An orchestrated misinformation campaign by well-funded lobby groups is the reason why biotechnology is not moving fast in the Philippines, according to a former professor of the University of the Philippines-Mindanao (UP-Min).
Dr. Eufemio T. Rasco, Jr., when asked why biotechnology is very slow in the country, replied: “Misinformation from well-funded lobby groups.” He added that whether we like it or not, “biotechnology is already here, mostly in medicine.”
Dr. Rasco has a doctorate in plant breeding from the Cornell University in the United States. He is also an academician at the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST). His decades in research and public education at the UP-Min have inspired him to address young minds’ curiosity toward plant biotechnology and other scientific farming practices
Biotechnology, particularly in the field of agriculture, “is beneficial to farmers and consumers alike, pointed out Dr. Rasco, who once headed the Institute of Plant Breeding at the University of the Philippines at Los Baños in Laguna.
“(Biotechnology) will prevail in spite of misinformation,” the scientist who wrote The Unfolding Gene Revolution: The Ideology, Science and Regulation of Plant Biotechnology added.
That’s what the new report from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) is also telling. In fact, the Philippines now ranks as the twelfth biggest producer of biotech crops in the world.
“Biotech/GM corn production in the Philippines rebounds in 2016 as the country remains to be the top grower of biotech or genetically modified (GM) crops in Southeast Asia,” said the report, Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2016.
In 2016, an additional 110,000 hectares have been added to the previously 702,000 hectares planted to biotech corn in 2015. The 16% increase was “due to favorable weather conditions, and high local demand for livestock and feed stocks.”
Adoption rate of biotech corn also increased from 63% in 2015 to 65% in 2016, when the number of small, resource-poor farmers, growing on average, 2 hectares of biotech corn in the Philippines was estimated to be over 406,000.
According to the report, the farm level economic benefit of planting biotech corn in the country from 2003 to 2015 is estimated to have reached US$642 million, and for 2015 alone, the net national impact of biotech corn on farm income was estimated at US$82 million.
Aside from corn, there are others crop events that have been approved for food, feed, and processing cultivation: alfalfa, rapeseed, cotton, potato, rice, soybean and sugar beet.
Current research and development efforts on biotech/GM crops include products from the public sector: fruit and shoot borer resistant Bt eggplant, biotech papaya with delayed ripening and papaya ring spot virus resistance, Bt cotton, and golden rice.
Biotechnology, which existed since ancient times, is defined as “any technique that uses living organisms to make or modify a product, to improve plants or animals, or to develop microorganisms for specific uses.”
Examples include bagoong, patis, lambanog and tapuy. Spirulina, one of the oldest forms of life on earth, is believed to be what the ancient Israelites of the Old Testament called “manna from heaven.”
The modern era of biotechnology, however, had its origin in 1953 when American biochemist James Watson and British biophysicist Francis Crick presented their double-helix model of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).
DNA, the genetic material of all cellular organisms and most viruses, carries the information needed to direct so-called “protein synthesis” and “replication.” Protein synthesis is defined as “the production of proteins needed by the cells or virus for its activities and development.” Replication, on the other hand, is “the process by which DNA copies itself for each descendant cell or virus, passing on the information needed for protein synthesis.”
In 1973, American geneticist Stanley Cohen and American biochemist Herbert Boyer removed a specific gene (a piece of genetic material that determines the inheritance of a particular characteristic, or group of characteristics) from one bacterium and inserted it into another using restriction enzymes.
This event marked the beginning of recombinant DNA technology, commonly called genetic engineering. Generally, it is “the alternation of an organism’s genetic, or hereditary, material to eliminate undesirable characteristics or to produce desirable new ones.”
In recent years, genetic engineering has been used to increase plant and animal food production, to diagnose disease, improve medical treatment, produce vaccines and other useful drugs and to help dispose of industrial wastes.
“Modern techniques in biotechnology have vastly increased the speed at which nature could be manipulated to serve society’s needs,” said Dr. Felimon Uriarte Jr. when he was still the head of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). “Biotechnology, in conjunction with other emerging technologies, will undoubtedly be a major source of innovation and growth in the next millennium.”
Biotech crops have been seen as the most possible answer to hunger. “All possible tools that can help promote sustainable agriculture for food security must be marshalled,” suggested Ismail Serageldin when he was still the vice-president of World Bank, “and biotechnology, safely developed, could be a tremendous help.”
But despite its safety records, several organizations are still against biotech crops. So much so that in 2016, several Nobel Laureates issued a statement in support of biotechnology and condemning critics in their critical stance.
“Biotech crops have now had an unblemished record of safe use and consumption for over 20 years,” the ISAAA report claimed. It was in 1996 when a biotech crop was first commercialized.
Slowly but surely, the Philippines is on its way. “As citizens of this country, I think it is our duty to help spread the truth about things that have the potential to make cheap and safe food available to our people and to inform them of things that endanger their health and welfare,” said former Senator Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr. said during the opening of the 12th National Biotech Week at the Bureau of Soils and Water Management last year.
“I think it is time that we make full use of the advances of biotechnology – where applicable – and use it to help free our people from hunger – and from ignorance – so that they in turn may not only be receivers, but sharers of the wealth of the nation with those in dire need of it,” the former senator from Mindanao pointed out.
But there are still those who are against the commercialization of biotech crops. One sage, however, put dilemma into this perspective: “A man who has enough food has several problems. A man without food has only one problem.”
Leading Roman lyric poet Horace dismissed it mildly: “Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.”
