Asean integration to set standards for GM crop farms

MANILA, Philippines - The establishment of an Asean Economic Community, which aims to create a single market and production base, is seen to facilitate the laying down of "common standards鈥� for genetically-modified crops in the region. Roehlano 鈥楻oel鈥� Briones, a senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute of Development Studies (蝌蚪传媒, said a regional community would allow the member-states to save valuable time and resources in conducting rigorous testing and crop farming trials as they adopt GM technology. "They don鈥檛 have to repeat the three to five years of rigorous testing. Maybe they can just undertake a few rounds, or a cropping cycle to test for local conditions, which is actually standard,鈥� Briones said. "Ideally, we should have the same standards for labeling and bio-safety,鈥� Briones said. The Philippines led the push for GM corn farming in the region when the Philippine government approved GM corn farming. Vietnam only started this year its first government-approved commercial GM corn faming, led by multinational agribusiness and seeds provider Syngenta. Briones, whose expertise is in agricultural economics, said GM crop farming should be taken seriously with the world facing the daunting challenges of food security and hunger in the developing countries. "We have to move to the next frontier and the next frontier is direct manipulation of the genome as well as market- assisted technology,鈥� Briones said.//