ANALYSIS - Brazil GMO ban seen in place till at least 2003
Date: 05-Feb-02
Country: BRAZIL
Author: Reese Ewing
Big money is at stake for bioscience-seed companies like Monsanto Co, the only company so far to seek approval to sell its trademark Roundup Ready soy in the vast GMO-free country, the world's No. 2 soy grower and exporter.
Lack of consensus among the three branches of government, legal red tape on food labeling, the upcoming presidential election and the resistance to GMOs by nongovernmental groups will be difficult obstacles to overcome.
"This is an election year and there are many unresolved problems. It will be hard to lift the ban. The October 2003 (Brazil's summer crop) planting is a more likely candidate," president of Brazil's Association of Vegetable Oils Industries (Abiove) Carlo Lovatelli told Reuters.
Two-thirds Brazil's No. 3 soy state Rio Grande do Sul is already estimated to be illegally planted with GMO soy, said the state seed association. Farmers are attracted by savings offered by GMO crops which needs less application of herbicides and less fuel to power machinery for routine field work.
Nongovernmental organizations, however, still see Brazil as sacred soil because it is the last agricultural producer and exporter of its scale to forbid the sale of bioengineered products.
Environmentalists and consumer groups have locked biotechnology companies out of Latin America's largest farming market since 1999 when Greenpeace and other NGOs launched the National Campaign for a GMO-Free Brazil and halted the sale of GMOs through the local courts.
"Consumers have a right to know clearly what they eat and there is no traceability system set up in Brazil that would guarantee that at this point," said Mariana Paoli, Greenpeace's GMO specialist in Brazil.
Legal battles have so far gone in favor of Greenpeace and local consumer watchdog IDEC with courts upholding their demands for health and five-year environmental impact studies from Monsanto and clear consumer labeling standards from the government before GMO sales are legalized.
GOVERNMENT INTO THE BREACH AGAIN
The next stage of the battle is likely to unfold in February when Congress and the federal courts return from recess.
Despite the government decree calling for consumer labeling for packaged foods of over 4 percent GMO, Congress is debating more stringent labeling regulations in a wide reaching biotechnology bill that is due to leave committee for vote.
The Federal Regional Court is also expected to return next month to review an earlier injunction that has stopped the government regulatory agency on biotechnology (CTNBio) from allowing GMO sales in Brazil, specifically Monsantos RR soy.
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso recently convened his cabinet to set the record straight: the administration would be undivided on the issue of GMOs and the government would step up its efforts to break the legal deadlock and liberate GMOs.
But almost a year ago, one of the government's main proponents of GMOs, Agriculture Minister Pratini de Moraes, had to recant after saying the ban on GMO sales would be ended in a month. Now a year later, the situation looks no less complicated.
EXPERTS SAY GMO WILL BE LEGALIZED SOONER OR LATER
Despite the mountain of obstacles, nearly all analysts and leaders in the farm sector say the legalization of GMOs in Brazil is just a matter of time.
"We will eventually go ahead with GMOs. Perhaps not this year but the longer it takes the more our farmers will lose market share to competitors in Argentina and the United States," said Flavio Franca, chief soy analyst at Safras e Mercado agricultural consultants.
Brazil is the world's No. 2 producer and exporter of soy after the United States and ahead of Argentina, both of whom plant GMO soy.
Soybeans are Brazil's No. 1 agricultural export money earner. Most are shipped to Europe, where health conscious consumers have been the most resistant to GMOs calling them "Frankenstein Foods".
"The big beneficiary of Brazil's ban on GMO has been the Eu