By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 13 2003 (IPS)

A judge has annulled the ban on producing and selling genetically modified soya in Brazil without prior studies of its environmental and health impacts, imposed by another court in 1998. But environmental and consumer activists pledge that the legal battle will continue.

Appellate court judge Selene de Almeida issued a ruling in Brasilia on Tuesday in favour of the transnational agro-business giant Monsanto, based in the United States. But her decision will need to be upheld by two other appeals court justices for it to stick.

Activists have already announced that if De Almeida’s ruling survives, they will push the matter into the higher courts.

But the decision was cause for celebration at Monsanto and the Brazilian Agriculture and Livestock Confederation (CNA), which represents big farmers and rural business. They see it as the "liberation" of commercial cultivation of the soya variety produced by Monsanto under the Roundup Ready (RR) trademark.

The decision "responds to the aspirations of the farmers and will benefit the country’s agricultural sector," said Macel Caixeta, president of the CNA’s grain commission.

But it is "a Phyrric victory, a victory in appearance only," said Marilena Lazzarini, executive director of the Brazilian Consumer Defence Institute (IDEC), a non-governmental organisation that, alongside the international environmental watchdog Greenpeace, initiated the 1998 court case that led to the ban on genetically modified soya.

Lazzarini said in an IPS interview that cultivation of RR soya has not been released from the ban because a resolution by the National Environmental Council, "which has the force of law", remains in effect, requiring a special licence to use transgenic seeds, and it is only granted after environmental impacts are evaluated.

Environment Minister Marina Silva announced that she would require this licence of anyone seeking to plant transgenic soya. She underscored that environmental risk studies must take into account the special circumstances of Brazil, whose territory holds great biodiversity, which could be threatened by the introduction of genetically modified organisms.

The second obstacle standing in the way of planting transgenic soya in Brazil is that the aerial spraying of the herbicide glyphosate, an essential product for RR soya crops, is not permitted, said consumer activist Lazzarini.

The RR soya variety is genetically modified specifically to make it resistant to glyphosate, also produced by Monsanto, under the trademark Roundup. The idea is to apply the herbicide over the fields planted with RR soya in order to eliminate all weeds and grasses, with only the soya plants surviving.

Monsanto has asked the Ministry of Agriculture to register the herbicide, but the ministry has not yet granted authorisation, Lazzarini explained.

But the RR question already involves many illegalities that are tolerated by the government.

The genetically modified soya has been widely – and illegally – cultivated in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul for several years. RR soya is estimated to represent 70 percent of that state’s soya harvest this year.

The seeds were smuggled in from neighbouring Argentina, the world’s second leading grower of transgenic soya, after the United States, being legal in both of those countries.

The problem has reached the point that Monsanto is threatening to charge Brazilian soya exports for royalties that are due the transnational as holder of RR soya’s patent rights.

The Brazilian government, through special legislation, is allowing the sale of the illegally produced soya domestically and abroad until the end of this year. But the ban on transgenic soya will be in force for the next planting season, which begins in September in Rio Grande do Sul.

That same legislation, by maintaining the ban for future harvests, reinforces the interpretation that this week’s court decision does not give RR soya the green light, says Lazzarini.

Regardless, said the consumer activist, IDEC will file a petition against judge De Almeida’s ruling.

What IDEC and the environmentalists fear is "the policy of fait accompli", she added. In addition to the permissiveness that allowed the massive and illegal cultivation of RR soya in the south is the legal confusion resulting from the different rulings and the exceptional treatment granted this year’s harvest.

Meanwhile, the presidential chief of staff, José Dirceu, announced that within a few weeks a bill would be sent to Congress aimed at clearing up the uncertainties surrounding the issue of genetically modified crops in Brazil.

Deep divisions on the matter persist within the government of leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The environment minister, Marina Silva, has always defended the "precautionary principle", speaking out against the approval of transgenics without prior studies "within the Brazilian context" that prove the organisms pose no environmental or health risks.

Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues wants Brazil to adopt the technology of genetic modification so that the country does not fall behind its rivals and remains competitive in farm exports.

Brazil is the world’s second producer of soya, surpassed only by the United States, which began growing RR soya in 1997. In Argentina, the third leading soya producer, 98 percent of this crop is of the genetically modified variety.

A moratorium on transgenic crops is recommendable in order to reinforce family-based farming as a means to combat hunger and rural poverty, Miguel Altieri, professor of agro-ecology at the University of California in the United States, told a meeting of experts this week in Brasilia, "Dialogues for a Sustainable Brazil".

Transgenic production is associated with monoculture farming and excludes small farmers from the productive chain, said Altieri. This is what happened to 60,000 farming families in Argentina since genetically modified crops were introduced there, he said.

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