Tehelka: India’s reckless use of GM crops is a recipe for certain disaster

Dancing With Frankenstein

India’s reckless embrace of Genetically Modified crops is a recipe for certain disaster, warns ARUNA RODRIGUES

ON 13TH FEBRUARY 2008, during the hearing of the PIL on Genetically Modified crops, the Chief Justice of India stated that GM crops give higher yields. The Prime Minister and his cabinet believe it, as is evident from the Centre’s policy to promote GM crops in India. This is an astonishing notion, with no factual basis. It would therefore be well to bell this particular cat and others, by making a start with separating the facts from fiction with regard to Genetic Engineering (GE) and its products GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms).

Myth No.1: Genetically Modified crops give higher yields The first casualty is the myth about their improved yields against conventional agriculture. Currently, worldwide, 99.9 percent of GM crops sown commercially comprise two kinds: First, Bt (Biotech) crops like Bt cotton grown in India, engineered to kill a specific pest, the ‘bollworm’ (not other pests), thereby protecting the crop; and second, Ht (Herbicide Tolerant) GM crops engineered to withstand herbicide spraying against weeds, where the engineered crop will live, but vegetation, beneficial insects and other organisms around it will die, indiscriminately. This 99.9 percent is mainly animal feed, comprising cotton, corn and soy along with canola (mustard oil seed). They provide sheer volumes and lucre for the Industry. None of these GM crops are engineered for higher yields. They are straightforwardly, ‘pesticidal’ (Bt) or herbicide tolerant (to kill weeds). This is the science and the fact. On the other hand, higher yields are conferred by traits in the parental lines that make up the GM crop; these parental lines are the result of farmer inputs over 10,000 years of agriculture. The Intellectual Property is rightfully theirs. It must be remembered that billions of dollars have been spent by the GE companies experimenting on ‘traits’, unsuccessfully. This represents a huge investment of resources that could be better utilised elsewhere because dozens of traits have been successfully launched using conventional and high-tech conventional breeding techniques. Genetic Engineering has conspicuously failed to match these successes.

Myth No. 2: Less pesticide, herbicide use, better economics with GM crops It is not within the scope of this article to analyse the Industry claims of the success of Bt cotton in India on the basis of lower pest attacks of the bollworm and therefore higher output. What can be said straight off is that scientists’ warnings of ‘resistance’ (a response of nature) to both Bt and Ht crops, with super bugs, super weeds and also insect shifts filling an ecological gap, are very much in existence worldwide, and are only growing with each passing year.

Quite contrary to what GM companies are saying therefore, worldwide, herbicide and insecticide use have not gone down with the adoption of GM crops. The experience of the US, Canada and Argentina are amply documented and are clear pointers to the dangers for India if we go down this path. US government data shows a 15 fold increase in herbicide use by 2005, (over a 10 year period), with the adoption of GM herbicide crops in the US. First quarter sales of Monsanto’s herbicide ‘RoundupReady’ are up by just under 50 percent.

This is a good business to be in: you sell a Ht GM crop; but spraying goes up because farmers don’t have to be too careful. The crop won’t die. Remember that it is resistant; after a few years when resistance sets in with super weeds, then the progression is to fiercer spraying and eventually moving on to the next, more lethal class of herbicides. So farmers get trapped on an herbicide treadmill.

GM crops are a hard-nosed business for biotech corporations, based on patents and profits, which farmers must pay for. Without patents, this business would die. This is the litmus test of ‘who really benefits from GM crops’. In the killing fields of Vidharbha for example, about 70 percent of farmer suicides represent Bt cotton farmers, reeling under both crop failures and the unbearable burden of higher input costs, a fact attested by the Tata Institute for Social Sciences and the Mumbai High Court.

The deeper goal is however insidious, and much more serious: nothing less than control over third world agriculture and the world’s food supply by a handful of private Transnational Agribusiness Corporations. Why our government should allow this, or fall for it, is the mystery.

Myth No. 3: GM crops are safe GM crops are not safe; there is growing proof of their hazardous impact on human and animal health and on the environment with each passing year. You simply cannot feed people toxic food. The accepted science with regard to Genetic Engineering is expressed clearly by David Schubert, Professor, Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at the prestigious Salk Institute, USA, in his affidavit for the Supreme Court:

“The GM process itself is highly mutagenic (capable of inducing mutation) and cause plants to make chemicals that they do not normally make, with completely unpredictable consequences — many of these are known to be highly toxic, cause cancer, and cause diseases like Parkinson’s. The claim made about the precision, specificity and safety of plant Genetic Engineering have no scientific basis. It is extremely unwise to allow the introduction of GM crops to India where there is great biological diversity and need for stable food production.”

This is why genetic contamination is an outstanding issue. Contamination is certain because it is a biological fact and irreversible. GMOs will change the molecular structure of our food in perpetuity. The biggest impact will be felt on biodiversity, threatening those very traits that nature supplies, and which may hold the answers for our future food security and global survival: traits for drought and disease resistance; high-yielding traits that GE corporations rely on to engineer their genetic manipulations. This is the central problem.

