Greenpeace protests against GM field trials

Meanwhile, the Supreme Adminis-trative Court yesterday heard a judge’s legal perspective that found the Agriculture Department was not at fault in the leak of GM papaya contamination to the outside environment in Khon Kaen.

Greenpeace’s move followed a report that the university has teamed up with US-based Monsanto to conduct the experiment with GM corn NK603 in the open field trial. 

The university organised a public opinion forum about the trial in February, which saw some 100 attendees, including experts and farmers.

According to Naresuan University president Professor Sujin Jinayon, the forum was a co-operation between the government, the academic institute and Monsanto Thailand, aimed at estimating bio-safety in the environment. 

Greenpeace however strongly opposed the university’s plan to seek approval from the Cabinet and Agriculture Department for the open field trial. 

Greenpeace campaign co-ordinator for Southeast Asia Ply Pirom warned that if the Cabinet approved this trial, it would open the door for other GM plant trials to be conducted in Thailand. 

“Thailand has no strong measures and regulations to control GM plant contamination of the outside environment. It will put farms at risk,” Ply said.

Monsanto conducted an open field trial of GM cotton for the first time in Thailand in Loei in 1995. Four years later, there was a report of contamination of GM cotton in the environment and on agricultural farms. 

There was another report by the Department of Agriculture about GM papaya contamination in the environment at the Khon Kaen Horticulture Research Centre in 2004.

The leak of GM plants into the environment and surrounding farms prompted the Thai Cabinet in 2007 to issue a resolution regulating GM plant trials in open fields by allowing them to be conducted only on state-owned land with local community participation, and requiring the trials to get Cabinet approval first. 

Despite such Cabinet resolutions, there were still reports of GM plant contamination among crops such as chilli, bananas and cotton among farms in Kanchanaburi and Nakhon Sawan.

Following the GM papaya contamination in Khon Kaen, Greenpeace filed a lawsuit before the Central Administrative Court in 2006 against the Agriculture Department for its negligence in not controlling the spread of GM plants. After the Central Administrative Court ruled the department was not guilty, Greenpeace appealed to the Supreme Court in 2008.

The Supreme Administrative Court yesterday invited representatives from Greenpeace and the Agriculture Department to a hearing of statements, a step needed for the panel of judges’ consideration of the case before issuing a final verdict in the near future. 

Supreme Administrative Court Judge Worasak Areepiam offered his personal opinion to the hearing that his study of the case found that the Agriculture Department had not been negligent in controlling the spread of GM crop contamination into the environment and wasn’t guilty. 

Moreover, the department had destroyed the open field used in planting GM papayas and had monitored the spread of GM plants for a year after the alleged contamination was reported.