GMW: Calls to Ban GM Crops Intensify After Rats Suffer

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GMW: Calls to Ban GM Crops Intensify After Rats Suffer

" GM WATCH " <info

Mon, 6 Jun 2005 14:19:14 +0100

 

 

 

 

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Calls to Ban GM Crops Intensify After Rats Suffer

Ranjit Devraj

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=28958

 

NEW DELHI, Jun 6 (IPS) - Environmentalists and food security activists

in India have renewed calls for a moratorium on genetically modified

(GM) foods and crops after rats reportedly secretly tested with GM corn

diets by the U.S. agribusiness and biotech giant Monsanto developed

blood and organ abnormalities.

 

Monsanto's tests are already the subject of brewing controversy in

Europe, where the transnational corporation is facing increasing

resistance

to its products and where legal initiatives are being mounted to compel

bureaucrats to make public the full results of the tests.

 

So far, Monsanto has maintained that its 1,139-page report could not be

revealed, even to the European Food Safety Authority, on the grounds

that it " contains confidential business information which could be of

commercial use to our competitors. "

 

In India, a country with 600 million farmers, the results of the tests

have been appended to public interest litigation filed in May seeking

Supreme Court intervention in India's own GM programme by a group of

prominent anti-GM activists, including Devinder Sharma of the Forum for

Biotechnology and Food Security and P.V. Satheesh of the Deccan

Development Society (DDS), based in southern Andhra Pradesh state.

 

While the litigation is pending Sharma has teamed up with Suman Sahai,

who leads the internationally known group Gene Campaign, to demand that

the government urgently publish all food and feed safety research on GM

crops in India, including cabbage, cauliflower, brinjal (aubergine),

potato, tomato and staples like rice.

 

" The methodology used must be made known, as also the laboratories

where safety tests are conducted, and all decisions on GM crops and foods

taken in accordance with the provisions of the Cartagena Protocol on

Biosafety, which already requires public participation and to which India

is signatory, " Sharma said in an IPS interview.

 

Both Sharma and Sahai said it is becoming increasingly important that

food and feed safety data not be accepted from companies, but generated

in government laboratories and in a transparent manner.

 

Although India has a string of well-established agricultural

laboratories that compare to the finest in the world, Indian

authorities had

chosen to accept data generated by Monsanto before accepting the

company's

GM cotton for large-scale cultivation -- and this has already proved

disastrous for farmers growing the crop.

 

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) last month banned two

varieties of Monsanto's GM cotton for use in southern Andhra Pradesh

state, where farmers have committed suicide by the hundred after severe

crop failures last year.

 

And in retaliation for the refusal of Mahyco-Monsanto (the Indian

subsidiary) to compensate the farmers, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YSR

Reddy last week ordered the company blacklisted in his state. He has also

demanded that state authorities be consulted before the GEAC grants

approvals for cultivating GM crops in Andhra Pradesh.

 

''Reddy's courageous decision will serve as an eye-opener for the

Parliamentary Select Committee that is presently examining the

controversial

Seed Bill 2004. The proposed bill allows the seed industry to escape

free without paying any compensation for any crop losses. All it suggests

is that in case of crop failures, farmers should knock on the doors of

the consumer courts,'' said Sharma.

 

According to Sharma and Sahai, more than growing GM crops in India, the

central government needs urgently to address the loosely regulated

import of GM foods into this country until clear safety data generated

independently and subjected to a public risk-benefit analysis is

available.

 

Both said the question must be asked in this country why transnationals

are gaining a reputation for being eager to force genetically altered

foods on unsuspecting populations and then shying away from making

public the results of research trials -- as Monsanto appears to be

doing in

the case of the secret trials on rats with GM corn.

 

In the United States itself, the Centre for Food Safety has alerted the

Environmental Protection Agency on the Monsanto trials and said that

the rat study showed ''unreasonable adverse effects,'' and these should

have been drawn to the attention of regulators, because failure do to do

so was a potentially criminal offence.

 

The activists suggest that the Monsanto study should be reason enough

for a serious overhaul of a draft Biotechnology Policy drawn up by the

Indian government and which has been criticised as jettisoning the

elements of precaution, safety and public participation.

 

They feared that if the new policy is passed, health effects of the

kind reported in the leaked Monsanto study would not even be detected

since there is no requirement for testing. Entire populations could be

exposed to untested foods and it would be too late should health

impacts be

detected, they said.

 

''In a country where there is a 50-million-tonne food grain surplus

there is little reason to invest in costly technology which is of

doubtful

value and which increasingly is found to be risky,'' said Sahai.

 

''India is a storehouse of food and agricultural diversity and has many

options to offer for food and nutritional security. There appears

little reason to opt for potentially dangerous GM foods especially when

regulations are demonstrably weak,'' she added.

 

(END/2005)

 

 

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