Rio De Janeiro, Brazil—A southern state in Brazil has approved a law banning the import, planting and sale of genetically modified organisms.
Tuesday's move comes weeks after Brazil's federal government issued a provisional decree allowing farmers already in possession of genetically modified soy beans to plant and market them, overriding a ban in place since 2000.
The new measure, supported by Parana state Governor Roberto Requiao passed in the legislature by a vote of 36 to 12.
The federal decree mainly affected farmers in Brazil's southernmost Rio Grande do Sul state, which neighbours Parana, where farmers have long been planting genetically modified soybeans smuggled in from Argentina.
The Parana state law bans the cultivation, manipulation, importation, industrialisation and the sale of genetically modified organisms.
The state legislature, however, removed a clause that would have banned the transport of genetically modified organism across the state.
"If by 2006 there are scientific studies showing that it doesn't affect human food and doesn't harm the environment, there's no reason why we can't change the law," state legislator Elton Welter told reporters in Curitiba, 680km southwest of Rio de Janeiro.
Welter said the move was aimed at protecting the states' exports to European markets where genetically modified foods are widely frowned upon.
source: http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1430373,00.html 15oct03
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