While picketing the Department of Agriculture Monday morning, the activist scientists group AGHAM, or the Samahan ng Nagtataguyod ng Agham at Teknolohiya para sa Sambayanan, condemned the approval by the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) of the commercial release of Bt corn from Monsanto.
 
“Monsanto and the Department of Agriculture cannot hide behind scientific duplicity. Despite the absence of any independent verification and experimentation, as would be done by any self-respecting scientist, the approval by the BPI rested on assessment of data coming from Monsanto itself,” said Dr. Giovanni Tapang, national chairperson of AGHAM.
 
“The field testing done by Monsanto was already in the context of future commercial release and was not a genuine scientific experiment for testing for the effects of Bt corn. Furthermore, it reported only yields and did not look into health and environmental effects such as allergenicity, neither did it test for uncontrolled contamination and propagation in the surrounding crops,” noted Dr. Tapang, in the picket with farmer and environmental groups from the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas and Kalikasan – Peoples’ Network for the Environment.
 
“We condemn the Department of Agriculture for standing by Monsanto and big agrochemical firms in expediting the approval of Bt corn. We fear that with the new secretary, Cito Lorenzo, who is an avowed “agribusiness” person, small farmers and the people will be last in the agenda of the Department of Agriculture,” Dr. Tapang added.
 
“The so-called Scientific and Technical Review Panel nor the National Committee on Biosafety of the Philippines should not be used to legitimize the commercial release of Bt corn especially since they have not done any independent scientific testing themselves. Genuine scientists should have shied away from Monsanto and instead put the people’s interest paramount over profits,” Dr. Tapang concluded. ###