On this World Environment Day, let us resolve to keep GM out of our lives and environment.

Hungry has recently burnt 1000 acres of Monsanto's standing GM corn crop. 

The timing is perfect. Only a few days before the World Environment Day, Japan cancelled its import consignment of white wheat from the United States. This triggered a global alarm with the European Union declaring it will go in for stricter testing of wheat imports, and China, and the Philippines announcing they will be keeping a close watch. Meanwhile, South Korea to joined Japan in halting US wheat imports.

The global alert following Japan’s decision to stop US wheat imports arose after the US Department of Agriculture began investigation into the detection of unapproved genetically modified wheat plants in a crop field in Oregon. This particular wheat strain was actually developed by the agribusiness giant Monsanto, before it shut down its field trails in 2004. Nine years after the field trials were halted, the mysterious presence of GM wheat plants have triggered a worldwide alarm.

The theme of this year’s Environment Day is Think-Eat-Save. Nothing could better illustrate the theme than the need to protect and preserve staple foods and other agricultural commodities from the menace of GM contamination. No amount of regulation, considering that the US has an effective and rigorous mechanism of following biosafety protocols, has been able to stop polluting food. In America alone, the USDA calculates that between 2003 and 2007 there had been 712 violations of which 98 could be responsible for unauthorised crops being cultivated.

It is therefore time to first think.

GM crops are being promoted and pushed on the promise of increasing crop productivity, reducing the use of chemical pesticides and addressing hunger and malnutrition deficiency. On all these fronts, the GM technology has fallen flat. While there is no GM crop in the world which increases crop productivity, the promise of reducing chemical pesticides thereby making the environment much clean too has belied expectations. According to Doug Gurian-Sherman, a scientist with the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists, the total usage of chemical pesticides have increased by 183 million kilos since the GM crops were introduced in the US in 1996.

In India, the story is no different. The only GM crop under cultivation is Bt cotton. Since approximately 50 per cent of the pesticides used in India are on cotton alone, the introduction of Bt cotton was expected to make a dramatic reduction in pesticides application. As per a study conducted by the Nagpur-based Central Institute for Cotton Research, pesticides usage has gone up from Rs 649-crore in 2005 to Rs 880-crore in 2010 when roughly 90 per cent of the area under cotton in India was of Bt cotton variety.

In India too, there have been quite a significant number of violations in regulation of GM crop research trials. Some years back, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had directed the State Administration to uproot the GM maize field trails in Pusa. After Nitish Kumar raised objections, the Ministry of Environment & Forests has re framed its policy and made it clear that no GM crop trials will be held without the approval of the State Government. Since then, at least seven States – Kerala, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Odisha, Bihar and Rajasthan – have stopped field trails of GM crops.

The other related theme of this year’s Environment Day is “Eat”.

Although food products made available for consumption comes laced with dangerous levels of adulteration, including contamination with deadly chemical pesticides, storage chemicals and ripening agents, GM foods too are a serious matter of concern as far as human health is concerned. Consumers can no longer take refuge behind the approvals being granted by the Food & Drug Administration as well as the Food Safety and Standards Authority. Awareness has to be generated at the mass levels so that people can themselves take control of what they eat.

The nation-wide opposition to the commercialisation of Bt brinjal – which, if approved, would have been India’s first GM food crop – resulted in a moratorium on the GM crop. This was a direct fallout of an effective campaign launched by civil society groups to educated and create awareness among consumers. The introduction in April in Parliament of the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority (BRAI) bill will take away such rights. Over-riding the provisions of Right to Information Act as well as certain clauses that restricts the intervention of civil courts will provide an opportunity for the GM industry to fast-track the commercialisation of its controversial products.

On this environment day, it is therefore important that we question the validity of such legislation. Several studies have shown the serious and harmful impacts of GM crops on human health, environment and biodiversity. More recently, in a path-breaking study the well-known French scientist Dr Gilles-Eric Seralini has conclusively demonstrated how dangerous the GM foods can be for human health. This damming research should itself make us sit back and think whether we need such foods or not.

