ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Transgenic Foodstuffs Meet Weak Resistence

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 7 1998 (IPS) - Brazil is a vast testing ground for transgenic plants where the weak resistence from NGOs demanding greater environmental and health protection is easily quashed.

Genetically modified maize, soya, cotton, tobacco and sugar cane are already being cultivated in dozens of experimental areas authorised by the National Technical Biosecurity Commission (CTNBio). The objective is to prove the feasibility of commercial production within two years.

Some NGOs have tried to contain the advance, or at least to broaden national debate on the environmental and health risks involved with the sowing and consumption of these foodstuffs.

Senator Marina Silva, representing Acre, an Amazon state with a strong environmental tradition, proposed a moratorium of two years to allow for the issue to be discussed better and for studies to be carried out to protect public health.

There is still no conclusive proof that genetically modified organisms do not damage human health, hence the concern this new technology will become implanted in a country “little prepared to carry out follow-up even on more simple things,” said Marilena Lazzarini, director of the Brazilian Consumer Defence Institute (IDEC).

Lazzarini was a member of the CTNBio for a year, but she left in early 1997 following various disagreements.

The CTNBio, linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology, controls and provides authorisation for biotechnological projects throughout Brazil.

Its members include experts from universities and one consumer representative, now exclusively taken from one organisation in Belem, in the north of the country.

The Commission makes its decisions on the basis of specialised and complex scientific knowledge, leaving the “lay” consumer representation in the “delicate situation” of being forced into making decisions without being able to make previous technical consultations, said Lazzarini explaining her resignation.

“It was a trick,” she said, adding there should be more independent, non-governmental representation from the scientific community and the environmental movement, in order to get greater balance in the Commission.

IDEC supports projects in Congress which seek to oblige the companies to include labels on their products, stating that they are made with transgenic grains or other plants. This is already done in the European countries and “is a strategy for awakening public attention on the issue,” said Lazzarini.

However, when David Hathaway, economist and consultant of an NGO dedicated to promoting agricultural alternatives, was asked about the experimental fields mushrooming throughout Brazil and soon to become commercial products, he said he was “afraid.”

He is currently lobbying to raise awareness and stimulate debate on the issue on Brazil, “where the majority of the population, including members of parliament, are ignorant of the issue,” he said.

Hathaway fears for the environmental effects of the transgenic crops, as the experimental areas barely fulfil “legal formalities,” with no concern for safety nor evaluation of the risks to human health, he said.

One example of this is that the corn fields are separated from other crops by only a 200 metre strip. Genetic improvement experiments demand twice this distance in order to avoid risks, he explained.

The genetic modification of the maize, soya and tobacco seek to make them more resistent to insects and viruses, or tolerant to herbicides, so that certain strong agrotoxics can be used on the crops.

If the genes transfer to other varieties or species of plants, these could become immune to their natural predators and thereby become “invaders,” causing damage to the environment, said Hathaway.

The international organisation Greenpeace tried in vain to block the unloading of a cargo of transgenic soya imported for oil production in December.

Greenpeace campaigns against these products as it considers “the effects of these are as yet unknown, as all the functions of the genes are not yet known.” For instance, cows fed on this soya produce milk with more fat, an unforeseen outcome, said the group’s executive director for Brazil, Roberto Kishinami.

CTNBio president, Luiz Barreto de Castro, said there are no such risks. The Comission follows the decisions of the US Food and Drugs Administration, which it considers sufficiently rigorous, and which has authorised the use of various transgenic products.

The strongest resistence to these innovations has occurred in Europe, and its is partly this lobbying which has forced transnationals like Monsanto, AgrEvo (an association between Hoechst and Schering) and Novaritis to expand their experiments in Latin America, said Jean Pierre Leroy, head of the Forum of NGO environmentalists of Brazil.