The Swiss-based Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS) plans to open Brazil’s first laboratory devoted to certifying whether corn and soy grown here is genetically modified. Located in Santos, Brazil’s largest port, and expected to open as early as this month, the $300,000 lab underscores how European concerns about transgenics are being felt in food exporting countries around the world. The European Union (EU), Brazil’s biggest soy and corn customer, requires certification that certain agricultural exports are not transgenic. Since April 1998, it has prohibited the sale of all transgenic food except four strains of corn, one strain of soy and three strains of canola—a vegetable oil made from rapeseed. And even genetically altered products that are legal must be labeled as transgenic in... [Log in to read more]