In long-term feeding studies conducted on rats, Dr Seralini has found that rats fed with GM maize over a two year period, which corresponds to the entire human life span, the animals had developed huge kidney and mammary gland tumours, had problem with their body organs and showed increased mortality's. This research had created a huge international furore with the pro-GM industry scientists ganging up. But nevertheless in the midst of charges and counter-charges, what is being missed out is the need to replicate this long-term study on rats.

The third and the final segment of the theme is “Save”.

I think in addition to minimising food wastage, which results in approximately 40 to 50 per cent of the food produced globally going into waste bins, what is important is to also focus on unwanted food products being created in the name of technological development. At one time, the most popular pesticide – DDT – was considered to be absolutely safe. Prior to it, Agent Orange gas used by US in Vietnam too was touted as safe for human beings. More recently, trans-fatty acids were considered safe. Over a period, all these claims were found to be completely wrong and mischievous. 

Similarly, the safety of GM foods is also under the scanner. Hungry is latest to burn the standing GM crops. Instead of blindly following the industry prescriptions, what is important is to save ourselves from the harmful impacts of such unwanted and risky products. Let us therefore use this year’s Environment Day celebrations to create more awareness about GM foods. This can only happen if each one of use first thinks, then eats, and finally tries to save. 

Bt brinjal too can create super weeds.

Bt brinjal too can create super weeds. 

Gene flow from a transgenic plants has remained a contentious issue. In the absence of experimental data, the task to pinpoint exactly as to how much is the potential risk, especially in centres of diversity, becomes daunting. The GM industry has often used lack of experimental data to show there is no cause for concern. It has happened in India, in the case of Bt cotton, and more recently when the moratorium on Bt brinjal came in 2010.

John Samuels of the Novel Solanaceae Crops Project, Penzance, Cornwall, UK, has raised some valid concerns, based on available data, in an excellent paper published in Trends in Biotechnology (Vol 31, Issue 6, June 2013). Admitting that transgene flow from Bt brinjal to wild, weedy and cultivated relatives is a major biosafety concern, he writes in an article Transgene Flow from Bt Brinjal: a real Risk? (URL: http://www.cell.com/trends/biotechnology/fulltext/S0167-7799(13)00068-1): "in preliminary risk assessment tests in India in 2007, only four spiny species were tested for interfertility with S.melongena  (http://www.envfor.nic.in/divisions/csurv/geac/bt_brinjal.html). They found only Solanum incanumL. (the nearest wild relative of brinjal) to be crossable; however, the production of hybrid progeny was not investigated." With such limited scientific studies available, obviously gene flow was considered to be not much of a problem. 

Citing various reasons like inadequate experimental methodologies and erroneous nomenclature of the parent species, John Samuel tells us that the biosafety implications of hybridisation remained compromised. Looking through the research data now available, he says that six wild relative species and four cultivated species have the potential to crossbred with the transgenic Bt brinjal. I have taken this table out from the article for an easy understanding. 

Table 1 Solanum species of India known to cross with brinjal

	Species	Common name	Status
	S. aethiopicum L.	Scarlet eggplant	Cultivated
	S. cumingii Dunal	Wild brinjal	Wild
	S. incanum L.	Bitter tomato	Wild
	S. insanum L.	Weedy brinjal	Wild
	S. macrocarpon L.	Gboma eggplant	Cultivated
	S. marginatum L.f.	White-margined nightshade	Wild/introduced
	S. ovigerum Dunal	Brinjal landraces	Cultivated
	S. torvum Sw.	Pea eggplant	Sometimes cultivated/introduced
	S. violaceum Ortega	Indian nightshade	Wild
	S. virginianum L.	Bitter brinjal	Wild

  
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

His conclusion: "Furthermore, the risk assessment of pollen-mediated transgene flow from Bt brinjal, if cultivated in Bangladesh or the Philippines, should not rely on the inadequate, previously undertaken ERA (Environmental Risk Assessment) tests." Hope the scientists as well as the science administrators are listening. Especially in the light of latest revelations that show how super weeds are becoming a nuisance in United States and Canada. 

GM crops should go back to the lab

Some weeks ago, I was addressing students of molecular biology at the Kerala Agricultural University campus in Thiruvananthapuram. During the question-answer session, I asked how many of them would like to take up agricultural biotechnology as a career. To my surprise, only a couple of hands went up.

