Remarkable consensus
The TEC Final Report (FR) is the fourth official report which exposes
the lack of integrity, independence and scientific expertise in
assessing GMO risk. It is the third official report barring GM crops or
their field trials singularly or collectively. This consensus is
remarkable, given the regulatory oversight and fraud that otherwise dog
our agri-institutions. The pervasive conflict of interest embedded in
those bodies makes sound and rigorous regulation of GMOs all but
impossible.
The four reports are: The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’ of February 2010,
imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal, overturning the apex
Regulator’s approval to commercialise it; the Sopory Committee Report
(August 2012); the Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) Report on GM
crops (August 2012) and now the TEC Final Report (June-July 2013). The
TEC recommends that in general, there should be an indefinite stoppage
of all open field trials (environmental release) of GM crops,
conditional on systemic corrections, including comprehensive and
rigorous risk assessment protocols. The report includes a specific focus
on Bt food crops.
It also calls for a ban on the environmental release of any GMO where
India is the centre of origin or diversity. It also says herbicide
tolerant (HT) crops, targeted for introduction by the regulator, should
not be open field-tested. The TEC “finds them completely unsuitable in
the Indian context as HT crops are likely to exert a highly adverse
impact over time on sustainable agriculture, rural livelihoods, and
environment.”
The PSC report which preceded that of the TEC was no less scathing: it
was “ [...] convinced that these developments are not merely slippages
due to oversight or human error but indicative of collusion of a worst
kind [...] field trials under any garb should be discontinued
forthwith”.
Sound science and factual data form the basis of the TEC decisions.
There is practical and ethical sense too. The TEC insists that the
government bring in independence, scientific expertise, transparency,
rigour and participative democracy into GMO regulation and policy. The
accent is on bio-safety.
Assessment and performance
GMOs produce “unintended effects” that are not immediately apparent and
may take years to detect. This is a laboratory-based, potent technology,
described by WHO as “unnatural.” The risk assessment (RA) protocols for
GMOs are an evolving process to be performed by qualified and
experienced experts who must be responsive to the latest scientific
knowledge. The fact is that GMOs involve us in a big experiment in the
idea that human agencies can perform adequate risk assessment, which, it
is expected, will deliver safety at every level/dimension of their
impact on us — the environment, farming systems, preservation of
biodiversity, human and animal safety.
After 20 years since the first GM crop was commercialised in the U.S.,
there is increasing evidence, not less, of the health and environment
risks from these crops. Furthermore, we now have 20 years of crop
statistics from the U.S., of two kinds of crops that currently make up
over 95 per cent of all GM crops cultivated globally, (like Bt cotton)
Bt and HT crops. The statistics demonstrate declining yields. GM yields
are significantly lower than yields from non-GM crops. Pesticide use,
the great “industry” claim on these GM crops, instead of coming down,
has gone up exponentially. In India, notwithstanding the hype of the
industry, the regulators and the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Bt
cotton yield is levelling off to levels barely higher than they were
before the introduction of Bt.
It takes roughly $150 million to produce a GMO against $1 million
through conventional breeding techniques. So where is the advantage and
why are we experimenting given all the attendant risks? We have hard
evidence from every U.N. study and particularly the World Bank-funded
International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge and Science for
Development Report, which India signed in 2008. The IAASTD was the work
of over 400 scientists and took four years to complete. It was twice
peer reviewed. The report states we must look to small-holder,
traditional farming to deliver food security in third world countries
through agri-ecological systems which are sustainable. Governments must
invest in these systems. This is the clear evidence.
Conflict of interest
The response to the TEC Final Report came immediately, with the Ministry
of Agriculture strongly opposing the report. The MoA is a vendor of GM
crops and has no mandate for regulating GMOs. The same Ministry had
lobbied and fought to include an additional member on the TEC after its
interim report had been submitted. That ‘new’ member came in with
several conflicts of interest, his links to the GM crops lobby being
widely known. His entry was in fact a breach of the Supreme Court’s
mandate for an independent TEC and provoked me to file an affidavit in
the court, drawing attention to this. Oddly enough, he did not sign the
final report, or even put up a note of dissent. This allowed the final
report, then, to be unanimous; as indeed was the TEC’s Interim Report
submitted by the original five members.
The Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) promotes PPPs
(Public-Private-Partnerships) with the biotechnology industry. It does
this with the active backing of the Ministry of Science and Technology.
The MoA has handed Monsanto and the industry access to our agri-research
public institutions placing them in a position to seriously influence
agri-policy in India. You cannot have a conflict of interest larger or
more alarming than this one. Today, Monsanto decides which Bt cotton
hybrids are planted — and where. Monsanto owns over 90 per cent of
planted cotton seed, all of it Bt cotton.
All the other staggering scams rocking the nation do have the
possibility of recovery and reversal. The GM scam will be of a scale
hitherto unknown. It will also not be reversible because environmental
contamination over time will be indelible. We have had the National
Academies of Science give a clean chit of biosafety to GM crops — doing
that by using paragraphs lifted wholesale from the industry’s own
literature! Likewise, Ministers in the PMO who know nothing about the
risks of GMOs have similarly sung the virtues of Bt Brinjal and its
safety to an erstwhile Minister of Health. They have used, literally,
“cut & paste” evidence from the biotech lobby’s “puff” material. Are
these officials then, “un-caged corporate parrots?”
Along with the GM-vendor Ministries of Agriculture and Science &
Technology, these are the expert inputs that the Prime Minister relies
on when he pleads for “structured debate, analysis and enlightenment.”
The worrying truth is that these values are absent in what emanates from
either the PMO or the President.
Ministries, least of all “promoting” Ministries, should not have the
authority to allow the novel technology of GMOs into Indian agriculture
bypassing authentic democratic processes. Those processes require the
widest possible — and transparent — consultation across India. With GMOs
we must proceed carefully, always anchored in the principle of
bio-safety. Science and technology may be mere informants into this
process. After all, it is every woman, man and child, and our animals,
an entire nation that will quite literally have to eat the outcome of a
GM policy that delivers up our agriculture to it: if a GMO is unsafe, it
will remain irreversibly unsafe. And it will remain in the environment
and that is another dimension of impact.
(The author is the lead petitioner in the Supreme Court for a
moratorium on GMOs and in which case the TEC was formed. She can be
reached at: arunarod@gmail.com)
Source: http://tinyurl.com/kl3ue88
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