After the Climate Change Ministry gave its approval to 55 importers, the food ministry is unhappy with the new quagmire coming its way.
It seems that the controversy that has surrounded the import of Genetically Modified (GMO) oilseeds in Pakistan has not quite died out, despite the government giving the all clear to a number of importers in October.
The two-year long struggle that has seen GMO soybeans coming from the United States of America become a major point of contention between Pakistan’s local solvent extraction industry and the federal government, particularly the Ministry for National Food Security & Research and the Climate Change Ministry.
Soybeans are an important component in the manufacturing of edible oil, but more importantly are the key input in Pakistan’s poultry industry, which uses meals made from these seeds to feed their birds. Back in the latter half of 2022, the import of these soybeans had been halted by the government because the beans were genetically modified, causing significant strain to the poultry industry. However, the government raised concerns over the entry of GMO products into Pakistan because of its participation in the international Cartagena protocol.
The ban was lifted last month following robust advocacy and lobbying not just from Pakistan’s poultry industry, which benefits from the cheaper GMO beans, but also from exporters based in the United States as well as the United States Embassy in Islamabad, which has been playing a role in pushing the issue.
While all of these efforts bore fruits, sources from within the food ministry have told Profit that the ministry is struggling to deal with the load of allowing these imports while also maintaining conducting risk assessments for 47 gene events in local conditions, as mandated by Article 15 of the Cartagena Protocol. So what exactly is going on, what are the concerns surrounding it, and are there any answers?
The buildup
The equation here is a very simple one. Pakistan is a very major importer of oilseeds like soybeans and palm oil. The vast majority of these $4 billion imports are made up of palm oil, which is used to make Vanaspati Ghee. However, other oilseeds like Canola, Sunflower, and Soybean are used to extract edible oil as well as make poultry meals. Even cotton seeds are used to make these poultry meals. This is the main purpose of importing soybeans to Pakistan.
Now, the United States is a major grower of soybeans across its farming belt in states such as Illinois, Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri. These soybeans are genetically modified and give higher yields making them cheaper. The US uses these beans domestically but also exports them to a number of countries including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and India which use them in their poultry production. Pakistan was also among these importers, but in December 2022, a dramatic episode took place which Profit covered in depth.
To cut a very long story short, It all started with a technicality — but a technicality that was being ignored for a few years. On October 20, 2022, two shipments were stopped at Port Qasim in Karachi. The shipments contained GMO oilseeds worth some $100 million on board. And despite the very vocal protestations of the importers that had paid for the consignments, they stayed stuck at the port pending a single certification from the ministry of climate change. The climate ministry was concerned that the oilseeds were GMOs. In the months that followed, more vessels joined the two stuck at Karachi and the value of the oilseeds piling up at the port grew over $300 million.
Are GMOs safe?
There is a general fear of GMOs in many places across the globe, fears that are completely unfounded and not based on any scientific research. The reality is that farmers and agricultural scientists have been involved in genetically modifying the food we eat for a very long time.
“For many decades, in addition to traditional crossbreeding, agricultural scientists have used radiation and chemicals to induce gene mutations in edible crops in attempts to achieve desired characteristics,” reads an article by Jane Brody published in The New York Times back in 2018.
This is where there is a parting of ways, and one that is very important to understand. Everyone agrees that genetic modification has been in place for centuries now. Farmers have used cross-breeding or both livestock and crops to achieve better yields and resistance to weather. What is new, however, is that there are now possibilities of extracting genes from other organisms and including them in different organisms. For example, to make a certain maize crop more resistant to cold, scientists might extract a gene from a fish that swims in icy waters and inject it in the maize. It really is a scientific marvel, and at the same time it makes sense that eyebrows would be raised over this level of interference in nature. But by and large, the scientific community has upheld that GMOs are safe.
“Although about 90% of scientists believe GMOs are safe — a view endorsed by the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the World Health Organization — only slightly more than a third of consumers share this belief,” states a report from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And that is the crux of the problem. Even though the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in the favour of GMOs, the public perception of GMOs is unfavourable. This is mostly coming from the same brand of pseudo-science that promotes homoeopathic remedies over actual, tested, medicine that works and peddles crystal therapy and all manners of snake-oil.
