Greenpeace Slams Biotech Group for Propaganda Favoring GMOs

Manila, 14 February 2008–Greenpeace today accused ISAAA (International
Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications) of spreading
false propaganda about benefits of genetically modified organisms
(GMOs) on the behest of its transnational corporate sponsors, in its
recently released report ‘Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM
Crops: 2007′ and rubbished ISAAA’s claim that GMO crops will help
achieve the UN Millennium Developing Goals of cutting hunger and poverty
in half by 2015.

Greenpeace refuted ISAAA’s report, saying that it lacks scientific
evidence to support its claims that GMO crops are safe and effective,
and are the choice of farmers. No scientific study has ever conclusively
proven that GMO crops are safe for human consumption, or for propagation
in fields.

“The truth is that GMOs contribute to the problem of world hunger. GMO
technology and the industry-dependent system it seeks to maintain
increases farmer dependence on the companies that supply the technology
and expensive farm inputs. Far from a solution, GMO crops extend all the
worst practices of industrial agriculture. Perversely, its widespread
adoption would lead to more hungry people–not fewer”, said Greenpeace
Southeast Asia Genetic Engineering Campaigner Daniel Ocampo.

ISAAA’s agenda is to push GMOs into the developing world. Every year it
publishes a report on the state of GMO world-wide which is
scientifically flawed and its statistics distorted. It receives
significant amounts of funding from the agrochemical industry, including
giant multinationals such as Monsanto and Du Pont which already control
more than 65% of the Philippines’ seed market.

“GMO cultivation is also not as widespread as corporations would have us
believe: the reality is that of the 1.5 billion hectares of arable land
on the planet, more than 92% is cultivated without GMOs, and over 99%
of farmers worldwide farm without resorting to GMO crops,” said Ocampo.
“In the Philippines, it is a fact that GMO corn hectarage in 2006 is
still less than half of one percent of total national area planted to corn.”

The Philippines is one of the countries which ISAAA touts as a model for
GMO crop adoption. Since December 2004, at a rate of almost one GMO a
month, the country has approved a total of 52 GMO crops, for food, feed
and processing, propagation, and field trial. No GMO application in
the Philippines has ever been disapproved despite documented cases on
questions of their safety and rejection by other countries, even by
countries where they were developed. Significantly, the government’s
system of regulation and assessment of the safety of GMOs remains, for
the most part, closed to the public.

Greenpeace has repeatedly questioned the credibility of the country’s
GMO regulatory body whose members are closely connected with the GMO
industry and their attached organizations. In the 2007 report ‘Ties that
bind: regulatory capture in the country’s GMO approval process’
Greenpeace exposed how GMO lobby groups such as the ISAAA and the
Biotechnology Coalition of the Philippines appear to be in collusion
with government GMO regulatory bodies in facilitating the swift entry
and approval of GMO crops.

In the past few months, the Philippine Department of Agriculture (DA)
re-approved the GMO Bt corn MON 810 from Monsanto without adequate
public consultation, and also granted a higher than normal subsidy for
the said seed. Mon 810 is currently banned in six countries due to
health and environmental concerns.