ACB demands immediate reversal of glyphosate-tolerant field trials that threaten biodiversity and deepen corporate control
Johannesburg/Yerevan — The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) condemns the decision of the Executive Council established under South Africa’s Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) Act to approve field trials of Corteva Agriscience’s genetically modified (GM) canola event DP73496, engineered to tolerate glyphosate-based herbicides. The approval revives a hazardous project that South Africa stepped back from more than 15 years ago, despite persistent and unresolved risks of genetic contamination, herbicide dependence and damage to biodiversity.
The timing exposes a stark policy contradiction. As governments gather for the United Nations Biodiversity Conference at the 17th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Conference of Biological Diversity (CBD COP17), in Yerevan under the banner of “Taking action for nature”, South Africa has authorised an experiment that could entrench a chemical-intensive, corporate-controlled model of agriculture. COP17 is conducting the first global review of progress under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Approving a crop designed to withstand repeated herbicide spraying undermines commitments to reduce pollution risks, halt biodiversity loss and transform food systems.
ACB objected to the present application in August 2025 and has opposed GM canola since Monsanto sought field trials of herbicide-resistant RT73 canola in 2009. Those earlier trials did not proceed. The return of GM canola under a new corporate name and through a different engineered event does not erase the unresolved concerns raised more than 15 years ago; it shows how contested technologies can return in repackaged form despite persistent environmental and socio-economic risks.
“This is not a contained scientific exercise; it is the first step towards a commercial pathway that puts South Africa’s biodiversity, farmers and food system at risk while expanding the market for a proprietary seed-and-herbicide package,” said Mariam Mayet, Executive Director of the ACB. “While South Africa presents itself at COP17 as committed to halting biodiversity loss, its GMO regulators are enabling a technology that deepens chemical dependence and corporate control. This decision must be reversed.”
The science does not support complacency
- Canola does not stay put. It readily forms feral and weedy populations, while pollen can travel kilometres and seed can remain dormant in soil for years. Once escaped, engineered traits may be extremely difficult—or impossible—to retrieve.
- South Africa is not an ecological blank slate. The country has at least 154 known species in the Brassicaceae family that require consideration in a robust assessment of potential cross-fertilisation and gene flow. The movement of engineered traits into compatible cultivated or wild relatives could create persistent reservoirs of GM material and threaten agricultural and wild diversity.
- Field trials themselves can leave a long legacy. International experience has documented GM canola persisting long after trials and appearing along transport routes through seed spillage. Containment measures cannot be treated as guarantees.
- Herbicide tolerance drives a pesticide treadmill. Crops engineered to tolerate glyphosate enable repeated spraying, selecting for resistant weeds and encouraging the later introduction of stacked traits tolerant to additional herbicides. This compounds risks to soil organisms, pollinators, aquatic ecosystems, farm workers and rural communities.
- The assessment cannot isolate the seed from the chemical regime. A credible risk assessment must examine the cumulative impacts of the engineered crop, the associated herbicide use, resistant weeds, gene flow and foreseeable commercial expansion—not each component in isolation.
A democratic and regulatory failure
The approval raises serious questions about democratic accountability and regulatory independence. The Executive Council is required to consider not only an applicant’s claims, but also public input and potential effects on agriculture, health, the environment, labour and trade. Approval in the face of substantive objections demands a transparent explanation of whose evidence was accepted, how competing risks were weighed and how corporate interests were guarded against. The public is entitled to know how ACB’s objections were addressed, what independent evidence supported the decision, what dissenting views were recorded and what liability arrangements will apply if contamination occurs.
The decision also exposes a wider contradiction in South Africa’s biodiversity policy. Governments cannot promise to implement global biodiversity targets while approving agricultural technologies that consolidate patented seed systems, increase reliance on hazardous chemicals and transfer ecological and economic risks to farmers and the public. Biodiversity protection requires agroecological transition, farmer-managed diversity and reduced pesticide dependence—not another round of technological lock-in.
ACB demands
- The immediate suspension and reconsideration of the field-trial approval under the precautionary principle;
- Publication of the Executive Council’s full reasons, the Advisory Committee’s recommendation, risk assessments, trial conditions and responses to every substantive public objection, with legitimate confidential business information narrowly construed;
- An independent, multidisciplinary assessment of gene flow, persistence, cumulative herbicide impacts, socio-economic consequences and alternatives;
- Binding rules that place responsibility and the full costs of monitoring, containment, remediation and compensation on the developer, not farmers or the public; and
- A moratorium on GM herbicide-tolerant canola trials and releases until South Africa has transparent, participatory and biodiversity-aligned biosafety governance.
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“COP17 must be more than global theatre,” Mayet said. “Governments cannot claim to be taking action for nature while treating biodiversity as expendable whenever powerful agribusiness companies seek new markets. South Africa must withdraw this approval and invest instead in agroecology, diverse locally adapted seed systems and farming approaches that reduce chemical dependence.”
Media enquiries:
African Centre for Biodiversity
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