SC dismisses petition vs 'mutant' corn tests

The Supreme Court has dismissed on technicalities an urgent petition to stop the field experiments in General Santos City of Bt corn, a genetically modified organism (GMO) which, according to various farmers' and environmental groups opposing the project, pose a threat to health and the environment.

Meeting en banc last Feb. 29, the 15-member High Court junked the petition filed by the NO-GMO Movement, a network of 35 groups opposed to the project, saying the petition violates the rule on the hierarchy of courts.

In General Santos, meanwhile, Regional Trial Court Judge Monico Caballes has ordered the city government and Agroseed Phils., proponent of the field trials, to observe a status quo until he decides on a petition Agroseed has filed questioning the city council's resolution stopping the experiments.

Caballes' order foiled the plan of General Santos Mayor Adelbert Antonino to uproot the experimented corn plants yesterday. The plants were to be harvested on March 15.

The NO-GMO Movement, represented by the UP College of Law's Office of Legal Aid, questioned the authority of the National Committee on Biosafety of the Philippines (NCBP) allowing two multinational biotechnology firms - Cargill and Pioneer Hi-Bred - to carry out the tests.

The 10-member NCBP, attached to the Department of Science and Technology, was formed by the former Aquino administration by virtue of Executive Order 430 to screen the entry of GMOs into the country.

Professor Marvic Leonen, executive director of the UP College of Law's Office of Legal Aid, said the NCBP has no power to grant the permit to test the questioned technology under the law that created it.

Leonen said the field tests, which began last Dec. 15, also violate Section 27 of the 1991 Local Government Code, which provides that any program or project of a national government agency which may have an impact on the ecological balance of local communities must go through local consultations before they can be carried out.

SC ruling

But in a two-page resolution, the High Court said the petitioners failed to show any "special and important reason" to justify the disregard of administrative remedies in their urgent petition.

The High Court also noted that the petitioners failed to accompany their petition with "clearly legible duplicate original copies of the assailed resolutions of the NCBP."

The tribunal refused to cancel the importation permits granted to Cargill and Pioneer Hi-Bred to bring into the country Bt corn seeds for use in the tests.

The High Court said the petitioners should have first asked the NCBP to reconsider the issuance of the permits.

The tribunal follows a strict rule on legal issues of administrative nature, which allows it to hear petitions questioning the decision of a government agency only after due appeals have been exhausted.

The petitioners said they will ask the High Court to reconsider its ruling.

Bt corn, a new breed of pest-resistant maize, utilizes a naturally occurring soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringienses, which produces a protein poisonous to a range of insects.

Through genetic engineering, scientists have spliced the Bt gene into the corn's genetic makeup so that its seeds manufacture their own poison. - With Allen Estabillo