The Dialectic of Pro-Poor Papaya - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 761

the Thai government and, in particular, the Ministry of Agriculture, as it presented an
undeniable failure of regulation. The ministry and the researchers therefore had little
opportunity to defend the transgenic papaya on its own merits as the political scandal
widened.
ItisimportanttoacknowledgethatGreenpeacewasalmostcertainlycorrectinits
assertionthattransgenicpapayaseedshadlettheresearchstationprematurelyand
were being cultivated by farmers. Although to date it is still not established beyond
doubt what happened, the most likely explanation is that field laborers hired by the
researchstationtookpapayaseedsfromthesiteanddistributedthem.Indeed,villagers
interviewed later openly admitted receiving papaya seeds from relatives who worked
atthestation(Davidson2008).Anobviousincentiveexistedforthemtodothis: he
virus-resistant papaya looked healthy and appeared even to the casual observer to
deliver a much more productive crop than the virus-affected plants farmers were used
to growing.
he2004situationinhailandcanthereforebeviewedasanexampleoftheunreg-
ulated spread of GE “stealth seeds,” biotech seeds carrying highly desired traits com-
ingintousebyfarmerslongbeforebeingassessedorapprovedbyregulators.InIndia,
for example, GE pest-resistant Bt cotton seeds were in wide circulation years before
transgeniccottonwasderegulatedbytheIndiangovernmentin2002,whileinBrazil
unapproved GE soy was similarly smuggled across the border from Argentina by farm-
erseagertoutilizeitsherbicidetolerancetraitforbetterweedcontrol(Herring2007;
Herring2013).herearemanymoreexamples: asabiologicallyself-replicatingtechnol-
ogy, transgenic seeds are clearly difficult to control, especially in polities with little regu-
latory capacity and border protections.
Greenpeace took the opportunity of the failure of regulation of a genetically engi-
neered crop in Thailand to put strong pressure on the Thai government. A “feature
story” published on its international website on the day of the direct action began as
follows: “We warned the Thai government over a year ago not to play with genetically
engineered(GE)papayabuttheydidn'tlisten.Nowtheyhaveletthewholecountry's
papayacropwideopentocontamination,”itasserted(Greenpeace2004).Greenpeace's
GE campaigner in Southeast Asia, Varoonvarn Svangsopakul, was quoted in the same
piece as saying: “This is potentially one of the worst cases of genetic contamination of a
major food crop in Asia as this station is one of the largest suppliers of papaya seeds in
the country. This is the hard evidence we needed to prove that GE contamination has
broken in Thailand.”
Greenpeacewasthereforeabletoportrayits27July2004actionasalast-resortmea-
suretoprotectthepublicfromthehaigovernment'sfailuretoproperlycontroltheuse
of potentially dangerous technology. From the outset the issue was discussed by the
activists, the media, and policymakers as one of how “contamination” could be con-
tainedbeforeitescalatedevenfurtheroutofcontrolinthecountryside.Inaddition,
Greenpeacewascarefultopresentitselfastakingthesideofhaifarmers.AsJiragorn
Gajaseni, executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, stated at the time: “All farm-
ers who have purchased papaya seeds from the research station have a right to know