Marred by faith

“It is the scientists who are asking for regulation and precaution” Suman Sahai What do you think of environmentalist Mark Lynas’ sudden change of heart – from being an anti-GM crusader to a pro-GM crusader? It is a renewed propaganda push to create goodwill around GM crop. This is a product that very large corporations are trying to sell. India is a very particular target because of large scale rejections (of GM crop) in Europe, many parts of Africa and Latin America. For these corporations, there are only two big potential markets – India and China. Everybody knows it is impossible to influence Chinese policy because they are very determined about what they want and what not. India is perceived as a soft target with a big market and therefore a huge amount of propaganda is directed towards India and Indian policy making. What is your stand on promoting GM crops in India? As a scientist, geneticist, this is my subject. It is the scientists who are asking for regulation and precaution right from the beginning. The (GM) industry is trying to cut corners on regulation because adequate bio-safety testing costs money. It is my firm belief that had this technology been purely in public sector it would still be in the laboratory. It would only come to market after it was sufficiently and properly tested. If you want to engage in science and technology that has a downside – any potential risk of the GM product having an allergenic component – but potential for benefits, then you have to be super careful to evaluate safety. ____________________________________ Sahai is a geneticist, Padma Shree awardee and winner of 2004 Borlaug Award for contribution to agriculture and environment
	GM debate: Contrary to Lynas’s simplistic views, India’s real concerns are ad-hoc regulatory body, self-defeating bio-safety norms and worthless scientific data

Monsanto back to its old games

Suman Sahai

You have to admire the gumption of Monsanto Company, called not without reason the world’s most hated corporation. According to a report some weeks ago, Monsanto threatened to sue the state of Vermont in the US in yet another display of its unbridled power. Why? Due to overwhelming public demand, the elected representatives of Vermont, its legislators are contemplating passing a legislation that will require mandatory labelling of all genetically modified (GM) foods! But the legislators have been frozen in their tracks and are beginning to back off because representatives from the Monsanto Company threatened public officials that the biotechnology behemoth would sue the state of Vermont if they dared to pass a law that would require GM foods to be labelled. Legislators admitted privately that they were apprehensive of attracting the ire of this huge and influential corporation since they know that Monsanto would launch a vicious and prolonged attack on the state of Vermont, if the government went against their diktat.

Monsanto and other biotech corporations oppose labelling of GM foods because they fear, and rightly so, that the public would reject GM foods if they could tell it apart from normal foods that had not been tampered with. Monsanto has so far successfully blocked every effort to allow the labelling of GM foods in the US, despite overwhelming public demand for it. Such is its influence in the corridors of power (and not just in the US), that the US food and drug administration, America’s ombudsman body on all matters related to food, including its safety, has consistently upheld the Monsanto line of “substantial equivalence”. This line is Monsanto’s ploy to deny the very basis of labelling. Briefly explained, the theory of substantial equivalence says that there is no great difference between GM and non-GM foods, that they are substantially the same, or substantially equivalent to one another. Since normal, non-GM foods are not required to be labelled, their substantially equivalent counterpart, the GM foods, need not be labelled either! So what happened to consumer choice? If this perverse and manipulative logic does not make any sense to you… well… go figure!

Substantial equivalence is the biggest public lie being shamelessly told across the world. Unfortunately, Washington puts its weight behind this lie to intimidate other governments to toe the Monsanto line. Despite consistent evidence from laboratory studies with experimental animals that serious, often fatal conditions can result from consuming GM foods, Monsanto is able to get its way, thanks to Washington’s support.

Vermont legislators know to take Monsanto’s threats seriously since the company has a record of threatening people with lawsuits in their sustained and successful campaign to ensure that the consumer is not allowed to choose between GM and non-GM foods. This is simply done by not allowing GM foods to be labelled. Vermont’s history of past run-ins with Monsanto makes it cautious. In 1994, the state gave in to public demand for clean milk from cows that had not been injected with genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH). The legislators passed for the first time in the US, a law requiring mandatory labelling of milk and dairy produce that had been derived from cows treated with the highly controversial rBGH.

rBGH is banned in countries like Canada and Europe because it is found to cause severe health damage in the milch animals and poses a higher cancer risk for humans. Monsanto sued the state promptly as the law came. Shockingly, the US federal court ruled in the company’s favour, saying that milk producers have the right under the American statute called the First Amendment to remain silent on what their milk contains and whether their cows are injected with rBGH or not. The First Amendment gives a person or agency the right to withhold information in a court of law that it thinks will damage its case. This strange law enabled Monsanto to defeat the Vermont legislators and squash the public’s desire to have milk that was not treated with growth hormones.


