Venezuela is on the “front lines” of a significant resistance in South America to genetically modified crops. While several South American countries, including Brazil, allow the cultivation of GM crops, Venezuelan environmental groups have been consistently opposed to the practice.
A ban on GMOs, which had been around since 2004, gained support when, in 2012, then President Hugo Chavez took on a campaign platform that emphasized an agricultural model of production based on “a harmonic relationship between human and nature.”
Soon after Chavez’s death in 2013, a new “Seed Law” was proposed that “reads like an eco-friendly document on the surface.” However, the law contradicts itself—while it “clearly articulates a ban on transgenics,” one of its articles “can be interpreted as providing a legal basis for the use of transgenics.”
Now, activists are demanding that the Seed Law be re-written to extinguish any possible legal loopholes. Though some government officials support the use of GMOs, “it is not likely that either the allies of transgenics in the farming and business sector will sway the agroecology forces in Venezuela.”
Read the full, original story: Venezuela and the Battle against Transgenic Seeds
