Wide Variation in Global GM Food-Crop Regulation

The French Environment Ministry stated in mid-June that France will not ban growing the only genetically modified crop allowed in the country, Monsanto's MON 810 maize, because there is no new element to question it.  Several European Union countries have recently dug in their heels on whether their farmers may grow MON 810 maize, one of Europe's few GMO crops.  Hungary, one of the EU's biggest grain producers, outlawed the planting of MON 810 seed in January 2005.  Germany last month decided that maize produced from MON 810 seed could only be sold if there was an accompanying monitoring plan to research its effects on the environment.  Soon after the announcement, French government number two Alain Juppe, in charge of his country's environment, transport and energy policy, said in a newspaper interview that he would not exclude being “inspired” by Germany's proposed GMO ban. 

Meanwhile, the Philippines has so far approved 41 varieties of genetically-modified plants for use in the country, with three types of corn cleared for commercial cultivation.  The assistant director of the Bureau of Plant Industry stated that the corn varieties approved for commercial cultivation are Bt corn, which is resistant to corn borer, developed by Monsanto, a herbicide tolerant corn also developed by Monsanto, and a Bt corn variety developed by Swiss company Syngenta AG.  As well as corn varieties, plants that have been approved for use as food, feed and for processing are soybean, canola, potato, cotton, sugarbeet and alfalfa.

In a reversal in Brazil, a federal judge banned the use of Bayer CropScience’s transgenic corn just a month after federal biosafety agents approved the product for retail sale.  Federal judge Pepita Durski Mazini of the environmental law department in the court's Parana capital city office in Curitiba also blocked the official biosafety agency, CTNBio, from approving transgenic corn in its meeting scheduled for this week.  Monsanto and Syngenta transgenic corn were up for review for possible commercial approval.  Parana's governor, Roberto Requiao, who opposes transgenic crops, governs Brazil's No. 1 corn producing state.  Corn is Brazil's No. 2 crop behind soybeans, and its popularity with farmers has grown, with corn prices and corn exports on the upswing.  Bayer's LibertyLink® corn was approved by CTNBio on May 16, but small-producer lobbies have convinced federal courts that the transgenic corn would be hazardous to native Parana corn.  (Reuters, 6/14/07, Market Watch, 7/4/07, & CattleNetwork, 6/19/07).