Monsanto and its junior partner and ally in India, the Mahyco Seed Company, are flexing their muscles in India too to see how far they can go. Their blatant violation of field testing RR Flex cotton without permission was noted by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) but they managed to get out of that without any punishment. Similarly, their violations in field trials of GM rice in Jharkhand — in defiance of regulatory guidelines — was overlooked by the regulators. Much is whispered along the grapevine about the strategies that Monsanto-Mahyco use to get their way. Whatever these may be, the company must be warned that they and their cohorts in government and outside it will not be allowed to get away with the kind of practices that they are used to getting away with in other places.

India has a vibrant and vigilant civil society, which has demonstrated that it is committed to protecting the interests of the common citizen and upholding their right to clean and safe food. Whereas the Indian civil society is strongly supportive of good science, it equally condemns the manipulation and distortion of science to line the pockets of corporations.


The writer, a genetic scientist who has served on the faculty of the Universities of Chicago and Heidelberg, is convenor of the Gene Campaign

Source : Asian Age, New Delhi, June 06, 2012

INDIA'S GE FREE SOYA CAN CAPTURE WORLD MARKET

Suman Sahai

A shortage of products that are not genetically engineered (GE free), especially soybean and corn, is forcing countries that are averse to GE produce to change their stand. Countries in Asia like Japan and South Korea, that are traditional soybean users have rejected GE soybean so far but may now be forced to buy genetically engineered soybean, not just for animal feed but also for soy based food products.

Most of Europe demonstrates a near phobic rejection of foods that are genetically engineered. In Asia, affluent sections of society are averse to consuming gene-spliced foods. In the case of soybean, countries like Japan and South Korea have expressed a clear preference for soy products made from GE free soybean. This has raised the demand for non GE soya and increased its price premium. The net result is a situation where the supply of non GE soya is unable to keep pace with the demand. The shortage of GE free soya is created largely due to the fact that China, the largest producer of non GE soy is faced with growing inflation in the food sector and has decided to hold on to its produce for domestic use.

The short supply and the rising price premium on non-GE crops is now forcing food processors in South Korea to buy American GE corn for the first time for their starch and sweetener industry. This is the first ever use of a GE product in the food chain in this region. Following S Korea, Japan is likely to allow the import of GE soybean too. Both countries are reluctant buyers of GE soybean, forced to do it in order to make up the shortfall in domes-tic requirement because not enough GE free soya is available.

This is a golden opportunity for India to step up its production of non GE soybean and enter the international premium niche market. India as the only country after China to produce certified non GE soybean, can position itself as the new source of GE free soya for countries in Europe which seek bulk soya for animal feed and Asia, particularly China, Japan and South Korea which are looking for quality non GE soya for food.

Stepping up production of GE free soybean immediately should not be difficult. India has been cultivating it for some years in places like Uttaranchal, Madhya Pradesh and some parts of Maharashtra. The transition to soybean in Madhya Pradesh came from the Black Toor, a legume similar to soybean which is eaten as a daal. In the hills varieties of soybean are also eaten as daal. This is to say that the cultivation of soybean is not unknown in India so it will not be an alien crop that farmers are not knowledgeable about. The introduction of soybean will have another advantage, that of replenishing the soil. The nitrogen fixing legume will improve soil nutrition, enabling better second crops. A kind of win - win situation for the farmer.

In Vidarbha particularly, soybean could become the alternative to cotton, which has proved to be such a risky crop. A farmer rehabilitation package could be based on promoting soybean cultivation. This will be better suited to the water deficient situation in Vidarbha and will be less risky than the water guzzling cotton, particularly Bt cotton, which demands even more water than other cotton varieties. Soybean has already begun to replace cotton in Vidarbha as farmers move away from the Bt cotton that has brought disaster.

If India is to exploit the market vacancy successfully, the soya package must be carefully organized, with top class planting material and marketing channels stream-lined and tied up from the farmers' fields to the international buyer. Farm training in sanitary and phy-tosanitary measures will be necessary, so that farmers are careful about maintaining the health and purity standards of their produce. Where necessary, government should negotiate markets in other countries, much in the same way as Malaysia negotiates advantageous market condi-tions and low tariffs for its palm oil.

