London (3.1.07) – Once upon a time, it was illegal to cultivate GM soya in Brazil, the last remaining major source of non-GM soya for the European market. But Brazilian farmers in the south, seeing the benefits accrued from the use of GM-soya by their neighbours across the border in Argentina (a country enthusiastically embracing GM technology from its early days) went over to buy seed for planting in their own fields.

The Brazilian government was slow to recognise reality but in 2003 they agreed to GM soya being grown for one year. Because the cultivation of GM-soya was illegal, it is impossible to know how much of the Brazilian product was actually GM; estimates, and that is all they are, suggested 20-40%.

In 2004 the Brazilian government extended permission for another year and in 2005 made it permanent by approving a new Biosafety Law. The cultivation of non-GM soya has become increasingly confined to the tropical north for which the GM strains were not yet ready; it is likely that within a few years all Brazilian soya, like its Argentinean counterpart, will be GM except, perhaps, for small quantities grown for a specialist, high-price market.

Now it is the turn of GM-cotton in Brazil. Transgenic cotton varieties, smuggled into the country in recent years, may now be legalised by a draft law already quietly approved by the lower house of Congress. The senate is almost certain to give its approval.

Source:

Mario Osava. Transgenic cotton ploughs its way through congress. Inter Press Service (28.12.06) (http://www.checkbiotech.org/root/index.cfm?fuseaction=news&doc_id=14129&start=1&control=175&page_start=1&page_nr=101&pg=1)

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