The Department of Agriculture (DA) is drafting specific protocols for the implementation of Administrative Order (AO) No. 8 or the biotechnology commercialization guidelines so as to strengthen the measures of eliminating the risk of commercializing genetically modified (GM) products.

Acting Agriculture Undersecretary Segfredo R. Serrano said in an interview that the protocols will guide the Scientific and Technical Review Panel (STRP) on how to conduct a risk assessment process which is required before a GM good is tested within contained conditions or on field or before it is imported.

“A draft will be ready, and it will be subject to public consultation with the public including the business sector and the science community,” he said. AO 8 indicates the creation of the STRP which will study GM products that are currently available and the corresponding risk that go with testing these products and with importing them.

In a related development, Dr. Antonio C. Laurena, research associate at the Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB), said in a biotechnology forum at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños that the science community is pressing for government to come up with new policies that will encourage more researchers in GM technology. Except for funds expected from the Public Law (PL) 480 fund, all research funds for GM products originate from government funding.

Laurena said that the science community will have incentives in conducting more research in GM if government allows technology developers, for instance, to enjoy tax exemptions for the development and commercialization of a technology or if they are given incentives to recover cost of investments. Laurena cited that development of new technologies in Israel and Europe are given incentives in the form of tax credits or cost recovery.

The IPB is currently engaged in developing GM products such as delayed ripening mango which has become very important in the Philippines’ aim to make shipment of mangoes to the US and Europe more competitive. As sweet potato is a popular crop even as input in processed goods, IPB is also engaged in the development of a gene that will make sweet potato resistant to the viral feathery mosaic virus (FMV) and the pest weevil or ulalo.

On the future commercialization of the Ballicus thuringiensis (Bt) corn which is resistant to the destructive Asiatic Corn Borer (ACB), Eduardo C. Fernandez, research associate at the IPB, also said government may conduct its own larger scale testing of the Bt corn so as to study economic feasibility of the GM product on a larger hectarage.