Robert Goldberg, a plant molecular biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, says that such fears have not yet been quelled despite “hundreds of millions of genetic experiments involving every type of organism on earth and people eating billions of meals without a problem.” The main problem is that science rarely uses definitive language when a sample size is small or relatively new. In the case of GMOs, for example, scientists maintain a regular level of human error and make statements like “foods have not shown any harmful effect,” rather than saying categorically that a certain food does not have harmful effects.
The lobbying begins
This naturally led to importers whose consignments were stuck panicking. They would have to suffer losses if they re-exported the containers to countries where the import of GMO products was allowed. Immediately, they began to try to convince the government to remove the ban. The ban had been put in place by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the Climate Change Ministry. The decision was taken even though GMO soybeans were being imported to Pakistan from the US since 2015, and the volume of this trade had reached $1.5 billion.
The sudden decision to claim that GMO imports violate international protocols or pose health risks, such as cancer, led both importers and the exporting country to push for the resumption of the trade at any cost. And while the importers were well connected, with a number of politically influential families involved in the poultry business such as the Prime Minister’s son, Hamza Shehbaz, who has a poultry business in Lahore. However, the heavyweight here was the lobbying effort made by the US exporters through US functionaries present in Pakistan.
The issue remained under discussion at various government forums and in courts for months, with the influence of importers and influence even on an ambassadorial level evident. An official source from the Ministry of Commerce confirmed that the United States had raised the issue of GMO soybeans multiple times at various forums, including the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) signed by the two countries in 2003. As Pakistan’s major export destination, with over $4 billion in exports, the U.S. reportedly told the relevant authorities to resolve the soybean issue swiftly.
The current concerns
This is where things stand. Back in December 2022, when the government first banned the imports, it was a hastily taken decision. In response, importers and the exporters banned together to lobby for resumption of imports. In December 2023, the government allowed the import again but kept delaying releasing shipments, but they finally did so in October this year, and the government has since given 55 licences to importers. However, a number of sources within both ministries have raised suspicions over the actions of the concerned ministries
The central issue here is that the government earlier raised the point of the Cartagena Protocol, which is a Convention on Biological Diversity, signed in 2001 and ratified in 2009 that Pakistan is party to. The Cartagena Protocol is an international treaty governing the movements of living modified organisms (LMOs) resulting from modern biotechnology from one country to another.
Now, the protocol leaves room for countries to devise their own policies. It also allows them to import GMO grains under the Food or Feed or Processing (FFP) category, and addressed requirements for cultivation only which are understandably much more complex. However, the ministries now seem confused about the necessary process for clearing GMO seeds—whether for food, processing, feed, or cultivation—appears not to have been followed. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the Ministry of Climate Change, admitted that the licensing process and the subsequent steps were based on decisions made by the previous caretaker government. Officials from the Ministry of National Food Security and Research even expressed reservations about the import of GMO oilseeds.
The licenses granted to over 40 importers are based on approval from the caretaker government’s cabinet, as confirmed by an official source at the Ministry of Climate Change. This raises the question of why an elected government was hesitant to approve this, if such approval was necessary.
Criticism of regulatory procedures
Criticism of the approval process has been widespread. The National Biosafety Committee (NBC), chaired by Secretary Eazaz A. Dar of the Ministry of Climate Change, approved the GMO soybean imports allegedly without conducting risk assessments under local conditions as mandated by Annex-III of the Cartagena Protocol. This move marks a departure from Pakistan’s previously non-GMO status, despite objections from previous prime ministers, such as Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan, as well as reservations from the Ministry of National Food Security and Research.
Officials at Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA), a subsidiary of the Ministry of Climate Change, acknowledged that the approvals were granted based on decisions made by the previous caretaker government. Importantly, the Environmental Protection Council (PEPC), which is mandated to oversee such decisions under the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act of 1997, was reportedly not consulted.