The answer I got probably points to the future of agricultural biotechnology in India. Most students wanted to go into animal biotechnology and human genetics, but not into crop biotechnology. The reason they gave was that they did not see a future for crop biotechnology, given the social backlash against it. Well, I am aware that this class is not an exact representation of the national mood among students, but surely it tells us a lot about the way society, more importantly the younger generation, perceives genetic engineering.

So, when the Supreme Court-appointed Technical Expert Committee (TEC) recommended a 10-year moratorium on all field trials of GM food crops, I was not surprised. The expert panel had merely echoed the concerns and apprehensions that society at large has towards such crops.

Knowing the casual manner in which large-scale field trials are held across the country, the absence of a regulatory mechanism, and the failure to document the damage transgenic crops have inflicted on humans and the environment during, before and after such trials, the committee has called for invoking the “precautionary principle.”

A few months ago, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture tabled on August 9 its report Cultivation of Genetically Modified Food Crops: Prospects and Effects. After an exhaustive interaction with stakeholders, and considering the impact genetically modified food crops have on biodiversity, human health, the environment and the future of farming, it recommended: “for the time being all research and development activities on transgenic crops should be carried out only in containment, the ongoing field trials in all States should be discontinued forthwith.” In a way, the Parliamentary Standing Committee and TEC are saying the same thing.

Three years after Bt Brinjal — which, if allowed, would have been India’s first GM food crop — was put on indefinite hold, the reports of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture and the TEC are pointers to swelling opposition to the manner in which GM crops are being pushed. Although many State governments have already refused permission for field trials of GM crops, I don't understand why Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar is time and again appealing to Chief Ministers to put GM research back on the agenda. Chairman of the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (SAC-PM), Dr. C.N.R. Rao, too has lamented the lack of a “science-informed, evidence-based approach” in the debate.

In a desperate bid to support GM crops, it is often said that conventional agriculture technologies may be inadequate to meet India’s food security challenges. The other objection is that the debate is not “science-based.” Let us look at both arguments. As far as the role of GM crops in boosting food security needs is concerned, this argument is not “evidence-based.” First, there is no GM crop anywhere in the world which increases crop productivity. In fact, even the U.S. Department of Agriculture acknowledges that the productivity of GM soya and GM corn in the U.S. is less than the conventional varieties. Moreover, the prevailing drought in the U.S. has conclusively shown that it is only non-GM crops that have withstood the vagaries of weather.

In India, on June 1, a record 82.3 million tonnes surplus of wheat and rice was stored. This surplus existed at a time when an estimated 320 million people went to bed hungry. Mr. Pawar is making all efforts to export a large chunk of food stocks or make open market releases, but no serious effort is being made to feed the hungry. In fact, since 2001-03, India has been holding on an average anything between 50 to 60 million tonnes of foodgrains and yet its ranking in the Global Hunger Index shows no improvement.

Food insecurity, therefore, is not the result of any production shortfall. To ensure that farmers do not produce more, and thereby add to existing storage problems, the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) has frozen the wheat price at last year’s level. Paying more to farmers would entail more production. This does not make any economic sense. After all, the farmer too is impacted by rising inflation. Why penalise farmers for the government’s inability to handle and store surplus foodgrain?

The fact remains that food production is being deliberately kept low, and only enough to meet basic food security needs. Provide market price to wheat and rice growers, and I am sure production will go up manifold.

SAC-PM is a committee made up of distinguished scientists. Although the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) had given the green signal for commercial cultivation of Bt Brinjal, the SAC-PM should take note of the 19-page submission by the then Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh; the analysis is the best “science-based” justification for stopping GM food crops.

Even when the Bt Brinjal debate was hot, I had pointed out the inability of the scientific community to conduct long-term feeding trials on rats. Internationally, the practice is to have 90-day feeding trials, which corresponds to 24 years of human lifespan — and that’s what the GEAC followed. I had always wondered why the industry as well as the scientific community was not conducting feeding trials for two years, which means the entire human lifespan. Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini, professor of molecular biology at the Caen University in France, finally did it. He recently published the findings of the two-year study on the long-term toxicity of GM maize NK 603, engineered to resist Roundup herbicide — and as expected the industry was up in arms.

