High Court in South Africa invokes the Cartagena Protocol’s Precautionary Principle in revoking the approval of Monsanto’s MON87460 maize

Mariam Mayet, Angelika Hilbeck & Eva Sirinathsinghji

In a groundbreaking judgement delivered on the 22 October 2024, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in South Africa, has set aside the commercial approval of Monsanto/Bayer’s so-called “drought tolerant” genetically modified maize, finding that three layers of decision makers failed to adhere to the
precautionary principle embedded in the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

The decision followed nine years of arduous litigation by the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), and is a victory for the precautionary principle and the protection of peoples’ human rights to food and environmental safety.

The ACB has consistently maintained that decision makers merely rubber-stamped Monsanto’s application for authorisation, uncritically accepting its paucity of evidence that the living modified organism (LMO) poses no threat to human health or the environment, and ignoring the contrary expert evidence tendered by several ACB’s experts.

The benefits under discussion by the court were solely that of ensuring the human right to an environment and food system, that is not harmful to human health and safety.

The court did not consider profits for the biotech industry, nor purported arguments of dubious yield gains by Monsanto, as being relevant in upholding compliance with biosafety law.

Rather, the SDC held that “When regard is had to the Cartagena Protocol, which requires that claims of scientific certainty be substantiated with evidence to prove a lack of potential for scientific hazards; Monsanto’s risk assessment was inadequate in identifying plausible hazards”.

The concerns raised in this case are not dissimilar to those raised in more than 60 objections filed by the ACB over the last 21 years.

Going forward, in the light that South Africa has decided to regulate all LMOs and products derived from new genomic techniques such as genome editing, all future decision making for approvals for environmental releases will also be subject to the precedent setting ruling.

More information at African Center for Biodiversity: https://acbio.org.za/gm-biosafety/groundbreaking-judgment-of-the-suprem…