On top of this, Pakistan does have a robust biosafety framework, including 15 institutional biosafety committees (IBCs) and updated Pakistan Plant Quarantine Rules (2019). However, these resources seem to have been bypassed. Of the licenses granted, only Quaid-e-Azam University’s Department of Environmental Protection conducted a risk assessment. Experts have questioned the scientific rigor and independence of this assessment, completed in just two months.
The government has also not informed whether or not there has been any communication with the Biosafety Clearing-House (BCH) and the Cartagena Protocol Secretariat regarding risk assessments and approvals.
Why all these concerns?
Let us get one thing straight. The import of GMO soybeans definitely gives Pakistan’s poultry market a boost, and importing products should not be a complicated process. The main concern raised by alarmists is that if Pakistan imports these GMO seeds, they will not meet the conditions of the Cartagena Protocol. As a result, certain export markets for Pakistani grown products like rice, wheat, and corn, might close their doors out of fear of phytosanitary standards and GMO contamination.
The revised SOP for GMO soybean imports, implemented by NBC, exempts TAC, NBC, and Pak-EPA from responsibility for any harm caused by these imports, holding importers solely accountable for any ecological and public health damages—though the regulations lack penalties for such consequences.
What is important here is for the government to be clear. Pakistan’s poultry industry already has GMO input. Since 2005, Pakistan has been using GMO cotton seeds and these have been used to make poultry meals. But the government first banned the import of GMO seeds without much explanation and have now unbanned them with as little fanfare and explanation. What is needed here is for the government to take the logical step, but also explain itself and make all overtures to the international organisations, and make sure different ministries are doing the work to ensure Pakistan is compliant with international standards and regulations.
Efforts to contact the Ministry of National Food Security and Research for an official stance were unsuccessful, though a relevant official claimed that the ministry opposed GMO imports due to biosafety risks.
However, as one EPA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, stated that the complaint regarding GMOs is based on false accusations. It indicates that the current crisis might also involve some level of jurisdictional head butting between the EPA and the food ministry. The complaint has been received by the Prime Minister’s office and the relevant ministries, but no action has been taken as of yet. The official further asserted that the decision to allow GMO soybean imports was based on the caretaker government’s cabinet decision, with relevant forums approving it in line with established rules.
Latest Development
After approving over 55 import licenses, the Ministry of Climate Change prompted the Ministry of National Food Security and Research (NFSR) to convene a consultative meeting on Friday, November 29, 2024. The meeting focused on devising strategies to protect and manage the import of GMO soybean, mitigating risks of contamination and spread from the port to processing areas. Chaired by Federal Minister Rana Tanveer, the session included representatives from importing companies, the poultry association, and relevant officials.
Insiders revealed that the food ministry, tasked with ensuring national food security, is facing challenges in making GMO seed imports entirely risk-free. The ministry is currently evaluating measures to minimize spillage during the receipt and processing stages. However, according to sources, the primary responsibility for preventing spillage rests with the importers.
During the meeting, officials proposed the devitalization of imported seeds in the exporting country as a precautionary measure. This process would help reduce the risks associated with GMO seeds. All GMO soybean consignments will undergo strict supervision by the Department of Plant Protection (DPP) during arrival, treatment at accredited facilities, and the devitalization process. Importers are required to transport sealed containers securely to processing sites after completing the devitalization treatment.
The ministry and the DPP have also suggested covering GMO oilseed consignments with polythene bags during transit from the port to processing facilities to prevent leakage. Additionally, importing crushed GMO seeds instead of whole seeds has been discussed as an option to mitigate risks further.
The NFSR, with DPP’s assistance, is finalizing a comprehensive safety mechanism for handling GMO imports. However, an official source admitted that no safety mechanism is entirely risk-free, and the import of GMO soybean will continue to pose a potential threat of contamination and spread. Furthermore, the ministry is yet to conduct a thorough analysis of the risks GMO soybean byproducts may pose to human health.
Courtesy Profit
