www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

While the world was still hotly debating genetic engineering in crops and
animals, Viet Nam considered this evolving field indispensable for social
and economic progress, experts said, January 2007.

Comparing application of genetic engineering to travelling by plane,
Doctor Le Tran Binh, director of the Biotechnology Institute, said that
though people knew that accidents may occur, they had little choice if they
didn?t want to be left behind.

"You have no option but travel by plane, if you do not want to be left far
behind," Binh said.

Though opinions are varied, many scientists have already started supporting
genetic engineering.

Giving his nod for genetic engineering in crops such as cotton and forestry
produce, Professor Vu Tuyen Hoang called for more careful consideration
before applying genetic engineering on food crops such as rice, maize,
coffee and soybeans.

Though hybridisation and genetic engineering can both help increase crop
productivity, the former was safer, Hoang said, pointing to Viet Nam?s
hybrid rice and maize that had the highest productivity in Asia.

Genetically modified crops usually produced certain toxins to protect
themselves from harmful pests, though the effect of such toxins on humans
remained uncertain, Hoang said.

Viet Nam had issued a decree on biotechnology in 1994, and an instruction on
conducting biotechnology research and application, including genetic
engineering, a year later.

Professor Le Doan Dien, general secretary of the Viet Nam Foodstuff Science
and Technology Association, said genetically engineered products had
increased productivity and output of different kinds of crops.

Thanks to genetic engineering, China had become the world?s leading exporter
of cotton. It was widely held that modified seeds would ensure food security
in the future when productivity of foodstuff decreased due to deforestation,
land erosion, soil exhaustion, weather changes, and lack of cultivable land,
he said.

One third of the population in the world has accepted the application of
genetic engineering, with China, India and the US, countries with large
populations, publicly promoting modified crops.

According to forecasts, by 2020, nearly 100 per cent of maize, barley,
cotton, and soybean areas in the world would use genetic engineering for
production.

[vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn]

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