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European
precaution punishes Brazil
[27-Sep-2002]
'The
Brazilian government's agricultural research institute has had its
research into GM paralysed.'
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John Conroy
TV producer
and journalist |
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.
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DA79.htm
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