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Piñera Government expands GM in Chile without establishing sufficient guards before negative impacts

PRESS

Indications from the Ministry of Agriculture to the bill grants big GM plant release facilities and allows for domestic consumption, without providing sufficient safeguards to avoid adverse impacts to the environment, biodiversity, human and animal health and do not give sufficient information to farmers and consumers.

Foundation Sustainable Societies (FSS) rejects the signs to Bill Genetically Modified (Bulletin 4690-01) by the Ministry of Agriculture in March 2011 . These indications further liberalize the use of transgenics in Chile, only benefit the economic interests of companies transnational biotech seed installed in Chile and not farmers and consumers.

Among the most contentious of these indications are:

1) The bill eliminates the requirement for environmental impact assessment for transgenic agricultural and forestry required by law Environment (Art 10 r, Law 19,300).

2) The project provides automatic approval to GM crops called for "controlled use" for research and seed multiplication. Companies must only give notice to SAG 5 days in advance. Do not require risk assessment, environmental impact study or information to the public. Only comply unknown biosecurity measures applied by the SAG. Many of these crops are field testing new dangerous events, such as pharma rejected in other countries, whose impacts have not been sufficiently evaluated. This system legitimizes the use of Chile as the backyard of these companies.

3) The bill establishes the "Free use" commercial GM crops for domestic use or export. These should be approved only the first time and were then free to be released without permission again. Only require a simple assessment of risk and if your application is rejected the companies have extensive rights to appeal the decision.

4) The project allows the declaration of sites of origin and centers of diversity to protect the resources within them, however, this protection is insufficient, because it allows the release of GMOs into them. Also proposed are only created under the Ministry of Agriculture, not allowed civil society proposals or the farmers themselves who would protect their crops from contamination. Through them you can not protect traditional crops spread throughout Chile that are still in the hands of small farmers who protect this endangered heritage breeds such as maize in Chile. Neither protects wild relatives of transgenic crops, which are endemic or native species widely distributed.

5) Project detrimental to the development of organic agriculture and GM-free conventional, since it establishes a system of protection of human rights, responsibility and compensation for contamination of crops and loss of organic certification.

6) The project gives businesses the ability to keep confidential the information of the genetic modification of crops, thus preventing a full assessment of its risks and impacts, as well as monitoring and traceability.

7) The bill provides that GM foods should not be labeled to violate the right of consumers to accurate and timely information provided by Consumer Law. In contrast, establishes a voluntary labeling of GM-free products, leaving the burden of proof to the healthy food and insurance are those GM free. They must assume greater content analysis costs and fines, which immediately discourage this type of labeling.

Foundation Sustainable Societies regrets these bills in Chile, and will continue to monitor his career in Congress.

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María Isabel Manzur
2235459, 2771429, 2097028, 08-5631199
mimanzur@gmail.com