EXPERIMENTAL genetically-engineered crops, such as the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) eggplant pose serious environmental and health risks and should be stopped, the environmental group Greenpeace said on Tuesday.
In a press statement, Greenpeace said all citizens are duty-bound to ensure that open-air planting of such experimental crops are immediately stopped to prevent health as well as environmental risks.
The group issued the statement as some its members face charges for “malicious mischief” for raiding and destroying several Bt eggplants at an experimental farm in Bay, Laguna, in February, being maintained for scientific research by scientists from the University of the Philippines in Los Baños (UPLB).
UPLB chancellor Rey I. Velasco is determined to push for the prosecution of the Greenpeace activists arrested for the raid in the Bt eggplant field trial site.
Provincial prosecutor George C. Dee said there was probable cause to charge respondents Daniel M. Ocampo, Aileen Camille Dimatatac, Adrian N. Dagondon, Benjean May Tolosa, Raymond Berongay, Don Florentino, Shivani Shah, Ali Abbas, Ricky Morales, Eyesha Endar and Rhoda Armoda and put them on trial.
Velasco said the “Bt talong plantation is a legitimate experiment of UPLB designed to evaluate the merits and demerits of the technology” and insisted that national policies and rules and regulations were observed in conducting the experiment. He added that the field trial was approved by the National Biosafety Committee.
“Greenpeace has repeatedly sounded the alarm regarding the dangers of open field trials of Bt eggplant ongoing in some provinces in the country. Unfortunately, these field trials commenced despite the lack of proper public consultation, and despite major objections from farmers’ groups, environmental and food safety organizations and civil society,” said Ocampo, Greenpeace Southeast Asia sustainable agriculture campaigner.
“Bt talong has already been proven to be risky, unsafe for human consumption, and irreversibly contaminates conventional talong crops of ordinary farmers. What is in contention here is Bt talong and why—in the face of such overwhelming evidence—any institution should support a corporate experiment that goes against all that is good and beneficial to the public,” he added.
The group maintained that its action on February 17, when a Greenpeace decontamination unit removed genetically-engineered Bt eggplant from a field trial site in barangay Paciano Rizal in Bay, Laguna is justified as the move was able to prevent any further environmental contamination from the hazardous GE crops.
Greenpeace has been calling on the Department of Agriculture (DA) to stop the experiment and decontaminate all existing field trial sites with immediate effect.
Instead, the group urged the DA to implement the Organic Agriculture Act and ban genetic engineering of all food crops in the Philippine.
