Suman Sahai
There is a furore over the approval granted to India’s
first food crop, GM mustard (Brassica juncea). Activists, consumers, farmers
and scientists have risen in protest against the government’s approval for the
environmental release of a genetically
engineered crop despite outstanding concerns.
The GM Mustard hybrid DMH 11 has been projected as a
high yielding variety that will increase the production of edible oil in the
country and reduce our import bill. But this claim does not appear to be
substantiated by official data. Scientists of the government’s Directorate of
Rapeseed-Mustard Research (DRMR) have said that there are mustard varieties in
existence already that show substantially higher yield than the GM hybrid.
India is self-sufficient in mustard oil, meeting its
requirement through domestic production, not imports. According to
the data on import of edible oils, 2020- 2021, the maximum import of edible oils is that of palm oil
(7491 MT), soybean (2866 MT ) and sunflower (1894 MT) oil, followed by
palmolein (686 MT ) and CPKO ( Crude Palm Kernel Oil (143 MT ).
Edible oil
preferences are region specific. Mustard oil is consumed largely in northern
and eastern India. India produces enough to meet this need. Any surplus mustard
oil would not fill the deficit, say in coconut oil in south India or groundnut
oil in western India. So the argument of needing GM mustard to increase production
of mustard oil through this GMO is hard to see.
What is of
great concern though are violations in the regulatory process and exceptions
made leading up to the approval for environmental release of GM mustard. Dr
Pental developer of GM Mustard at the Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop
Plants (CGMCP) applied to the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) in
September 2015 for approval of environmental release of the GM hybrid DMH 11. After evaluating the data and
the many comments received from different stakeholders, GEAC, gave directions
to the CGMCP to conduct further studies to assess the impact of GM mustard on
honey bees and other pollinators as well as on soil health.
Thereafter
follow strange and highly objectionable developments, Dr Pental wrote to the
GEAC on 10 May, 2022 asking for approval of GM Mustard without conducting the
tests directed by the GEAC. The GEAC referred this request to the Department of
Biotechnology and Department of Agriculture Research & Education, both of
who recommended that the developer may be exempted from conducting any of the required
tests. Strangely, the GEAC went along with this breach in the regulatory
process and gave approval to GM mustard.
So in a
shocking violation of its own Rules and Guidelines, the central government
granted approval for the environmental release of GM Mustard on 25 October,
2022. The required tests are now apparently to be conducted post environmental release of GM Mustard. This is a
farce. The point of assessing such socio economic impacts of a GMO before granting approval is to catch any
harmful impacts in time.
Another problematic aspect of the GM mustard is the
fact that it is essentially a Herbicide Tolerant (HT) crop. This fact has been
pushed under the carpet highlighting instead a supposed yield advantage. The
government’s defence is strange, saying that
since this HT GM Mustard is not labelled as an HT crop for commercial
release, it cannot be called an HT crop even if it carries the HT trait ! But
the government has taken cognizance of the HT trait by proscribing herbicide
use and threatening to penalize farmers if they do use herbicides with the HT
GM Mustard.! All this makes very curious reading.
Gene
Campaign’s PIL of 2004 on GMOs followed by another by Rodriguez in 2005 led to
the Supreme Court to appoint a Technical Expert Committee (TEC) to provide recommendations in the matter of
GM crops. The government has stated that all the recommendations of the TEC
have been followed. This is clearly not the case as we see in the case of GM
Mustard which carries the HT trait.
On HT
technology, the TEC recommends “In view of the
concerns bearing on health, environmental, and socioeconomic considerations, a
moratorium on field trials of herbicide tolerant (HT) crops…. until an
independent committee comprising experts and stakeholders has examined and
assessed the potential impact of HT- technology and its suitability in the
Indian context.”
Once GM
Mustard is released into the environment and its impacts are felt, it will be
too late to do anything or recall/reverse the damage. And it is almost certain
that the Herbicide Tolerant (HT) trait will be passed on via pollinators to
Non-GM Mustard thereby contaminating the gene pool of Brassica juncea, the special Indian
Mustard.
The HT trait is highly undesirable for Indian
agriculture as we see. Herbicide use destroys all the vegetation in
and around the field where the HT crop is cultivated. It therefore destroys the
biodiversity that is used by the rural community in many ways.
In India,
this biodiversity is not considered useless, as it is in the west. These so
called "weeds" provide leafy green vegetables and many kinds of saag like chaulai and bathua that
provide valuable nutrition to poor rural families; they also provide green
fodder for livestock kept by rural households. Such "weeds" are also
the medicinal plants that traditional healers use in the treatment of
human and animal diseases.
HT crops
are clearly not in India’s interest. But what is truly alarming is the
violations of Rules and this slipshod method of approving GM crops
*Dr Suman Sahai is a scientist trained in Genetics
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