Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
and use in several fields, including agriculture, chemistry and, above all,
health. Many of these articles present views of defenders and detractors
on this technology. A negative discourse was noticed when the possible
effects for the environment were discussed, and a very positive discourse
when transgenic benefits for health were presented, as well as when they
were considered as an advance of scientific and technological knowledge.
The class “Science, Technology, and Society” is related to the class
“Research.” Although its content does not put the GM crops matter in
debate, this theme raises a greater discussion about the general advances
of science and technology and its impacts upon society. This class of
articles is divided into favorable and contrary opinions toward such
advances. Other articles try to explore public understanding of science
and technology, frequently considering peoples' fear of new technology
as irrational.
The classes “Bio-Safety Law 1, 2, and 3” are closely related and por-
tray the judicial battle that involved a series of decrees and appeals until
approval of the new Biosafety Law in March 2005. Together, the three
classes correspond to 34.78 percent of the entire
corpus
.
Class “Bio-Safety Law 1” (the Cardoso Law) shows a period marked
by the absence of clear rules on the planting and commercialization of
GM crops, and CTNBio's role and power. This class content followed the
civil action filed by IDEC (Consumer Rights Association) and Green-
peace against CTNbio's approval of commercial plantation of Monsanto
soya, in June 1998.
Class “Bio-Safety Law 2” describes some problems created by the
Executive Order that authorized the planting of genetically modified
soya for the years 2003-2004. By this Executive Order, the government
acknowledged that GM soya seeds had been planted in violation of the
1995 Biosafety Law, but nevertheless allowed the growers to commer-
cialize their GM crops.
Class “Bio-Safety Law 3” portrays the disagreements inside the gov-
ernment in 2003 between the Ministries of Environment and of Agri-
culture. This class describes the creation of two Executive Orders that
authorized the commercialization of the 2003/2004 and 2004/2005 crops.
