Here’s the list of banned GMO-tainted food items

PLAIN LUCKY?: At the National Power Corp., an official was found in an in-house investigation to be guilty of mischief that merits the filing of administrative charges for grave misconduct and criminal charges for violations of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.

So, what happened? The official was promoted!

The lucky executive was identified in Napocor documents as M.R. Abesamis, formerly a minor project director who has since been promoted plant manager.

Six years ago, Napocor contracted out its Sucat-Araneta-Balintawak power transmission project to the consortium of ABB-Siemens with Abesamis as project director. He was to see to it that the consortium complied with its obligations under the contract.

However, investigation has shown that what he did was mess with the contract in favor of the contractor and to the disadvantage of government.

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HIGHLY IRREGULAR: Records show that Abesamis negotiated and entered into a supplemental agreement with ABB-Siemens under which the backfilling, spreading and compaction of access roads and tower sites were removed from the consortium’s responsibilities under its contract.

The work removed from ABB-Siemens was transferred by Abesamis to another contractor, Alfine Construction, at a cost of P10 million.

Napocor higher-ups, not necessarily then NPC president Guido Delgado, blocked the transaction. But somehow, Abesamis went ahead.

Napocor’s internal audit department (IAD) conducted an investigation and found the transaction ‘highly irregular.’

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VOID AB INITIO: To begin with, Abesamis had no authority to negotiate and enter into a supplemental agreement with ABB-Siemens. The backfilling works that he removed were the responsibility of the original project contractor and were covered by the approved project costs.

Lawyers said that the P10-million contract with Alfine Construction, which was awarded through open canvass, was void from the start because such canvass is not allowed if the cost involved is more than P20,000.

Abesamis explained that Napocor president Delgado verbally authorized him to enter into a supplemental agreement with ABB-Siemens. Be that as it may, the internal auditors maintained that such verbal authorization from Delgado, if true, did not vest him authority to sign any supplemental agreement.

Abesamis also argued that the P10-million contract with Alfine would save the government money. Apparently, it did not occur to him that the work cost to be paid Alfine is already covered by the scope of services of ABB-Siemens. Or if it did, he ignored it.

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DOUBLE WHAMMY: Internal auditors concluded that the actions of Abesamis "point to a calculated design to situate NPC into a highly disadvantaged position to benefit the consortium and pave the way for the contracting out of backfilling works to Alfine Construction."

They said that Napocor ‘suffered damage twice for the same backfilling works.’ The double whammy would have Napocor paying the consortium for work it will no longer do, and paying Alfine for the works supposedly to be undertaken by ABB-Siemens.

The investigators qualified the unauthorized acts of Abesamis as "bad faith or fraud, beyond gross negligence." They recommended that he be charged administratively for grave misconduct punishable by dismissal, and criminally for violations of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.

No case was filed against Abesamis. Instead, he was rewarded with a promotion. So (yawn) what else is new’

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FLOOD OF E-MAIL: Even as we type this, more requests are pouring in from readers who want the list of the food products reportedly containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that were banned in Saudi Arabia but are still sold in this benighted country.

As of 2 p.m. yesterday, when we decided to suspend sending out responses (with the list) to be able to start writing this followup column, we had replied to more than 600 pieces of readers’ e-mail.

Were it not for the high-tech wonders of computers we would not have been able to cope with the workload. We do all this, including the production/writing of our regular columns, all by our self. We have no staff, no legmen, no researchers, no ghostwriters.

The reason given by 95 percent of the readers (65 percent of whom were women) asking for the list was that they want to know what food to avoid.

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HERE THEY ARE: As we said in our responses, by sharing the list of banned items, we are not confirming that they are indeed GMO-tainted, or that they are hazardous to health. Neither are we advocating a boycott.

We’re not a lawyer but a simple journalist. But under the circumstances, we feel duty-bound to publish here the list whose sourcing was explained in our previous Postscript. Without much ado, here is the list:

1. Silver Swan Soy Sauce

2. Granny Goose Tortillos Chili Flavor

3. Granny Goose Kornets Barbecue Flavor

4. Bocaditos Tortilla Chips Shashlik Flavor

5. Prime Corn Starch

6. Food Fair Quality Corn Starch

7. Magnolia Chicken Chunks in Brine

8. Holiday Corned Beef

9. Purefoods Gusto Sausage

10. Purefoods Liver Spread

11. Campo Carne Chicken Vienna Sausage

12. Campo Carne Chinese Luncheon Meat

13. Butterfinger

14. Argentina Corned Beef

15. Argentina Beef Loaf

16. CDO Karne Norte Pinoy Style Guisado

17. Quality Foods Big N’ Tastee Hotdog

18. Pokka Soya Bean Drink.

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WHAT’S A GMO?: A genetically modified organism (GMO) is a living thing whose genetic structure has been altered by including in it a gene that will express a desired trait or quality, in what is often termed as gene splicing.

The gene that is introduced to the organism usually allows it to show a characteristic or quality that will add to the desirability of the end product to producers or consumers.

An example is Flavr Savr Tomato, the first food produced from gene splicing and evaluated by the US Food and Drug Administration. Tomatoes get softer as they ripen because of a protein in them that breaks down the cell walls of the fruit. This makes it difficult to maintain the quality of the ripe tomato over a long time.

The Flavr Savr Tomato had a gene spliced into its DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid responsible for the passing on of characteristics of organisms) to prevent the breakdown of the tomatoes’ cell walls. The new gene enables a ripe tomato to remain firm several days or even weeks after harvest.

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SIDE EFFECTS: The biotechnology of gene splicing can lower production costs due to reduced chemical and mechanical requirements in planting, handling and harvest. It can also help create food that is more nutrient dense, or packed with more nutrients per unit volume.

This is the case with the so-called "Golden Rice" that contains beta carotene, a source of vitamin A and iron that are vital in countries suffering from high rates of childhood blindness and maternal anemia.

On the other hand, inserting alien genes to food raises the risk of allergic reactions, among other side effects. More than 90 percent of food allergies are triggered by specific proteins in milk, soybeans, eggs, fish, shellfish, wheat, tree nuts and peanuts.

When a GMO-based protein is inserted into a food that does not cause a known allergic reaction, a problem may arise. If, for example, an individual who has a known allergy to peanuts unknowingly ate a GMO that contained the allergenic protein from peanut, the individual could experience an allergic reaction.

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RULE FOR NOVEL FOODS: In the European Union, they have Regulation 258, the Novel Foods regulation that has been in force since May 1997.

It provides for labeling of biotech foods when: (1) any characteristic or food property such as composition, nutritional value, or intended use of the food has changed so as to render the product no longer equivalent to its conventional counterparts; (2) an allergen is introduced into the food; (3) there is material in the food that would give rise to ethical concerns; or (4) the food is derived from a genetically modified organism.

The Union also came up with Regulation 1139 in 1998 that required the labeling of products made with Roundup Ready soybeans and Novartis Bt-176 corn. Manufacturers are now required to label their products with the phrase ‘produced from genetically modified soya’ or "produced from genetically modified maize."

The rationale is that the presence of protein or DNA from the transformed soybean or corn varieties made new products no longer equivalent to the conventional counterparts and therefore must be so described in the label.

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ePOSTSCRIPT: You can read Postscript in advance, even before it sees print, simply by going to our personal website www.manilamail.com. While at our ManilaMail.com site, you can also peruse back issues of our column and review past discussions on certain subjects. E-mail can be sent to us at [email protected].