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January – March 2005 BIO LIFE
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Senior Agriculturist Jane Bartolini isolates DNA from individual plant samples for purity testing.
This will also give the government an opportunity to use advanced
testing based on reliable and efficient molecular techniques
for variety verification, pathogen identification in relation to seed
health testing and seed quality control program, she says.
The NSQCS is actually the agency that is mandated to continuously
provide services such as seed certification, seed testing and
training needed in assuring and maintaining the quality of seeds
used to improve agricultural production in the country.
Maribel Querijero, a senior agriculturist who is stationed at the
biotech laboratory, says that as a member of the International Seed
Testing Association, they have to cope with the challenges triggered
by the globalization for the Philippines to regain competitiveness in
the seed market.
As government’s regulatory body, the NSQCS is tasked to assure
planters a steady supply of high quality seeds and planting
materials with distinctness, uniformity and stability.
“If seed growers or seed companies want to prove their seed is
not contaminated by any GM we can test. But since some producers
are promoting GMOs, we can also prove that in testing their
products,” says Querijero, who has been into seed testing since 1990
when she joined the BPI after a brief stint with the International Rice
Research Institute in Los Banos.
With her experience in biotech products, Querijero says she can
assure that GMOs that are being tested here do no create allergens,
contrary to critics claim. “I’ve seen it. The genes that they
insert in feed do not really harm humans,” she says.
THE year 2002 was actually the time when the Corn MON810, or
popularly known as Bt corn, was finally approved by government
for propagation as well as direct use for food or feed and processing.
It was widely acknowledged as a major breakthrough in the agriculture
and science communities. It opened the country to the propagation
of modern biotechnology. It also took the challenge needed
to help ensure the success of government’s food security agenda.
The Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt corn, is resistant to corn borer,
an insect that destroys corn crops. Bt corn is produced by transferring
bacterial genes to the corn to make it resistant to corn borer.
The product was already commercially available in the United
States, Canada, Japan, European Union, South Africa and Argentina
but the BT corn still had to pass through the Department of
Agriculture’s stringent—and rigid — evaluation process. The Bureau
of Animal Industry (BAI) tapped 16 personnel for feed safety,
the Bureau of Agriculture and Fisheries Product Standards (BFARS)
and two technical experts from the Fertilizer and Pesticides Authority
(FPA ) the safety in handling of BT corn in food and feed.
Finally, experts concluded that Bt corn was safe to humans,
animals, non-target organisms. It was also as nutritious as any ordinary
corn, safer than chemical insecticides and very effective in controlling
Asiatic corn borer.
Despite its discovered wonders, it’s not surprising that cynics
would simply find BT corn a killer. It has a smack of multinational
control, tracing its roots to the US multinational giant Monsanto, which
was a target of a worldwide campaign by anti-biotech activists.