In these first-ever long-term feeding trials on rats, published in the scientific journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, Prof. Séralini and his team observed that “females developed fatal mammary tumours and pituitary disorders. Males suffered liver damage, developed kidney and skin tumours and experienced problems with their digestive system.” The team also found that even lower doses of GM corn and Roundup weedicides resulted in serious health impacts. Moreover, 50 per cent male and 70 per cent female rats died prematurely. The tumours were 2.5 times bigger than what would normally appear in the control population.

As expected, the study was branded “bogus,” “inadequate” and of course “unscientific.” Séralini answered the industry’s main criticism pointing out that the species of rat used was the same that the biotech giant Monsanto had used in its research trials. Moreover, the sample size was as per the recommendations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) protocol for GM food safety toxicology studies. Séralini’s experiment has amplified the need for long-term human safety trials, which I think the SAC-PM should be primarily asking the Department of Biotechnology to focus on. SAC-PM needs to review more scientific literature before making any broad and sweeping assertions.

At a time when GM crops hold no promise of higher crop production, the latest long-term scientific research on the impacts on health warrants repeated trials under all environments. As suggested by TEC and the Standing Committee, more experiments are needed on farm animals.

Since science is answerable to society, and cannot be allowed to operate in a vacuum, this is the least India can do to dispel any fear. #

Source: GM Crops should go back to the lab, The Hindu, Nov 8, 2012

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/gm-crops-should-go-back-to-the-lab/article4074872.ece#

How to push GM crops by strangulating regulations

Government seems to be hell bent upon forcing GM food on us by proposing quick approvals to the industry under the BRAI Act.  “We will have 9 billion mouths to feed on this earth by 2050 and there will not be enough food for all of us which is why we need to make technological interventions like GM crop to produce more food.” 

At a time when food prices are soaring and agricultural land is increasingly turning into housing societies and shopping malls, increasing food production and providing food security for all times to come to all population is indeed a challenging task. We are repeatedly told, by scientists, economists and politicians, that as population grows in a geometric proportion, the country has to embark new technologies to produce more food. GM crops are therefore being pushed as the only alternative the world has got.   

This argument cuts ice with the leaders as well as the gullible masses. This is however not true. There is no shortage of food globally. The reality is that for a human population of around 7 billion, the world produces food for at least 11.5 billion people. In terms of calories, against the acceptable per capita norm of 2400 to 2500 kcal, what is available is 4,600 kcal. So in reality we actually produce double the quantity of food than what we need today. We have more than enough food to feed the people even by the year 2050 when the earth’s population reaches 9 billion.

The need is to ensure that the available food reaches the hungry.  It is not a crisis of production, but is more of a political problem relating to access and distribution.

Take the case of India. It has one third of world’s hungry population – roughly 300 million people -- deprived of food despite the availability of a continuous surplus of 60 million tonne of food grains. I have always said that if we are really serious and sincere in addressing hunger and poverty, the time is now. We have huge food surplus with us, and at the same time India alone has the world’s largest population of hungry. Why can’t we make the surplus food available to the needy? Why don’t be launch a food security programme that builds on self-reliance rather than depend on entitlement doles for the poor? Why do we want to go in for genetically modified (GM) or transgenic crops, which are unhealthy and environmentally damaging, and thereby create more problems?

To me this is sheer madness.

Why GM?

GM crops are developed through insertion of alien genes from different species which, it is claimed, gives the crop an ability to withstand pests among other improved traits that are incorporated. However, several studies have indicated serious side effects of consuming GM food on animal and human health especially genetic defects seen in the next generation. At the same time, the environmental risks outweigh the potential benefits that are being claimed.

GM crops are primarily being promoted in the name of increasing productivity. There can be no bigger lie.

Let me make it clear that there is not a GM crop that increases productivity. In fact, the biotechnology industry has very cleverly infused the illusion of enhanced productivity by treating reduction in crop losses as increase in productivity. Take the case of Bt cotton. It has been pushed in the name of increasing crop productivity. In reality, Bt cotton acts more or less like a biological pesticide and like any other chemical pesticide reduces crop losses. Increase in crop productivity will only come through a genetic breakthrough, which is not the case in case of GM crops. The last time the world witnessed a genetic breakthrough in productivity was at the time high-yielding crop varieties were developed that helped usher in Green Revolution.

