The Philippines Bureau of Plant Industry of the Department of Agriculture has granted GM brinjal (Event EE-1) a Biosafety Permit for Commercial Propagation. This Bt brinjal, which contains a gene from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis that confers resistant to eggplant fruit and shoot borer or EFSB (Leucinodes orbonalis), was approved for import as food/feed use in the Philippines in 2021. The Bureau has now concluded that this variety is safe for consumption by humans, animals, and other non-target arthropods, as the Bt protein is highly specific to EFSB larvae. The product has also been deemed safe for release into the environment.

Bt brinjal was previously being imported from Bangladesh, where it gained cultivation approval in 2013 (see AgbioNews Nov 22, 2013), with adoption of the GM technology being found to have a positive impact (AgbioNews Mar 8, 2019). Adoption of Bt brinjal in the Philippines is predicted to result in lower production costs.