Amendment to biosafety policies governing GM crops is pushed

The government is pushing for amendments in Executive Order (EO) 430 in an aim to harmonize regulations in biotechnology products and coordinate cluttered efforts in promoting biotechnology as a means to battle hunger. The Department of Agriculture (DA) is filing an amendment to EO 430, the law governing biosafety policies which created the National Committee on Biosafety of the Philippines (NCBP). The changes will hopefully speed up approval processes for biotechnology products and at the same time inform consumers on potential benefits and risk in these products. "This will harmonize government’s activities including DA, DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources), DoST (Department of Science and Technology," said Saturnina C. Halos, chairman of the Department of Agriculture’s Biotechnology Advisory Team, in an interview. The NCBP is the monitoring body that approves testing of biotechnology products particularly genetically modified (GM) crops and assesses their impact on human health and environment through greenhouse and field testing. Strengthening biosafety policies is believed to be important even as GM crops are seen as hope to increase yield, raise farmers’ income, solve problems on poverty without having to adversely affect environmental sustainability. Since the NCBP is under the DoST at present although it is by nature a national agency that has a national authority, the amendment may upgrade the NCBP as a coordinating body of a higher level body since it needs to link at least three cabinet-level agencies —DA, DENR, and DoST. New stakeholders will also be involved as members of the NCBP, particularly non-government organizations (NGO) and consumers, in consideration to NGO’s contribution to the sector and the product safety’s impact to consumers, according to Charo Ampil, DA chief on legislative matters. The strengthened NCBP will also settle differences on governments’s position on the issuance of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) which is being required by DENR for producers of biotechnology products. The coherence in the activity of government institutions, NGOs, and consumer groups is needed, Halos said, in order to come up with better information on the benefits of new technologies on food, feed, and consumer products. "In the past, one government agency will present a position before an international conference that is different from the position of another government agency. And then because of government’s lack of money, an NGO will send its representative to an international event which also has a different opinion," Halos said. Somehow the new coordinating body may also help coordinate with local government units (LGUs) on the use of new technologies in order to raise farmers’ income, at least through as some LGUs have issued a moratorium on the testing of biotechnology products, particularly GM crops. "Based on the Local Government Code, the local government has the power to issue its policies. But it is their own farmers that are affected. Usually, the affected farms are the small ones, and who will fight for them when it should be the local government that should support them," she said. "Source":[ http://www.checkbiotech.org/root/index.cfm?fuseaction=news&doc_id=12089&start=21&control=179&page_start=1&page_nr=101&pg=1]

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