For the sake of discussion, let me illustrate. Chemical pesticides are applied on standing crops to control pests. By doing so, pesticides reduce crop losses. GM crops, as I said earlier, perform the role of biological pesticides. By killing certain pests, GM crops also reduce crop losses. Why is that while we consider GM crops to be indirectly increasing productivity by reducing crop losses whereas we refuse to accept that chemical pesticides increase crop productivity? Why we refuse to give credit to chemical pesticides for increase in crop yield, and if not then why should we hold GM crops responsible for increasing productivity? (For a detailed analysis on the yield factor, please refer to my analysis: Do GM crops increase yield, the answer is No. http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.com/2009/03/do-gm-crop-increase-yield-answer-is-no.html)

In India, only one GM crop has been approved for commercialisation. It is being generally claimed that cotton production has gone up because of the increased acreage under Bt cotton. In the last 5 years, the weather in the cotton belt has generally remained fine benefiting even the limited non-Bt cotton acreage. Whenever the crop does well, the credit goes to the improved varieties. And whenever the production declines, the blame invariably shifts to aberrant weather. I wonder when scientists will start acknowledging the role weather plays in increasing crop production!

Let me give you an example. Gujarat is hailed as a model of high production as far as Bt Cotton is concerned. In fact, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which for all practical purposes is an industry body, had even sung virtues of praise for Bt cotton to be primarily responsible for 9 per cent growth in agriculture.  am not denying that cotton crop in general did well in Gujarat. But the other day I met former Minister Dr Y K Alagh in Ahmedabad who told me that the agriculture growth that IFPRI had worked out was hyped. It was something around 6 per cent, and not 9 per cent.

Nevertheless, what is not being acknowledged is the expansion in irrigation area in Gujarat. In recent years, irrigation was brought to an additional 35 per cent acreage as a result of which crop production took an upswing. Bt cotton too was a major beneficiary.

Another argument that I often hear is that GM crops reduce the application of chemical pesticides as a result of which the environment becomes much safer and cleaner. Given the acreage presently under Bt cotton, the use of pesticides on cotton should have come down by now. But it hasn’t. According to the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) Nagpur, the usage of pesticides too has gone up. In 2005, Rs 649-crore worth of chemical pesticides was used on cotton. In 2010, when roughly 90 per cent area under cotton is of Bt cotton variety, the pesticides usage has gone up to Rs 880.40-crore.

The other question that I am often asked is that if Bt cotton is not all so good than how come farmers are increasingly bringing more acreage under the transgenic seed. I agree that the acreage under Bt cotton is over 90 per cent today. But what is little known is that the industries along with the agricultural scientists have very cleverly removed the non-Bt cotton seed from the market. Bt cotton trait has been incorporated in hybrid cotton varieties, which means farmers have to buy seed afresh every year. They go to the market, and find only Bt cotton seed available. So what choice are they left with except to buy Bt cotton seed. The area under Bt cotton has therefore multiplied.  

Remember, if Bt cotton was the saviour, there should have been a marked reduction in farmers suicides in the past 5 years. More than 70 per cent farmer suicides still remain confined to the cotton belt.

The BRAI Act

After the open-ended moratorium imposed on the introduction of Bt brinjal, the industry has been aggressively pushing for a tougher regulatory regime that minimises the role of the general public. The proposed BRI Act came in handy. The 2009 version of the bill, which was leaked out, and caused enough public uproar, actually sought to muzzle opposition (Sec 63) to GM by seeking to impose fines and imprisonment on voices raising concerns on GM crops. After the outrage died down, another version of the bill has been put in public domain.  In my understanding, the grip of the GM-promoting companies will be further strengthened if the draft Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Act is passed by the Parliament in its present form.

The idea of an independent authority to regulate biotechnology and offer single window clearance to new techniques was mooted by a task force headed by Dr M S Swaminathan in 2003-04. However, there were caveats mentioned for approving any biotechnology regulatory policy: the safety of the environment, wellbeing of farming families, ecological and economic sustainability of farming systems, health and nutrition security of consumers, safeguarding of home and external trade and biosecurity of the nation.

