BACOLOD CITY – Bounty Agro Ventures, the consignee of the genetically modified (GM) corn shipment, agreed to ship it out of Negros Occidental, Gov. Isidro Zayco said on Tuesday.

However, National Federation of Hog Farmers president Albert Lim warned that Negros Occidental would face a shortage in corn for processing into animal feeds if the seized corn was shipped out.

The provincial government on Saturday seized the yellow corn shipment, worth P18.978 million, found to be genetically modified and kept at the consignee’s warehouse at the Bacolod Real Estate Development Corp. (Bredco) port in Bacolod City.

Zayco said Dante Samonte, Bounty Agro Ventures feed milling operations chief for Visayas and Mindanao who represented the company in a dialog with provincial officials, agreed to ship the 15,746 bags of corn out to comply with a ban on the entry of GMO plants and animals into Negros Occidental.

“I think they agree that the corn they shipped in has GMO because they were the ones who offered to ship it out,” Zayco said.

Samonte, who maintained that the company did not know that the corn shipment was genetically modified, said they would ship the corn out on Monday, probably to Cebu or Iloilo.

He said Negros has a corn shortage so Bounty Agro Ventures had to get its corn requirement for chicken feed from different sources.

He said the company promised that the shipment of GMO corn would not happen again.

Lim said Bounty Agro Ventures would have difficulty replacing the GMO corn that it would be shipping out.

Lim said he learned from company owners that they would slowly pull out their operations from the province if they could not get sufficient corn for their feeds.

If this occurred, Lim warned that the province would have a shortage of poultry.

“We want the corn to stay but the governor said there is a law and we have to follow the law. How sure can we be that processed feeds coming into the province do not use GMO corn?” Lim said.