BPI’s conflict of interest in GMO products

This refers to the news story titled “PH officials look forward to mass adoption of GMOs.” (Inquirer, 1/30/12)

While farmers, NGOs, organic traders and other sectors of society are busy trying to promote and implement the National Organic Agriculture Act (RA 10068), the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) is going in the opposite direction, having “reviewed and approved 67 genetic modifications of plants.”

BPI director Clarito Barron and company are totally ignoring the threats GMOs pose to human beings and the environment, as well as the possible contamination that could affect the Philippine organic industry. GMO-contaminated products cannot be certified as organic.

Barron said that the BPI “will be reviewing our guidelines.” But the fact that only one agency (the BPI, an agency under the Department of Agriculture) reviews and approves the propagation of GMOs, very clearly shows how flawed our regulatory system is under the DA’s Administrative Order 08. The BPI is also tasked to promote GMOs, which is why no GMO has been disapproved so far. There are no checks and balances in the process.

A government agency tasked with reviewing and approving GMOs should have no business promoting them. And to think this is also the agency tasked with implementing the organic agriculture act.

It is misleading to say that the controversial Bt (Bacillus thuringensis) corn “was engineered to produce enhanced kernels, resulting in an increase in yield while reducing the rate of soil erosion.” Bt corn was genetically modified to contain the gene from Bacillus thuringiensis, giving the plant the ability to produce its own toxins, which has lots of consequences for the health of people and the environment.

The BPI—and, for that matter, the DA—should get its priorities straight. It has been the NGOs, people’s organizations and local government units, that have had to take measures to stop the field testing of GMO crops, such as the Bt eggplant, and to let the BPI know that communities don’t want these threats. Barron has called on “proponents to stop field tests in areas ‘that do not want’ these plants,” but clearly the BPI has been remiss in its duties and have let the proponents proceed with open field trials without really complying with AO 8’s minor requirement of consulting communities and other stakeholders before conducting open field trials. Does Barron mean that open field tests may proceed in “areas” where the opposition was not able to organize simply because it didn’t have enough opportunity to say they “do not want these plants”?

AO 8 doesn’t even give provision for the “Precautionary Principle” of science, which requires that GMO testing be done in confined, controlled laboratory conditions, not in open fields, since no one really yet knows for sure how such genetic manipulations will actually impact on people and the ecosystem; and that controlled testing should be done over time to establish long-term impacts and generational effects of the mutations.

We also urge a review of AO 8 and a revamp of BPI policies on GMOs.

—DANIEL OCAMPO,

sustainable agriculture campaigner,

Greenpeace Southeast Asia