sunshine Project, a Hamburg-based biotech watchdog group, released a report that called on the UN Biodiversity Convention to halt the US experiments and warned: "There is imminent danger that a highly infectious fungus will be deliberately released in Andean and Amazonian centers of [bio]diversity." The US has already used the fungi experimentally on US- and Central Asia-grown opium poppy and cannabis fields, noted the report.
The strains of the fungi Fusarium oxysporum and Pleospora papveracae intended to infect and kill coca, poppy and cannabis can also extinguish non-target plants.
"The USA is playing roulette with irreplaceable biological diversity," says Susana Pimiento Chamorro, a Colombian lawyer with the Sunshine Project. "In Colombia, four close relatives of coca are already listed as endangered. Agent Green might be the last step to their extinction."
One of the most highly-prized butterflies in the world, the Agrias, depends on coca's wild relatives in the Amazonian rainforest. Plants in the coca genus are the only place where Agrias larvae feed and mature. The Agrias lives in the Upper Putumayo River region of Colombia, precisely where the US intends to apply its heaviest doses of the coca-killing fungus. If the fungus attacks wild coca relatives, it could exterminate the Agrias.
Because Fusarium oxysporum is highly toxic to animals and humans, its use could threaten endangered birds that feed on coca seeds, and native peoples who use coca as a traditional, and legal, stimulant.
"Fusaria can produce mycotoxins that are deadly enough to be considered weapons of war and are listed as biological agents in the draft Protocol to the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention," says Sunshine Project biologist Jan Van Aken. Once released into the environment, the deadly fungus cannot be recalled.
The fungus has been banned from use inside the US -- even though the US is the world's largest producer of illicit cannabis sativa. Last year, the director of Florida's Environmental Protection Agency halted the use of Fusaria, arguing that "it is difficult, if not impossible, to control the spread of the Fusarium species. The mutated fungi can cause disease in large numbers of crops. Fusarium species can stay resident in the soil for years."
Except for modest support from the UK, the US plan for deploying Agent Green has failed to obtain the financial backing of other governments. But this has not stopped US anti-drug warriors from pressuring Asian and South American countries. UN Drug Control Program offices have pressured Colombia to sign a field-testing contract.
Agent Green's Victims
As Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project notes, "Microbes pay no attention to passport and visa requirements. The fungus can spread without regard to political borders, potentially attacking legal crops and countries that do not agree to its use."
Applying fungal agents in southern Colombia, for example, might lead to infections spreading to Ecuador, Brazil or Peru (a legal coca producer). Using Agent Green in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Turkmenistan could lead to losses in bordering India, which currently produces approximately half the world's legal pharmaceutical opiates. In Southeast Asia, many opium poppy fields in Burma border on Laos, Thailand and China -- countries that legally produce opiates for domestic pharmaceutical use. Canadian industrial hemp growers also have expressed concern about US fungus plans.
The rights of indigenous people who cultivate the target crops for traditional, non-drug uses are also endangered. In South Asia, poppies are used in traditional medicine, and plant material is used as fodder. Throughout South America, coca has been used in traditional medicine for more than a millennium. Under the Biodiversity Convention, indigenous peoples are afforded rights to their biodiversity -- including medicinal plants.
The US says that its fungus varieties are not genetically-engineered, but it has created genetically-modified strains in the laboratory. US scientists have cloned virulent genes from Fusarium strains that attack potatoes (with the possible intent of increasing the kill-rate of anti-drug fungi through biotechnology).
Governments have a legitimate need to control narcotic crops; but doing so by using Agent Green microbes is profoundly misguided and sets an alarming precedent. How will governments protect biodiversity if microbes are developed to kill other unpopular and regulated crops, like tobacco, kava, betel nut palm, peyote, ayahuasca or hops?
What You Can Do The full report on Agent Green is available on the Sunshine Project website [www.sunshine-project.org] or upon request to Susana Pimiento [44563 Linden Ave. N., Seattle, WA, 98103, (206) 633-3718, spimiento@sunshine-project.org].
Fight the Fungus