The task force also recommended that “transgenics should be resorted to when other options to achieve the desired objectives are either not available or not feasible.” Though the Agriculture Ministry accepted the task force’s report in 2004, the draft BRAI Act contains provisions which go against these very recommendations and hence invite strong objections. At the same time I don’t understand when the United States can have a three-window regulatory system in place for GM crops (although not perfect) why does India have to rush through with a single-window clearance house. 

First, it is now being increasingly realised and accepted that GM crop is not safe for the environment. While dealing with target pests, it also affects the friendly insects and creates superweeds thus creating imbalance in nature. The GM crop will also spell a death knell for traditional varieties of the same crop. For instance, India currently has thousands of varieties of Brinjal but introduction of Bt Brinjal would have led to contamination and gradual elimination of the traditional varieties. Meanwhile, the emergence of superweeds has assumed menacing proportion in the US and Canada.  

This trait of transgenic crop is against the spirit of the Biodiversity Act, which lists provisions for conservation of flora and fauna. I have never understood how can scientists and planners talk of preserving biodiversity and promoting transgenics in the same breath !

GM crop do not ensure economic sustainability of farming systems. As mentioned above not only farmers have to buy costly GM seeds every year, the expenditure on pesticides and fertilizers increases manifolds. Still more importantly, the implication on human health is the least studied. Why risky and unhealthy food should be pushed on unsuspecting consumers when there is no shortage of food and nutrient crops. 

The regulatory authority envisaged under the draft bill is going to be under the Ministry of Science and Technology which points towards conflict of interest because this is the ministry with a mandate to promote biotechnology.

Further, the BRAI setup will replace the current regulatory regime which is governed by the Environment Protection Act’s 1989 Rules to protect health, environment and nature from risks of biotechnology.  This protective attitude should also be adopted in the BRAI Act and the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare should be the nodal agency in regulatory biotechnology.

An all-powerful five-member committee (two being part-time members) is being suggested under the draft bill with “distinguished” scientists or senior bureaucrats as its three permanent members. This again highlights the fact that promoters of biotechnology will be appointed as regulators. The committee should instead have eminent people from all walks of life to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. In addition, several committees are envisioned in the bill but all of them have been accorded advisory role with the five-member panel being supreme.

An environment appraisal panel has been proposed which will be consulted in case of organisms and products having environmental impact. However, the five-member authority can override the panel’s opinion in case of difference of opinion thus making the whole set up an exercise in futility.

Under the federal structure of India, agriculture is a state subject but the proposed legislation gives only advisory role to the state governments in the form of “State Biotechnology Regulatory Advisory Committee” with no decision-making powers. It should be noted that seven state governments have already rejected field trials of GM crops and during anti-Bt Brinjal campaign last year, 13 state governments had said no to cultivation of Bt Brinjal in their areas. Recently, State governments have been given the powers to refuse field trials of GM crops, which are a welcome initiative and goes with the democratic norms. The BRAI Act seems to be a new tool to force GM crops down the throats of state governments.

Section 28 of the BRAI Act classifies some information as confidential which can’t be supplied even under the Right To Information (RTI) Act thereby making the whole decision making process a clandestine affair. Earlier, on a petition filed by Greenpeace seeking information related to Bt Brinjal, the Supreme Court had ordered the regulators to put out all the biosafety data in public domain. The new provision seems to be a deliberate effort on the part of the industry to scuttle public scrutiny.

Lastly, since GM crops have already generated so much controversy with doubts being raised about its health and environment implications, isn’t it prudent to make independent and long term safety trials mandatory for all GM crops before approval? The fact that the draft BRAI Act does not have any provision for labelling, redressal and recall of a GM product makes the situation more worrisome.

Gullible Indians are already being used as guinea pigs by international pharmaceutical industry which conducts its clinical trials here without following the required protocol. BRAI Act will ensure we serve as guinea pigs for GM crops too.

(Based on an interview conducted by Manu Moudgil of www.goimonitor.com and the interview is available at: http://www.goimonitor.com/story/burden-gm-food-and-farcical-brai-act)

Gutter Science: Inter-Academy Report on GM Crops

I still can't overcome my disbelief. Such 'distinguished' scientific bodies, and such a shoddy report. I have always said there is good science, there is bad science but this report transgresses all earlier known brackets, and I have no hesitation in saying that the Inter-Academy Report on GM crops (see the pdf copy of the report here: http://bit.ly/cQbyCI) does not even qualify to be put in the category of bad science.

