October 20, 2006

Brazilian Commission: No consensus on biotech corn, cotton

Brazil's biosafety commission (CTNBio) was unable to reach a consensus Wednesday (Oct 18) regarding technical studies on transgenic cotton and corn seeds from Bayer CropScience, Monsanto (MON) and Syngenta Seeds (SYT), a CTNBio spokeswoman said Thursday.

CTNBio said the commission's scientists responsible for the review of Monsanto and Bayer's transgenic corn and cotton seeds did not appear at the meeting Wednesday and did not submit a final report to the committee.

It said another study was required for Syngenta's BT-11 corn, which is resistant to certain insects. Bayer is asking for permission to sell LibertyLink cotton and Monsanto is asking for permission to sell Roundup Ready cotton in the local market.

Farmers and seed companies regularly complain that CTNBio takes too long to pass transgenic field studies and even longer to commercialise seeds currently in the field test phase.

Since 1998, Brazil has permitted only two genetically modified products in the national market, Monsanto's Bollgard cotton and Roundup Ready soybeans. Roundup Ready was permitted in 1998 but quickly suspended following political protests. Roundup Ready soy was allowed by executive order in 2005 and is expected to constitute roughly 50 percent of the soy planted in the 2006/07 crop.