Laoag City- About 50 protesters staged a lighting rally around the city's commercial district Friday to protest the ongoing field trials of the genetically modified crop Bt corn.

Uniformed guards immediately blocked the entrance roads going to the provincial capitol to keep the protesters away from the capitol grounds.

At that time, employees were huddled at the capitol lobby while serenading Ilocos Norte Gov. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on his birthday. 

The protesters belonging to the Anakbayan-Ilocos and the Solidarity of Peasants Against Exploitation (Stop-Ex) stopped by the roadside chanting anti-Bt corn slogans.

Sherwing de Vera, Anakbayan deputy secretary general, said 300 hectares of farmland in Dingras town, the province's rice granary, have been set aside for Bt corn planting.

De Vera said another 50 hectares have been set aside in Ilocos Sur and other sites of field trials in La Union.

"The debate is still raging about the safeness of Bt corn, including the cost-benefit it could provide to farmers, yet field trials have covered a wide area of farmlands," De Vera said.

He added: "We have coordinated our efforts with the farmers' group in the communities to sustain protest rallies against the widespread field testing of Bt corn."

At least five hectares of farmland have already yielded the first Bt corn harvest in Dingras in preparation for the modified crop's commercialization.

The office of the provincial agriculturists, which tapped the US-based Monsanto for the Bt corn supply, has started a separate field-testing of another four hectares of farmland in Vintar town.

Bt corn is a variety that can withstand corn borers, the primary enemy of corn crops.

But critics cited several studies showing that transgenic organisms have adverse effects on non-target and friendly insects.