The controversy over the Greenpeace report on the environmental impact of transgenic Bt-cotton in China took a new turn with some officials of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) maintaining that the insect-resistant cotton actually benefited the environment.
This claim has been made in a joint statement issued by Professor Shirong Jia of the CAAS Biotechnology Research Institute and Professor Yufa Peng of the CAAS Institute of Plant Protection. Peng is director of the Beijing-based Centre for Biosafety Research.
These scientists maintain that the research findings of the past three to five years indicate that the greatest environmental impact of Bt-cotton was its benefit to the environment from a significant reduction (70 to 80 per cent) in the use of chemical pesticides.
The row on this issue had begun with a report produced by the Chinese government-funded State Environment Protection Administration Research Institute in cooperation with the global environmental lobby group Greenpeace. It had alleged that genetically modified Bt-cotton varieties introduced by the US agribusiness giant Monsanto had damaged the environment and provided few long-term agricultural benefits.
The report had further argued that Bt-cotton had destabilised China
