Stay with science, go slow on GM crops Transgenic technology

Transgenic technology, unlike other technologies, is uncontrollable and irreversible after environmental release. Living Modified Organisms (LMOs), as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety refers to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), propagate themselves and proliferate. This process cannot be reversed. Therefore, any deliberate environmental release has to be only after thorough, independent, peer-reviewed assessment of long-term implications. The precautionary principle is a cornerstone because of the unpredictability and time lag of serious outcomes manifesting in highly complex living systems, and their irreversibility. To draw a parallel, not a single one of 330 invasive species (for example, lantana, parthenium) in India has yet been eliminated, despite estimated damage of Rs 8.3 trillion by just 10 of them!

More than 25 years after their introduction, GM crops are still globally grown in just 29 out of 172 countries. Moreover, 91 per cent of GM crop area continues to be in just five countries (USA, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, India). Most countries of Europe and Japan, Israel, Russia, Malaysia etc., do not grow GM crops. In China, a first adopter, Bt cotton area has been declining and non-GM hybrid technology is used for rapeseed/mustard.

Only two traits are present in over 85 per cent of GM crops grown — herbicide tolerance (HT, where crop plants are modified to withstand large amounts of toxic weed-killing chemicals), and/or insect resistance (pesticidal toxin, usually Bt, is produced inside the plant). In 2000, 761 scientists warned of adverse impacts. Scientific evidence shows that adverse impacts are expanding.

HT crops result in not only ecological damage, but human health impacts for consumers. Like tobacco, once declared safe, the effects take long to manifest. Beekeepers say that HT mustard will affect honey production and contaminated honey will damage exports. As regards human health, probable carcinogenicity, neuro-toxicity, reproductive health problems, organ damage etc. have been documented by independent research on GM crops and associated herbicides, once claimed by developers and regulators to be “safe”. Like thousands of doctors in other countries, over 100 eminent Indian doctors have conveyed their concerns to the Prime Minister and asked that no HT food crops be released and the planted GM mustard be uprooted before flowering.

It is claimed that DMH-11 is not an HT crop as the use of the Bar gene — which confers a herbicide tolerance trait — is essentially for the pollination control technology in creating hybrids, and glufosinate herbicide will only be used during seed production. The reality is that by virtue of the Bar gene being present in both parental lines, and thereby also in all their hybrid offspring, this GM mustard can withstand application of a toxic weedkiller, glufosinate, including in farmers’ fields. It should therefore have been assessed as an HT crop. If governments, for over 10 years, have been aware of the illegal planting of herbicide tolerant cotton and rampant illegal use of glyphosate on such HT cotton, and have been unable or unwilling to stop this, what “regulatory process” will now prevent farmers in search of low-cost weeding options from spraying glufosinate on herbicide tolerant mustard?

The ongoing litigations in the Supreme Court are about serious shortcomings in our regulatory regime. Minutes of meetings of the regulatory body GEAC and the “guidelines and protocols” on the regulator’s website reflect an absence of regulatory protocols for HT crops. And yet a crop with an HT trait is being released in the environment! The technical expert committee (TEC) appointed by the SC and the unanimous multi-party reports of two parliamentary standing committees have exposed serious lapses and inadequacies in bio-safety testing. They all advised that herbicide tolerant crops, which GM Mustard is, should not be released in Indian conditions. Even the government-nominated experts in the TEC asked for a ban on HT crops. The government, surely, cannot call them unscientific!

Testing on GM mustard has been done with test protocols evolved by the crop developer, and most tests were done by the applicant. No independent health expert participated in the committees that looked at GM mustard safety. To this day, biosafety data of GM mustard has not been posted on the regulator’s website for independent scrutiny.

Initial publication by the developer’s team publicised GM mustard’s herbicide tolerance ability as a great benefit to farmers. When strong evidence of the hazards of HT crops and herbicides emerged, claims of yield increase were made, with a higher yield of 25-30 per cent being projected. When it was shown that the yield increase claims were based on comparison with an old, non-hybrid variety, and there were several higher-yielding mustard hybrids that should have been the comparators, it is claimed that DMH-11’s parental lines will be very useful for breeding better hybrids, though the countries with the highest yields in the world do not use this GM HT technique. The benefits claimed, hence, are therefore questionable.

It is claimed GM mustard is necessary to reduce India’s edible oil import bill. Most of the edible oil we import is not GM oil, but cheap, non-GM, palmolein oil. For mustard yield improvement, safe agro-ecological solutions such as the “system of mustard intensification” are showing significant yield increases. This technology should be promoted, not GM HT mustard of dubious yields and safety.

What is the urgent necessity for GM mustard release when the Supreme Court’s Technical Expert Committee and two unanimous reports of multi-party parliamentary standing committees have recommended that HT crops should be banned in India and the precautionary principle followed?

The writer is Vice President of the BNHS and member of the GOI’s National Conservation Strategy Committee, NBWL and NCEPC. She chaired a working group for Maharashtra government’s 25 year action plan for agriculture.

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