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Published on August 29, 2007

Agriculture and Co-operatives Minister Thira Sutabutra will seek a meeting with ministers next week to lobby support for his ministry's plan to resume field testing of genetically modified organism (GMO) crops.

GMO field tests were suspended by the Cabinet in 2001.

Thira revealed yesterday he planned to talk to the ministers of Science, Natural Resources and Environment, Public Health and Commerce before he put his ministry's plan to Cabinet. "The experiments on GMO crops are necessary," Thira said yesterday, "I can guarantee that academically speaking the experiments are completely safe".

Activists have campaigned against GMO crops and voiced fears that field tests would allow seeds from GMO crops to drift and contaminate other fields close to the experimental farms. Greenpeace rallied in front of Government House yesterday.

"If we don't develop GMO crops now, then we will have to answer a question by our children in the next 10 years as to why we have no development in the field," Thira said.

The agriculture minister expressed confidence he would be able to persuade Public Health Minister Mongkol na Songkhla to support the plan.

But Mongkol complained yesterday that a case about GMO crop seeds spreading from a field test was still pending at the National Counter Corruption Commission.

"If we accept GMO crop technology when we are not ready, we may end up being enslaved by GMO producers," Mongkol warned.

He also pointed out that the country had yet to develop a proper system of biodiversity and that GMO crops might hurt indigenous crops and local farmers.

"If we have to buy fertilisers and pesticides, we will lose our farming independence," he said.

Mongkol said he would be ready to listen to experts and would not object if they could guarantee that GMO crops would hurt neither consumers nor the local biodiversity, and that the country would not become dependent on seeds, pesticides and fertilisers after it adopted the GMO crops.

Natural Resources and Environment Minister Kasem Sanidwong na Ayudhaya said he already instructed the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning to prepare relevant information for him to study.

National Science and Development Agency director Sakarindr Bhumiratana said Thai researchers had conducted GMO crop farms in line with standards and procedures accepted by various countries for more than 10 years.

Piyanart Srivalo,

Janjira Pongrai

 The Nation