October 19, 2006

Brazilian commission to discuss new biotech corn, cotton

Brazil's biosafety commission will review technical studies on three corn and three cotton transgenic plants on Wednesday (Oct 18) following pressure from farmers and seed companies who said the commission was moving too slow to approve GMO studies for both field tests and commercial use.

The commission, known as CTNBio, meets monthly. No genetically modified organisms were approved for field tests or commercial use in the last meeting, the group's spokeswoman said.

The last GMOs permitted were Monsanto's Bollgard cotton and Roundup Ready soybeans in 2005.

Monsanto's Roundup Ready soy was first approved in 1998 but later suspended on political and activist pressure.

On the list of items requesting commercial restrictions to be lifted are biotech corn resistant to insects from Syngenta and Monsanto. For cotton, Bayer CropScience's LibertyLink and Monsanto's Roundup Ready are also on Wednesday's agenda.

If those products are approved by CTNBio, it's up to a government committee made up of analysts from various government departments who make "political and economic decisions" whether to permit the product for commercial use, CTNBio said.