Director Candida Adalla of the DA Biotechnology Program Office (BPO) told reporters during a press briefing on the Seminar on the Global Status of Biotech/GM Crop Adoption held at the Hyatt Hotel in Manila on Wednesday that P5 million has been allocated to acquire modern laboratory equipment on top of the continuing human-resource development program being initiated by the DA and her office.
Last year, she said the DA-BPO started training programs for personnel of the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (FPA) which also exercises regulatory function on genetically modified organisms (GMO) and GMO-transformation events.
This year, with the available funding, she said training of quarantine officers nationwide would be conducted.
Adalla said the equipment to be purchased would be “Asean-harmonized” or compliant to the standard set by the scientific community of Asean member-countries.
“Right now, we are enhancing the regulatory unit of the Bureau of Plant Industry through human-resource development. We are funding a project to give training to all BPI quarantine officers to be able to participate in the regulatory process. We are also capacitating the unit for new and modern equipment,” she said.
She said there is also a plan to hire additional manpower to focus on biotech regulation.
“We hope to incorporate this to the BPI budget for these to become permanent positions,” she said.
She said the target is to train all regional quarantine officers. Dr. Emil Javier, president of the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), raised the issue on the institutionalization of the biosafety regulatory unit within the BPI during the seminar open forum.
He underscored the need for such biosafety unit within the BPI whcih should be dedicated to detecting GMOs and GMO transformation events, so as to enhance the country’s biosafety systems.
According to Javier, currently, biosafety regulation is being managed by BPI researchers who are working from various units or offices within the BPI.
“There should be a unit dedicated to biosafety within the BPI, with a modern laboratory facility to work on,” he said. More important, he said that funding should be institutionalized to support its operation.
Agriculture Undersecretary Segfredo Serrano, in charge of policy and planning who gave an overview of 10 years of biotech commercialization in the Philippines, agreed. He said that even with a rigorous biosafety systems in place, there is a need to institutionalize a biosafety-regulatory unit dedicated to GMO and GMO transformation events detection and regulation within the BPI.
He appealed to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to address the DA’s rationalization program application to realize the plan of institutionalizing biosafety regulation within the BPI.
“Hopefully, the DBM will help us address this by addressing the DA rationalization plan,” he said, adding that the proposal has been submitted as early as the first quarter of last year and is currently being studied by the budget department.
(Jonathan L. Mayuga)
