First petition to restrict GE food imports filed in Pakistan

Date Posted: 5 December 2002

ISLAMABAD - Inter Press Service via NewsEdge Corporation : In the first ever
case of the sort in Pakistan's legal history, food rights groups have sought
a court order to stay the import and sale of genetically engineered (GE)
food in the country -- soybeans from the United States.

In a petition before the Lahore High Court, the highest court in the Punjab
province, the rights groups -- the Islamabad-based the Network for Consumer
Protection and the Sungi Development Foundation -- maintain that the
imported soybeans may have hazardous affects on human health and the
environment.

Most soybean in the country is consumed in the form of poultry feed,
purchased by the manufacturing industries -- indirectly making the product
part of people's diet.

Food rights groups are pleading with the court to impose a moratorium on the
import and sale of all GE seeds and foods, until the government formally
establishes a regulatory framework to independently ascertain the safety
aspects of such products.

Although a signatory to the Bio-safety Protocol, Pakistan has not yet
finalized its bio-safety guidelines, which are in a draft form shuttling
from one department to another for consultations.

These guidelines will put in place legal requirements with regards to the
safety, transport and handling of locally developed and imported genetically
modified organisms, or GMOs.

Currently, there is no law in the country that bans the import of GE
products, though the country's 1961 Food Act requires exporters to label
their products with a list of the ingredients.

However, legal experts maintain that the requirement cannot be stretched to
include the labelling of GE foods, as genetic modification of a product
ingredient does not necessarily create a new ingredient requiring labelling.

"To deal with this new range of food products, the country, on the one hand,
requires a regulatory framework with regard to their safety aspects, and on
the other, a law binding exporters to declare whether their products are
genetically engineered," said intellectual property rights lawyer Hafiz
Abdul Aziz.

"This would enable people to exercise their consumer rights to choose
between GE food and naturally produced ones," said Aziz, who teaches at the
Islamabad-based International Islamic University.

The two food rights groups petitioned the court after the state- run Trading
Corp of Pakistan (TCP) placed an advertisement on Nov. 11 to auction 6,000
metric tonnes of soybean oil.

Although the court -- which took up the petition on the same day as the
auction on Nov. 19 -- did not stay the auction, it admitted the petition for
hearing on the grounds that the matter concerns public health and safety,
and issued notices to the government to respond. The court set a hearing
date for Dec. 12.

The lawyers of the food rights groups say the premise of the petition
remains the same despite the court's decision, as more such consignments of
soybean oil and meal are to be imported and sold in the country.

"This case is in fact an assertion of demand by people's groups for laws and
regulations that could ensure that people are safe from hazardous food
products in his day of technological advancement," said Nadir Altaf, one of
the lawyers representing the two food rights groups in court.

Pakistan is importing the soybean as part of a $467 million refund that
Islamabad paid in advance to the United States in the late eighties for the
purchase of 28 F-16 fighter aircraft.

The aircraft deal did not materialize after Washington slapped economic and
military sanctions against Pakistan in the early nineties for secretly
manufacturing nuclear weapons.

While successive Pakistani governments since then had been fighting the case
for refund with the American authorities, it was only in 1998 that the
United States agreed to pay back $327 million in cash, while the rest
was to be returned in "undefined" goods and benefits.

Against part of the remaining payment, the United States provided wheat in
September 1999 when Pakistan was facing shortages of the staple, leaving $80
million outstanding.

It was the military government that decided to procure soybean oil and meal
to adjust the remaining amount. The two governments struck the agreement in
September 2000, under which Washington agreed to provide 245,000 tonnes of
soybean meal and 30,000 tonnes of soybean oil to Islamabad.

The first consignment of the 12,500 tonnes of oil was delivered last year,
but the post-Sept. 11, 2001 events kept the arrival of the shipment and its
subsequent auction by the TCP at a relatively low profile.

In November 2001 after Pakistan gave overwhelming support to the United
states in its 'war against terrorism', Washington decided to give $30
million to Islamabad in soybean under Section 416(b) of the United States
Agricultural Act of 1949, and an agreement was signed accordingly.

American officials in Pakistan say this section empowers their
government to
run a "Food for Progress" program, under which developing countries are
provided with surplus commodities as donations.

The amount to be collected through sales under the program "will be used to
fund rural development and poverty alleviation programs", said a spokesman
for the Ministry of Commerce.

However, officials of the ministry say that the agreement between the two
only mentions the product and not how it was produced. Food rights groups,
quoting statistics by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, say that by June
2002, 75 percent of all soybean planted in the United States was of a
biotechnological variety.

Altaf, one of the lawyers for the rights groups, said: "It is for the
government to prove the soybean coming to Pakistan is not genetically
engineered."

Source: soyatech.com