Silvio Valle

Silvio Valle, a biosafety expert at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, questions why the legislation is stricter for products that are unlikely to be found on the Brazilian market, such as GM maize, than it is for illegally grown GM soya, "which is a reality in our country".

He says that the law does not make clear whether imported GM products must also be labelled.And he adds that it very unlikely that any labelled GM products will appear in Brazilian supermarkets this year.

Silvio Valle, a biosafety expert at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, questions why the legislation is stricter for products that are unlikely to be found on the Brazilian market, such as GM maize, than it is for illegally grown GM soya, "which is a reality in our country".He says that the law does not make clear whether imported GM products must also be labelled.And he adds that it very unlikely that any labelled GM products will appear in Brazilian supermarkets this year.

Silvio Valle, an expert on biosafety at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, says the scientific community felt that stem cells and GM crops should not have been put together in the same bill.

The legislation will be finalised when Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio da Silva, signs it.

Silvio Valle, a biosafety expert at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, questions why the legislation is stricter for products that are unlikely to be found on the Brazilian market, such as GM maize, than it is for illegally grown GM soya, "which is a reality in our country".

He says that the law does not make clear whether imported GM products must also be labelled.And he adds that it very unlikely that any labelled GM products will appear in Brazilian supermarkets this year.

Silvio Valle, a biosafety expert at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, questions why the legislation is stricter for products that are unlikely to be found on the Brazilian market, such as GM maize, than it is for illegally grown GM soya, "which is a reality in our country".

He says that the law does not make clear whether imported GM products must also be labelled.And he adds that it very unlikely that any labelled GM products will appear in Brazilian supermarkets this year.

Silvio Valle, a biosafety expert at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, questions why the legislation is stricter for products that are unlikely to be found on the Brazilian market, such as GM maize, than it is for illegally grown GM soya, "which is a reality in our country".

He says that the law does not make clear whether imported GM products must also be labelled.And he adds that it very unlikely that any labelled GM products will appear in Brazilian supermarkets this year.

But for now it is not a question of biological safety, "because the 'product' does not yet exist," its viability has yet to be proved, and the experiment is limited to contained laboratory spaces, said Silvio Valle, coordinator of the biosafety division at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation of Rio de Janeiro.

There should be a prior assessment of whether the conventional methods for fighting malaria have been exhausted -- encompassing the economic, environmental, social and ethical issues -- and whether there are less costly and more beneficial alternatives, Valle said in a Tierramérica interview.