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GM crops facing trial times across the country
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Saturday, 18 November, 2006, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Joseph Alexander, New Delhi
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ations against Genetically Modified (GM) crops, court ban on fresh field trials and scattered but vociferous calls by scientists for GMC make it still one of the livewire issues for Indian farming community.
The spectrum of protestors from NGO groups, political outfits, agitated farmers to exporters widened day by day, even the Supreme Court recently put a ban on fresh field trials. Hardcore environmentalists say it is as destructive as nuclear weapons, though it can give short-term gains.
On the other hand, scientists and multinationals stepped up the campaign for GM crops, viewed as the only tool to ensure food security. India cannot lag behind the global advancements in the sector, they say. Nearly 800 million people in the globe still lacked adequate access to food, and biotechnology and genomics are the potential tools to overcome any future shortage in agricultural supply.
Recently rice traders in the country also joined the chorus of protestors, led by firebrand activists and leading groups like Greenpeace. Near Karnal in Haryana, Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) members burnt a trial field of GM paddy, giving a new twist to the events."GE trials are a matter of grave concern," according to Anil Adhlakha, president of the All India Exporters' Association, at a press conference recently.
The Supreme Court last month banned till next hearing any new field trials of GM crops to allow it to examine potential conflicts of interest in the approval mechanism. The verdict followed a public interest petition filed in May 2005 by four activists who claimed that India's bio-safety protocols were a serious threat to public health and the environment. The petitioners argued that field trials should only be allowed once comprehensive, scientific, reliable and transparent bio-safety tests have been carried out.
The case follows campaigns by civil society organisations over the safety of field trials of the country's first transgenic food crop, Bt brinjal - a vegetable also known as aubergine or eggplant genetically modified to resist insect pests. These protests forced the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) - whose prior permission is needed for GM trials - to form a panel of experts to give a final decision on the trials.
"Our objection to GM rice is not ideological. It is purely on practical grounds," said Gurnam Arora, joint managing director of Kohinoor Foods Ltd. The All India Rice Exporters Association, representing the Rs 7,000-crore rice exporting segment, also joined the campaign against GM crops, after the European Union recently rejected contaminated American rice.
"It may be scientifically true that rice is a naturally self-pollinating crop and there is little possibility of our regular basmati or long-grain rice getting contaminated by GM rice," said R S Seshadri, Director of Tilda Riceland Ltd, the country's top basmati exporter to the European Union.
A European consignment of Riceland Foods - the world's largest miller, handling a third of the total US rice produce - was detected with 0.6% GM rice contamination in January 2006, raising concerns among the Indian exporters. This was subsequently confirmed by the US Department of Agriculture in an advisory to the EU on August 18. The contamination was from GM rice varieties.
India is the largest producer and exporter of Basmati rice, and exported 1.15 million tonnes, generating Rs 30.3 billion ($673 million), in the financial year 2005-6. The exporters fear that the trials could affect the reputation of Indian rice.
Environmentalists like Nanditha Krishna, director, C P R Environmental Education Centre, feel that GM crops may give immediate good yield, but in the long run, the soil is extracted of necessary nutrients thus it becomes infertile and unfit for agriculture.
The GEAC has already approved a number of field trials for a new variety of GM cotton that has escaped the scope of the court ban. India has carried out field trials of mostly short-grain rice at 10 different sites across the country since 2005. The government recently allowed Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company's (Mahyco) to conduct field trials of paddy at 10 locations across seven states.
According to Deepak Pental, vice-chancellor of Delhi University, India cannot go back on GM trials at least to check the crop loss due to pest attacks. India loses every third of its produce every year due to pests. Crops worth around Rs 60,000 crore were lost during 2005 alone, he said.
Dr Pental, who is working on developing a transgenic variety of mustard seed, said the corporate greed gave a bad reputation to GM seeds in India. "Monsanto and Mico wanted their two-three hybrids to grow everywhere. It is not possible to grow the same variety in all soil types,'' he said.
Agricultural scientists like B B Chatto of M S University, Baroda, and Swapan Datta of the University of Calcutta, also support GM crops as a means to bridge the gap between demand and supply.
The production of cotton and maize engineered to be resistant to insecticides and soya beans resistant to weed killer marked the inception of a profitable GM crops industry in 1996. Today around 8.5 million farmers in 17 countries grow GM crop varieties in over 90 million hectares worldwide.
According to the latest reports by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in America, it is estimated that nearly 70% of the processed foods at groceries in the US contain at least one ingredient that's been genetically altered. As market leader, US has the total GM crops planted area of 53.8 million hectares, comprising 63% of the country's maize, 89% of soya beans, 65% of canola and 83% of cotton.
Since 2004, marketing of 30 GM products have been authorised in Europe. In the EU, labelling of GM foods is mandatory for food and animal feed containing more than 0.5% of GM ingredients. In 1990's China first allowed sale of genetically modified cotton, corn, tomatoes, and soya. Recent trends reveal that China with an investment of $500 million stands next to the U.S. in the research of GM foods. China is soon to become the first developing country in the world to allow the sale of genetically modified rice. As the world's largest rice market, any decision of China on GM rice is expected to have implications across the globe.
Researchers are also into the process of digging out new applications of GM like ability to make antibodies in fruits and to decontaminate polluted land by degrading organic pollution or removing inorganic pollution. It also promises to alter the composition of food, by increasing its nutritive value, and increasing its tolerance to biotic stresses and abiotic stresses.
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