Supreme Court urged to ban GMO

Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A coalition of environmental non-governmental organizations has urged the Supreme Court to rule against the government's policy allowing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to be planted in Indonesian soil.

Executive director of the National Consortium for the Preservation of Indonesian Forest and Nature, Tejo Wahyu Jatmiko, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday the policy violated an existing law on environmental management.

"We hope the Supreme Court will deliver its verdict soon," Tejo said.

Tejo said the NGOs had initially filed a lawsuit with the State Administrative Court against the Ministry of Agriculture in September 2001. The lawsuit challenged the ministry's decision to grant a license to PT Monagro Kimia to distribute transgenic crops.

Monagro is the Indonesian unit of U.S.-based genetically modified crops producer Monsanto Co.

The coalition lost the first and second round of its legal battle and decided to appeal to the Supreme Court in March 2002.

Tejo explained the decision by the ministry in granting license for Monagro to distribute and plant genetically modified crops was against Environmental Management Law No. 23/1997.

He said that according to the law, Monagro should have completed an environmental impact assessment first before the Ministry of Agriculture could issue the permit.

"We are very suspicious why the ministry issued the license (to Monagro)," Tejo said.

The U.S. Department of Justice has recently launched an investigation into issues related to Mosanto's unit in Indonesia over an improper US$50,000 payment to an Indonesian government official in 2002.

In October 2000, the Indonesian government scrapped plans to release transgenic products to the local market.

But the Ministry of Agriculture then designated South Sulawesi as a testing ground for Monsanto's transgenic crops in 2001, prompting protests from environmentalists.

The biologically engineered plants are meant to be resistant to pests or herbicides.

But environmentalists oppose them because little is known about the long-term impact of GMOs on the environment and on human health.

A number of European countries have rejected outright their commercial use. American companies remain at the forefront of producing a variety of transgenic crops, and they have been actively looking for markets in the developing world.