Policy aspects will also have to cover research programs on soybean. There will have to be a clear and explicit ban on any research on genetically engineering soya. The government must be very clear that it cannot dabble in research on GE soya, risk contamination and expect to capture growing international markets for GE free soybean.

It will need just one single instance of contamination with GE soy to bring the GE free niche market crashing down. We saw what happened to US rice exports after the detection of traces of a GE rice from Bayer, called LL 601 in rice consignments. Overnight there were no takers for American rice. Vietnam and Thailand entered with GE free rice and captured the rice market.

The directionless, largely copycat agenda for research on GE crops that is being supported by the DBT (Department of Biotechnology) and the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) must be brought under a stringent review to conform with India's food as well as trading interests.

GE Crops and India's Trade Interests

Suman Sahai

A somewhat garbled invitation was sent out by the Department of Biotechnology calling for a Consultation on Guidelines for Regulation of Genetic Modification in Crop Plants and Farm Animals with Reference to Trade Security. Had I not earlier known the purpose of this meeting, I would never have figured out what the consultation intended to achieve.

The purpose as it happened, was to discuss a policy for genetically engineering crops that India was exporting. The immediate impetus for the meeting was the understandable nervousness of the Indian Rice Exporters Association after contamination of US rice stocks with an unapproved genetically engineered herbicide tolerant rice led to the total rejection of US rice and entailed huge costs to recall stocks from the UK, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and Japan where US rice had been exported.

The rice exporters wanted the Indian government to have a policy and safeguards in place to protect rice exports from the country from contamination with GE rice, since as one representative rather imaginatively suggested, "anything to do with GM would be the kiss of death "for India's rice exports.

The gentleman had a point. India exports not just Basmati, but non-Basmati rice as well, largely to Europe and West Asia but also to Africa, both regions that have rejected GE crops and foods. The total annual value of India's rice export is approximately Rs.6000 crores. The importers of Indian rice are countries where there is mounting opposition to GE foods. Producing GE rice in India or even researching and testing it in the fields is bound to result in the escape of GE rice.

The irresponsible and clumsy manner in which the Bt rice field trials were conducted by the Mahyco Seed Company indicate that given the shoddy implementation of GE technology in our country and the lack of accountability on the parts of agencies and regulators, contamination from trial plots and field sites is a certainty. The presence of GE rice in India, will undoubtedly lead to contamination, jeopardizing rice exports to countries that will not accept GE foods.

Soybean is the other crop which India exports which qualifies as a special case for consideration. India is the only country in the world now that is producing GE free soybean. Because of this status it has an assured export market in countries like Japan and South Korea that are sensitive about soybean as food and expressly seek GE free soya. In addition, companies that use soybean meal in food, particularly baby foods and food for convalescents, and which have given undertakings to produce GE free foods, are buyers of GE free soybean. This is a captive market available only to India and it can be expanded several times, creating a growing market for India's soybean farmers many of who are to be found in the distress areas of Vidarbha. Instead of offering inadequate doles, a proper policy introducing GE free, organic soybean may help Vidarbha farmers find their feet and rebuild their agriculture with self respect and dignity.

It is understood that the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation (RCGM) in the Department of Biotechnology has given permission to conduct research on GE herbicide tolerant soybean. This is extremely undesirable and should be stopped immediately. If India were to allow the cultivation of GE soybean ,or even its research and field trials, it would at once lose its assured export market. Becoming a GE soya producing nation, it would have to compete for markets with gigantic producers like Brazil, USA and Argentina, who are sitting on huge surpluses, unable to sell their produce easily on the world market.

I have no idea whether there was any policy outcome on GE crops and Indian trade interests from the DBT meeting. Both the soybean people and the rice exporters present there held the same view, that genetic engineering of crops in which India had trading interests, was undesirable. The MS Swaminathan led Task Force on Agbiotechnology has made the recommendation that the national policy on GE crops should seek the "economic well-being of farm families, food security of the nation, health security of the consumer, protection of the environment and the security of our national and international trade". Seeing the trend of sharply declining global markets for GE crops and foods, and the rapidly burgeoning market for organic food (currently valued at US $50 billion), it would be wise for India to recognize its USP in agriculture and develop the organic food sector, specially for exports.