Genetically Modified Food searches new markets in india

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Barely six months after elections in India, the fight for introducing Genetically modified foods in India is gathering momentum. On one side of the spectrum is the big GM food multinationals of the likes of Nestle and the Genetic Engineering Approval Comittee GEAC a body of bureacrats and scientist turned adminstrators who are trying to push in GM Foods in India and on the other side is environmentalists, culinarty, experts and legal eagles tryoing to stop the inroad of these foods to the very fragile Indian food markets dominated by small and tiny units. The battle for testing GE varieties in India has been going on for the past few years and we are giving a small detail of the fight and the issues involved as under: .

Petitioners have filed for ‘contempt’ against three persons of the GEAC: MR. B.S. Parsheera, Chairman; Mr. CD Mayee, Co-Chairman and Ms Ranjani Warrier, Member Secretary, for wilfully and deliberately disobeying the explicit orders of the Supreme Court dated 22nd September 2006, 8th May 2007 and 1st August 2007. The Court’s Orders of the 22nd September 2006, by which further approvals of field trials by the GEAC had been injuncted, remain in force today. However, blatantly disregarding this, the GEAC has in its 79th meeting on 8.08.2007, allowed LARGE-SCALE field trials of Bt. Brinjal, and field trials of other GM food crops including Bt. Rice, Bt. Tomato, Bt. Okra, more Bt brinjal, Transgenic Groundnut etc. A legal notice dated 24th August, 2007 to this effect was sent to the Member Secretary of the GEAC i.e. Ms. Ranjini Warrier by Counsel for the Petitioners to stop these trials. There was no satisfactory response to this.

The GE process as currently practiced is an unsafe technology; it is therefore my position that at present, it is extremely unwise to allow the introduction of GM food crops into the environment in India where there is great biological diversity and need for stable food production. This is particularly true for an indigenous species and a major food source such as Brinjal. It is argued by the GM producers that crops (mostly maize) containing the Bt gene have been eaten for 10 years (true) and therefore proven safe (not true), and that putting the same Bt gene into another crop means that it will also be safe to eat (absolutely not true). The reason for the concern about the ability of GE plants to produce toxins, carcinogens, and compounds that cause birth defects (teratogens) is the result of the uncontrolled events that occur in the steps required to make a GE plant. Therefore the GM process itself is highly mutagenic and can cause the plants to make chemicals that they normally do not make with completely unpredictable consequences--- estimates are that they can make between 90,000 and 200,000 unique chemicals with up to 5,000 in one species-- Many of these are known to be highly toxic, cause cancer, and cause diseases like Parkinson’s. --- the claims made about the precision, specificity and safety of plant genetic engineering have no scientific basis.--There are no mandatory, safety testing procedures in the US. Therefore there is no scientific basis for claiming that Bt crops are “proven safe to eat”. --It may take many years before any symptoms of a disease arising from a GM product appear. In the absence of strong epidemiology or clinical trials, any health problem associated with an illness caused by a transgenic food is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to detect unless it is a disease that is unique or normally very rare. –-Of utmost importance is the fact that Brinjal in India is one of the major sources of calories for its population, while the Bt corn in the US and elsewhere is mostly used for animal food and its consumption as food is extremely small, less than a percent of total calorie intake.