It is Gutter Science.

The Inter-Academy Report on GM Crops -- prepared by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Academy of Engineering, Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, National Academy of Medical Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences -- and submitted in September 2010 to the Ministry of Environment & Forests, is no better than the introductory write-ups any graduate student of biotechnology would come out with. In fact, I have a collection of a large number of papers/analysis written by graduate and post-graduate students who seek my comments/views that I would rate much higher than the Inter-Academy report.

The Inter-Academy Report on GM Crops is in fact a disgrace to Indian science. That Indian science was on a downhill path was never in question, but that it had already slipped into a cesspool is a revelation. I wish the presidents of the six Indian Academies had at least read the 19-page report prepared by the Minister for Environment & Forests Jairam Ramesh (and which is available on the website of the ministry) at the time of announcing the moratorium on Bt Brinjal early this year, and they would have known what academic excellence means.

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh had imposed a moratorium on Bt brinjal’s release until there is widespread scientific consensus on its environmental and biosafety aspects. The Inter-Academy report failes to answer any of the concerns/questions that Jairam Ramesh had raised in his paper.

The Inter-Academy report therefore is not a scientific inquiry, but a cheap public relation exercise on behalf of the GM industry. This is a scientific form of corruption, and has to be condemned in as strong words as possible.

You have probably read in newspapers how the key parts of the report -- which supports genetically modified (GM) Bt brinjal’s commercial release -- have been plagiarized from a government newsletter. According to a news report entitled 'Experts Admit GM brinjal Report Faulty' in The Telegraph (Sept 27, 2010): "Six Indian science academies had earlier this week approved the limited release of GM brinjal for cultivation in a joint report that contained 60 lines of plagiarised text, a near verbatim reproduction of an article in a biotechnology advocacy newsletter which itself had lines extracted from an industry-supported publication.

"This is unfortunate — we are devastated. This should not have happened,” said M. Vijayan, the president of the Indian National Science Academy, and a senior faculty member at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. [See the news report at http://bit.ly/9K6D2l]
 
The cheat slur reminds me of an almost similar incident that disgraced Indian judiciary a few months back. According to a news report: "In a major embarrassment for the Andhra Pradesh judiciary, five judges were caught cheating while writing the LLM ( Master of Law) examination for which they were promptly suspended by the High Court. One of the judges was found copying from a law book hidden under his answer sheet. Written slips and pages torn from textbooks were seized from other judges."
 
The Andhra Pradesh High Court was at least quick in suspending the judges who were caught cheating. Every time there is a major train accident or an aircrash, we have often seen the minister concerned resigning taking moral responsibility. When politicians can be held responsible for lapses, scientists too should be held accountable when caught with their pants down. Shouldn't the Ministry of Science & Technology therefore sack the six presidents:

-- Dr M Vijayan, Indian National Science Academy.
-- Dr A K Sood, Indian Academy of Sciences.
-- Dr P S Goel, Indian National Academy of Engineering.
-- Dr Mangala Rai, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
-- Dr K K Talwar, National Academy of Medical Sciences.
-- Dr Asis Datta, National Academy of Sciences.

The report ends with two quotations, and this sums up the inherent but brazen bias the Science Acadmies had. The first quote is from a joint statement of six major Academies of the world: “GM technology, coupled with important developments in other areas, should be used to increase the production of main food staples, improve the efficiency of production, reduce the environmental impact of agriculture, and provide access to food for small-scale farmers.” –the Royal Society of London, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, the Mexican Academy of Sciences, and the Third World Academy of Sciences, In Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture (2000), Document made available by the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi.

If the Indian science academies have to merely endorse what the foreign academies have done than what is the need to have this exercise in the first place. In any case, if you read what the six major academies across the world have said, it becomes crystal clear that science has simply gone into the lap of the industry.

I don't know why the Inter-Academy report fails to even take into consideration another international report, which has been officially endorsed by India. I am talking of the report of the three-year international collaborative effort (2005-07) that culminated in the form of a report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which clearly states that 'business as usual' is not the way forward. The answer is simple. The people and environment-friendly IAASTD report does not promote the commercial interest of the agribusiness companies.

