| 'The Brazilian government's agricultural research institute has had its research into GM paralysed.' |
 |
|
|
The same risk-aware approach that motivates the wasteful farm-scale trials has damaged the development of agriculture far beyond Britain. The current moratorium on GM crop production in Brazil is a product of the precautionary principle that has been adopted by the European Union in relation to GM.
|
The Brazilian government's agricultural research institute, Embrapa, has had its research into GM paralysed by the legal injunction won in 1998 by Greenpeace and the Brazilian Consumer Defence Institute, which banned Monsanto GM Soya production. The judge in the case decided against Monsanto and the Brazilian government's biotechnology safety commission because the Brazilian constitution has incorporated the precautionary principle.
|
This has opened the floodgates to legal action based on the argument that government scientists and companies must absolutely prove that Brazil is safe from unknown, hypothetical risks of GM crops. None of the cases brought by Greenpeace and others has offered any proven scientific evidence against GM Soya. But when dealing with hypothetical risks, facts become superfluous.
|
The pressure on Brazil to be more precautionary has been developing for some time. Since its international humiliation over Amazon deforestation in the 1980s, the Brazilian government has learned to adopt Western diktat on environmental matters. The Rio summit of 1992 represented Brazil's surrender to Western theories on development in the third world: sustainability and the precautionary principle.
|
During the 1990s, Brazil signed up to four pieces of international environmental legislation written by Western governments - all of which contain the precautionary principle: the Rio Declaration (1992), the International Climate Change Convention and the International Convention on Biological Diversity (1994), and the UN Biosafety Protocol (2000).
|
Brazil has taken its lead from the EU's and the British government's refusal to defend GM technologies, in the name of precaution. Non-governmental organisations like Greenpeace and the UK's Action-Aid have exploited Britain's rejection of GM food, arguing that Brazilians should reject it too. Each media scare about GM in the UK was heavily cited by the Brazilian media and NGOs as further evidence of the UK's 'sensible' rejection of GM.
|
The British government's delay tactic of 'inclusive' public discussion has become a mantra in Brazil - as if the public in either Britain or Brazil is the driving force behind the rejection of GM. NGO demands for labelling and traceability regulations are justified by the EU example. This will effectively kill all Brazilian grain exports to Europe, as Brazilians cannot afford to duplicate their transport and port facilities to take account of the new rules for exportation.
|
The GM-free Brazil Campaign, led by the Workers' Party government of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, sent ministers to Europe to convince them of the non-GM content of their Soya crops and to do non-GM deals with supermarket chains. It argues that Brazil will lose its conventional grain crop exports to Europe if it 'goes GM'. The same arguments were used by NGOs to convince African ministers to oppose American GM food aid during the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The EU's precautionary stance on GM crops gave real weight to these arguments.
|
In 2001/2002 Brazil surpassed the 100million tonne grain production mark for the first time, due to the massive increase in Soya production on the southern limits of the Amazon. This was the consequence of work by Embrapa to produce seeds that could grow in the inhospitable aluminium-rich Savannah soils. Growers want to apply GM technologies to surpass this tonnage and to compete with US growers. But this will be impossible if farm-scale trials like Britain's are adopted in Brazil.
|
Three judges are still out after four months of deliberation over whether GM crops should be released in Brazil. The Workers' Party, front-runner in the October presidential election race, has stated that it will impose a moratorium on GM crops and encourage organic production in Brazil. As long as the precautionary principle guides UK and EU policy, GM production in countries like Brazil will be paralysed.
|
John Conroy is a TV producer and journalist based in Brazil. He has spoken on GM at the United Nations University Biotechnology Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Oswaldo Fiocruz Public Health Institute Biosafety Course, and the Brazilian Biotechnology Congress/Latin American Symposium on Biosafety.
|
