Indian Government says No to BT Brinjal

Quick update: After holding public consultations across several cities in India and meeting up with farmers, scientists, environment activists and ordinary citizens, the Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh has refused to allow BT Brinjal. He said: "We cannot depend on private sector to drive biotechnology research in our agriculture sector."

M.S. Swaminathan, the noted agricultural scientist, has also advised the government to proceed with caution.Since brinjal contains natural toxins, there is a need to be extra careful with BT brinjal, he pointed out. Moreover he was of the view that "there are unquestionable benefits in the short term but also potential risks to human health and our brinjal heritage in the long term. What will be the impact of numerous local strains? Such a collection must be carefully preserved before we permit the extinction of the gifts of thousands of years of natural evolution and human selection."

Should genetically-modified foods be allowed in India? This is the subject of an intense debate that is currently raging across India. And the vegetable that is under the spotlight is the humble brinjal. The common man’s vegetable that finds a pride of place in every Indian kitchen, be it in the south, east, west or north. BT Crops are genetically engineered crops that are able to kill certain pests that infest in them. The BT Brinjal has been developed by Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company (Mahyco) - a subsidiary of the multinational Monsanto - the largest private seed company in India. As it is on the threshold of introducing BT Brinjal, the environment minister Jairam Ramesh is holding ‘public consultations’ in seven cities to arrive at a consensus on whether BT Brinjal should be allowed to be produced.

Like every story, this one too has two sides to it. The argument that is presented by the biotechnologists goes like this: Bt brinjal is harmless and will be a boon to a poor country like India and will actually help solve food crisis and hunger in the world. They argue that resistance to GM foods stems out of ‘fear’ of new technology. The other argument is represented by environmentalists who feel that genetically modified food should not be allowed as there is inadequate scientific understanding of their impact on environment and human health. According to Greenpeace India, “a 2007 study published in the scientific journal Nature reveals that genes appear to operate in a complex network where they react, interact and overlap with each other in ways we still do not understand. This research raises serious questions about the established ways in which we assess the safety of genetically engineered crops.”

Here are 10 top reasons why BT Brinjal (and genetically modified food) spells bad news for India:

1. Inadequate testing to assess impact on human Health: The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the regulatory body under the Ministry of Environment and Forests has assessed BT brinjal to be safe based on bio-safety tests performed in the laboratory, the longest of which is just 90 days on adult rats!

2. GM food is food developed, sold and marketed for profit by companies: Genetically modified foods are like products being manufactured by companies with their own patented technology. Traditionally farmers have harvested their crops year after year by using, saving and exchanging seeds. But once BT brinjal seeds start being sold in the market, farmers will no longer be able to save the seeds and use it for the next season as this would mean lower profits for the biotech company that has patented the technology, developed it and marketed it. This would thus put tremendous pressure on farmers who would become dependent on multinational seed companies for the most important input in farming: the seed. In the long-terms, profit-driven companies could hoard and/or release excess seeds to suit their purpose. Prices of seeds can be controlled by companies and in fact lead to more hunger and poverty if prices of seeds and its end-product (the vegetables/fruit) are too high making it out of reach of the poor family.

3. There is no assurance that BT brinjal will actually provide farmers with a pest-free crop. That’s because it has been developed to resist one type of pest (Shoot Borer). Over time, even this pest will develop resistance and therefore more modification and engineering will be needed to resist mutated pests. It will also not provide resistance to other types of pests.

4. When we produce 2500 varieties of brinjal in India why do we need to engineer it? There are more than 2500 varieties of brinjal that have been developed and grown by Indian farmers over the last 4,000 years. Is it right or even moral for a company (whether national or multinational) to steal from the collective knowledge of traditional Indian farmers to boost their balance sheet and prevent future generations of farmers access to grow their crops in the traditional method. In the long run, such technologies will have a deleterious effect on environment and biodiversity.

5. If GM foods were so good, why has Europe banned cultivation of GM crops? The European Union has banned the cultivation of GM crops. Though the EU allows imports of packaged food products that use GM food, they are required to be labelled as containing GM food so that consumers have the choice of buying it or not.

6. Is BT brinjal safe for consumption? Devinder Sharma, a well-known environment journalist, says that it “has been established that compared to BT bio-pesticide sprays, the concentration of BT toxin in BT brinjal is thousand times more.” Would you actually dare to give such food to a growing child?

7. What happens to consumer choice? If consumers do not wish to consume BT brinjal, there is no way that they will be able to exercise that choice because BT brinjal is totally undistinguishable from the regular brinjal.

8. The motives of the regulatory body are suspect. The GEAC may have given its approval to the BT brinjal but there seems to be a strong conflict of interest as several members of the committee have been involved or associated with the development of BT brinjal. Given the rampant corruption in India, it is only logical that companies are going to use their money muscle to influence policy decisions on GM food.

9. Beware of Monsanto! Once GM seeds are introduced into the environment, it will contaminate the environment and consequently farms that use traditional seeds. Consider this: in Canada and the US where GM crops have been grown for more than a decade, agri-companies have taken legal action against farmers for “patent infringement”. Many of these farmers were not growing these crops by choice, but had unwittingly done so, because their land had got contaminated as a result of other farmers in the area using GM crops. These hapless farmers have faced years of legal harassment from agri-companies like Monsanto.

10. Can GM food actually eradicate world hunger? This is the biggest myth being perpetrated. Says Sharma: “There is no shortage of food in the world. We have 6.5 billion people on Earth and we produce food for 11.5 billion people. If more than one billion people are going to bed hungry, it is because of faulty distribution process rather than unavailability of food.” Can GM crops revive the desperate state of Indian agriculture? No. The fact is that hundreds of tonnes of vegetables produced in India rot because of lack of cold chains, inadequate processing facilities and lack of market access from remote rural areas. Farmer suicides are rampant in many parts of India – it is a result of the increasing debt of farmers who have been forced to take loans from middle men to purchase fertilisers and other inputs to cultivate their farms. We are already witnessing how overuse of pesticides is leading to rapidly declining productivity and farm yield. There is a need to overhaul agriculture in India, develop organic farming techniques, rejuvenate the soil and create marketing channels that will ease the farm-to-market access. For this to happen state governments, agricultural institutes, agricultural scientists, biotechnologists, agri-companies and farmers need to work together and for mutual benefit. GM food on the other hand is aimed at giving agri-companies all the benefit at the cost of other stakeholders.