The second quotation is from Norman Borlaug. "The affluent nations can afford to adopt elitist positions and pay more for food produced by the so-called natural methods; the 1 billion chronically poor and hungry people of this world cannot. New technology will be their salvation, freeing them from obsolete, low-yielding, and more costly production technology.” Dr. Norman E. Borlaug (Nobel Prize Laureate for Peace 1970), Plant Physiology (2000). 124, 487-490.

The report therefore is on the expected  lines. This only reinforces what we knew all along. Indian scientists are only capable of copy and paste.

In any case, when these academies were entrusted to come out with a report on GM crops, especially in the context of the public groundswell against genetic contamination of food crops, it should have been known that all these academies are merely letter-head organisations.

These are in reality 'retiring-room' for the retired scientists, most of whom happen to be the former head of organisations which are primarily responsible for doing the damage in the first instance. Take the case of the National Acedemy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS). It is headed by a former Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the umbrella organisation that is primarily responsible for the terrible agrarian distress and cannot wash its hands off the spate of farmer suicides that dot the countryside.

The other national academies are no different. In fact, all these scientific bodies are promoting public-private partnership (PPP) and therefore cannot be expected to stand up against the commercial interests of the biotechnology companies. It will be interesting to know the names of the scientists who contributed to the report, and the research projects they have undertaken in the past along with the funding support.

Meanwhile, Dr M Vijayan, INSA president has been quoted in The Telegraph as saying: "The academies will now examine the report again, introduce references for all text extracted from earlier publications, and release the names of all the scientists who contributed to the report. 'But, he said, the main recommendations are unlikely to change.' This should not be allowed since the report is simply a compilation of what suits the vested interests of these bodies.

I suggest the following:

-- Like the judges caught cheating, the presidents of the six academies should be first removed.

-- There is an urgent need to revamp the science academies. All retired scientists should be removed, and these science academies should include eminent citizens from different walks of life. 

-- There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Jairam Ramesh's paper that resulted in the moratorium on Bt brinjal needs to be examined, and all public fears and concerns need to be addressed point-by-point.

Only gutter science will like to bypass social and environmental concerns.

Is Kapil Sibal behind the draconian provisions that puts GM critics in jail?

The case of the proposed National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Bill is getting curiouser (or should I say getting solved). Ever since the controversial provisions in the proposed draft bill became known, the first reaction on everyone's lips was who could be so stupid to incorporate such draconian provisions that puts the critics of the GM technology behind bars. Even communist China does not have such laws in force.

In case you missed it, the specific provision that I am talking about, reads: "Whoever, without any evidence or scientific record, misleads the public against the safety of the organisms and products specified in Part 1, Part II or Part III of Schedule 1, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than six months, but which may extend to one year and with fine, which may extend to two lakh rupees, or with both."

No sooner the news broke out, the Science & Technology Minister Prithviraj Chavan was quick to deny it saying that the draft bill does not contain any such provisions. I was not amused since I had myself seen the draft bill, but I thought maybe the Minister had probably not read the bill. Or maybe he was trying to buy time by convincing the public that it was merely a diatribe against his ministry, and in the meanwhile drop the controversial provisions from the final draft that has still to be placed in Parliament.

Coomi Kapoor from the Indian Express has perhaps provided us the right answer. In her column "Inside Track" (Sunday Express, Feb 28, 2010), she writes that the bill was actually drafted in March 2008 when Kapil Sibal was the Minister for Science & Technology.

Now I understand why Prithviraj Chavan (he succeeded Kapil Sibal) was caught unaware about the draconian provisions in the proposed draft bill. Well, thank you Coomi for clearing the mist or to put it more succintly for solving the mystery. It is important for the nation to know the extra mile Ministers can walk to back multinationals and big business.

Anyway, discussing Budget 2010 with the yoga guru Swami Ramdev on Aastha TV channel on Feb 26, I brought up the issue of the draconian provisions in the proposed draft bill. Swami Ramdev was shocked to learn that the government could even think of introducing such a law.

Nevertheless, when I said that if the NBRA law was already in force, I as well as Swami Ramdev would have been in jail by now, he warned: "I dare them to arrest me. They will get a taste of what it means to gag independent voices," and added: "My opposition to GM foods will continue."

I hope Kapil Sibal is listening.