Ramesh faults regulator, says standards fail global norms

Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), country’s GM food regulator, had failed to meet global standards on approving Bt brinjal, Environment and Forest minister Jairam Ramesh has found. See graphics

Updated on: Feb 10, 2010, 01:40:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), country’s GM food regulator, had failed to meet global standards on approving Bt brinjal, Environment and Forest minister Jairam Ramesh has found.

India is a signatory to Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which states “where there are threats of irreversible damage, the lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost effective measures to prevent environmental degradation”.

But, the GEAC based its approval to Bt brinjal in October 2009 on limited field trials without going for tests over a sufficient number of generations to allow adequate exposure to variety of conditions met in nature.

“It does appear that the current standards by which the GEAC has formulated the decision to approve Bt brinjal do not match these global regulatory norms to which India is a party,” Ramesh said, in his 18- page note on Bt brinjal.

Even prominent GM scientists from across the world have found flaws in the methodology adopted by GEAC to clear Bt brinjal. Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Washington DC found serious flaws in the GEAC report on evaluation of gene flow risk from Bt brinjal.

Professor Allison Snow and Professor Norman Ellstrand of the Ohio State University had similar issues with GEAC’s safety protocol. Dr David Andow of the University of Minnesota, USA, that there is no sufficient evidence in GEAC report to suggest that Bt Brinjal was environmentally safe. “The manner in which the proponents of the product are recommending to farmers to use this technology is faulty and unscientific and would lead to disaster,” said Dr N S Talekar of Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth.

Ramesh also found out that one-third of the tests recommended by Evaluation Committee (EC)-I of GEAC on Bt Brinjal were discarded by EC-II. P M Bhargava, an eminent GM scientist, had raised this issue and had alleged that Mahyco, the company which developed Bt brinjal, failed to conduct eight essential tests.

Although the Central Institute of Cotton Research supported Bt brinjal technology, it made observations on its experience of Bt Cotton making the minister conclude that it points to more tests that are well “designed, widely accepted and independently conducted”.

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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