Myth No. 4: GM crops have been tested as safe for human consumption At a time when other countries are getting tougher about GM crops, India is relaxing norms; pushing ahead with reckless haste. India generally follows the US regulation on GM and borrows wholesale from it. It might then come as a surprise that the US Food and Drug Administration does not approve any GM crop as safe for human consumption. Members of the European Parliament have called for a Community response to the threat posed by the introduction of “invasive alien species and alien genotype;” “to ban the introduction of Genetically Modified Organisms and evaluate the potential threat to biodiversity posed by their introduction.”

Yet India is trail-blazing with this hazardous technology, with a staggering range of every conceivable GM vegetable, grain and oilseed, in effect, all our food, such as no government anywhere has contemplated. We are the first country to undertake large-scale pre-commercial trials of Bt brinjal; Bt Bhindi (okra) in field trials is also a universal first. China has backed off from commercialising GM rice. We have not.

Incomprehensibly, bio-safety decisions by the Indian Government are based on secretive Industry studies by the very crop developer that will benefit from its introduction. The Government also astoundingly accepts Industry demands of confidentiality or CBI (Confidential Business Information), overriding public safety. This is of course unconscionable; it flouts every ethical norm and yardstick of objectivity. It works only to sanction fraud. Where does this leave India as a supposedly functioning democracy and the health and future quality of life of its people?

On the other hand, a German court, in a decision involving a Bt corn, which had passed the approval process in the EU 10 years ago, forced Monsanto to publish its dossier on a 90- day rat feeding study. When leading independent scientists subjected the study to hard scrutiny, Monsanto’s own data showed the GM corn variety to be toxic.

This February, French President Sarkozy banned another variety of Bt corn (also for animal feed), the only GM crop grown on French soil. The provisional High Authority on GMOs found “a certain number of new negative scientific facts which notably impact fauna and flora.” The UK does not grow any GM crops; Poland and Scotland have moratoriums. Ireland, Wales and Cyprus are moving toward declaring themselves GM-free. In the US, four district courts have ruled that the US Department of Agriculture has acted illegally, for not conducting proper environmental impact assessments, even calling the “USDA’s regulatory heedlessness arbitrary and capricious” and “an unequivocal violation of a clear congressional mandate.” As a result of this landmark judgement commercial sales of GM alfalfa are banned nationwide.

Monsanto’s Dubious Track Record It is very relevant to cite Monsanto’s 100 yearold track record of how it serves society:

This is the company that said Agent Orange and PCB’s (PolyChlorinated Biphenyls, of Bhopal infamy) were safe.

This agri-business giant that now makes GMOs owns Terminator technology in partnership with the US government, fudges, bribes and falsifies data to show its GMOs are safe.

It bribed 140 Indonesian officials to get Bt cotton approved without an environment impact assessment and also tried to bribe Canadian government officials to get its GM Bovine Growth Hormone approved without further study.

The US Patent and Trademark Office rejected four key Monsanto patents related to GM crops that the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) challenged because the agricultural giant is using them to harass, intimidate, sue — and in some cases bankrupt — American farmers.

The Alabama Court Judgement in February 2002 best describes the sort of business that Monsanto is in. Court documents revealed that the company withheld evidence about the safety of their PCBS because “We can’t afford to lose one dollar of business.” Residents of the town were being poisoned by their factory. Monsanto was found to be guilty on six counts including ‘Outrage’ which according to Alabama law is conduct “so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilised society.”

We must be judged by the company we keep. The RTI data provided to GreenPeace proves just how cosy the relationship between the regulators, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) and the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation (RCGM) and the GM Biotech industry is. The regulator’s approvals mortgage India’s farming livelihoods and systems, bio-safety and the health of its citizens. The Indian Government has gone one step further with the enactment of an agreement with the USA, called the KIA, (Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture) which will give Monsanto access to India’s genetic resources. What I and three co-petitioners asked of the Supreme Court, in view of the sheer weight of the evidence against GM crops and the way they are approved in India, was a ban on the release of GMOs in line with the Precautionary Principle, especially in our food crops, which must not be contaminated. Such a ban is necessary at least until we have in place a transparent system functioning under a tough and rigorous biosafety protocol that is open to scrutiny by the international scientific fraternity and civil society. This is not just rational and scientific; it has a firm basis in law that is appropriate and reasonable.

The gravest threat is to global ecological damage from the twin threats that face our world: First, of ‘climate change’ and with it, the unique risks of Genetic Engineering and its products GMOs. Climate change, after years of cover-up and disinformation is now headlined everyday. In theory at least, there can be a rollback if we act decisively. On the other hand, the greatest danger posed by GE is that globally, we are being subjected to the same spin as climate change was for years. This time however, every action that releases untested GMOs, takes us to the brink. Today, in India, we stand ‘on the brink’ like no other nation. The crisis we face requires a profound reassessment of just who we are as a people and what we stand for. Grappling with honest issues of the debate and making decisions based on such an assessment is one thing. Committing our country to the disastrous and irreversible con sequences of this technology by covering up scientific facts and promoting the fiction as truth is completely unacceptable. In my book, given the magnitude of the sell-out of India’s national interest, this is treasonable.

Aruna Rodrigues is the main Petitioner to the SC in a PIL filed in 2005. This article is based on the evidence submitted in Court, which includes statements of leading world scientists prepared for the Court