Plant biotechnology is helping today to provide people with more and better food and holds even greater promise for the future. Whether cotton farmers in China, India, America, Australia and South Africa, canola farmers in Canada, soybean farmers in Argentina or corn farmers in Spain and the United States, millions of farmers around the world are using biotech seeds to boost yields, improve their livelihood and preserve the environment.
Biotech crops can significantly alter the lives of these farmers; limiting the time they must spend in the field and helping alleviate poverty.
That's why organisations including the United Nations, American Medical Association, International Society of African Scientists and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, have voiced their support for plant biotechnology.
Although the government of Pakistan has the taken initiative by setting up institutes like the National Commission on Biotechnology, the National Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (Nibge), the Center of Excellence in Molecular Biology so on in the country to develop and help the flourishing of crop biotechnology to compete with other countries, but the absence of Bio-Safety Guidelines, does not allow farmers to grow indigenous developed Bt Seeds.
Bio Safety Guidelines are the rules to regulate the safe development of biotechnology products and their safe application for human and animal health, plants and environment.
The enactment of biosafety guidelines will essentially set-up the legal requirements for the import, export, transport, and handling of biological agents, genetic engineering organisms or vectors, seeds, crops and foods, besides setting conditions for researchers in the field of health, agriculture, environment etc.
In January 2001, a draft of Bio Safety Guidelines was prepared by our prominent scientists, since then it has undergone several reviews and re-examined by a number of national and international experts. Beside the Ministry of Environment constituted a National Bio-safety Expert Committee (NBEC) for updating bio-safety laws, handling of living modified organisms (LMOs) and recommending measures for management, safe transfer and movements of LMOS.
Though, Pakistan has ratified many international agreements like TRIPS, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), the Cartagena Protocol so on, to show its growing world-wide interest in genetically modified organism (GMOs), trade, under WTO rules and regulations, but the process for the approval of proposed Bio safety regulations from the last four years has been lingering by the Ministry of Environment and reflects our lack of commitment to our current responsibilities, leave aside our strategy for the future as an enlightened, progressive, dynamic and modern nation.