GM crop: Panel to review field trials

After moratorium on BT Brinjal, the environment ministry will review all existing field trials of the genetically modified crops in India for safety and the protocols of safety adopted by trial agencies. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: May 12, 2011, 02:09:52 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After moratorium on BT Brinjal, the environment ministry will review all existing field trials of the genetically modified crops in India for safety and the protocols of safety adopted by trial agencies.

A committee is being set up on directions of the Supreme Court, which wanted the government to constitute a panel to advise it on safety aspects of GM crop field trials. Several field trails of GM recrops including rice, tomato, brinjal and cotton are going on in different parts of the country.

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh at a recent meeting with the petitioner, Aruna Rodrigues, finalised the terms of reference of the committee, which included comprehensive review of the field trials being conducted. The panel would see whether the GM crops have met the safety parameters as prescribed by GM regulator and impact on local vegetation.

Rodrigues, in her petition, had alleged that field trials being conducted by various companies after getting approval from Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee had contaminated local vegetation and poultry. Although stray incidents of contamination had been confirmed in certain states, no case of large scale contamination was reported. The petitioner sought a stay on field trials immediately but the court did not agree.

According to ministry officials, the committee will be broad-based to taken into account all view-points. “We want both people in favour and against the GM in the committee,” a ministry functionary said.

The panel, whose members are yet to be finalised, would have representatives from civil society and GM experts from the government and outside. There is a fight going between the ministry and the petitioner on who would be the members of the panel.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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