KORONADAL CITY- In line with the government food security program, the Arroyo administration is mulling the opening of a credit facility for farmers who will plant the controversial Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn.

Tetchi Capellan, undersecretary for the Million Jobs Program, said the plan aims to accelerate farm productivity in corn-growing areas. 

Capellan made the announcement in a recent meeting with Filipino and Thai farmers at the Asian Institute of Management following the farmers' visit to various sites in the country planted with the transgenic crop.

"The need to secure food supply is imperative (that's why the government is contemplating to provide Bt corn farmers with the credit assistance)," she said in a statement posted at the website of the probiotechnology group South East Asia Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA).

In 2001 the Philippines imported 171,770 metric tons of corn valued at US$ 25.6 million, an improvement compared to 2000 when the Philippines imported 446.430 metric tons. The corn is mostly used by feed-milling sector which links the feed crop and the livestock industry.

"Safe and responsibility use of biotechnology is an option that the government supports toward our goal in agricultural modernization," Capellan stressed.

Meanwhile, a source at SEARCA said that farmers in Pangasinan province were scheduled to harvest last week their fields planted to Bt corn.

"The [crops] in Isabela are also due for harvest on the third or fourth week this month," she replied in an e-mail query TODAY. The farms are part of about 100 hectares f Bt corn sites commercially up for harvest this month as reported earlier.

The transgenic crop developed by Monsanto Co., YieldGard 818, was approved for commercialization in the country in late 2002 by the government's Scientific and Technical Review Panel.

The approval was stiffly resisted by local farmers' groups and environment advocate Greenpeace, saying there's still no worldwide scientific consensus on the safety of the transgenic crop to the human health and the environment.

But officials allayed the fears of critics, saying that "stringent biosafety regulation are in 
place from research to propagation phase".
They said that the Department of Agriculture and the National Committee on Biosafety of the Philippines are premier agencies tasked to evaluate applications and assess and monitor undertakings related to biotechnology products before the graining of permits.

Monsanto's approved Bt corn variety, according experts, underwent a series of evaluation since 1996 form the greenhouse to fields trials in different corn-growing areas before it was finally granted permit for propagation in December 2002 in the country.

The firm's strain was designed to kill the Asiatic corn borer, which is one of the most damaging corn pests that can cause as much as 80 percent yield loss.

With the advances of genetic engineering, a Bt corn is developed that makes the menu of choices for farmers expand in dealing against corn borers. This is done by inserting the Bacillus thuringiensis gene, a naturally occurring soil bacterium that produces a specific insecticide crystal protein, into the corn plant or a cry gene. 

The cry protein is specific only against corn borers, which has an alkali-based digestive system as against the acidic guts of human beings, thus it is not harmful to the human digestive system.