Misapplication of the Writ of Kalikasan Friday, June 07, 2013 05:55 AM Views : 1151by:Emil Q. Javier 2013 bt talong The day the Special 13th Division of the Court of Appeals ordered to permanently stop all field experiments on the Bt eggplant or Bt ‘talong’ variety is a pitiful day for Filipino consumers and farmers, a huge setback to the struggling science community, and a serious curtailment of the academic freedom of the University of the Philippines. The CA order was a perverse application of the Writ of Kalikasan which intent is to assure the Filipino people of balanced and healthful ecology because this was precisely what the Bt talong research was trying to accomplish. The eggplants that Filipino housewives buy in public markets are very often heavily coated with chemical pesticides, to protect the fruits from the fruit borer insect which render the fruit inedible and non-marketable. The eggplants have to be washed thoroughly to make them safe to eat. Bt talong is resistant to the fruit borer and need not to be sprayed, thus reducing the hazard to human health, reducing pollution of the environment, not to mention costs to the small farmers, and ultimately the food price to the consumers. The Bt gene in question which makes the Bt talong insect resistant has been found safe. The Bt gene was derived from a common soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis. For a half of century now, suspensions of Bt are used as biological sprays as substitute for chemicals. As a matter of fact organic farmers are allowed to use Bt sprays to protect vegetable crops. The same Bt gene has been transferred to and approved for food, feed, and environmental safety in corn, cotton, soybeans, and tomato. Hundreds of millions of hectares of these GMO crops have been harvested worldwide since 1996. And to date, no single instance of food poisoning and allergy has been reported and verified. Our own corn farmers had been planting Bt corn for a decade. In 2012, we harvested almost 800,000 hectares of Bt corn and we have yet to hear of cases of Bt corn poisoning. The GMO technology is so practical and profitable that small Filipino farmers purchase the “expensive” Bt corn hybrid seeds without subsidy from the government. Dr. Emil Q. Javier is a former President of the University of the Philippines and the National Academy of Science and Technology. He was the founding director of the Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB) and the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (BIOTECH) in UP Los Baños and has a Ph.D. in plant breeding from Cornell University, USA. This concern for the environment of the Special Division of Court of Appeals is misinformed and misplaced. Unfortunately, this Writ against Bt talong trials may also negatively impact research in the Philippines on other important crops. Contrary to what Greenpeace and GMO technology detractors claim, the UN World Health Organization, the US National Academy of Science, the British Royal Science Society and many other prestigious National Science Academies consider consuming foods from GM crops “no riskier” than consuming same foods from crops modified by conventional plant breeding techniques. In other words, varieties developed using genetic engineering technologies are equivalent, or even safer, to those varieties using conventional plant breeding. This is one advanced technology where Filipino scientists are holding their own in global competition. Sadly, all these Filipino-brand GMOs will be stillborn if this misapplication of the Writ of Kalikasan is not reversed. Between a known health and environment hazard from the overuse of chemical pesticide versus speculation of risk from a gene from a common soil organism being transferred to other unspecified living things, the Court should have not succumbed to the fear of the unknown being sown by GMO opponents.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 03:09:54 +0000
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