SC panel says no to GM crops for now

A Supreme Court appointed committee had recommended an indefinite moratorium on field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops till the government fixes regulatory and safety aspects and a ban on the introduction of GM varieties in regions of their origin. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 23, 2013, 02:24:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A Supreme Court appointed committee had recommended an indefinite moratorium on field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops till the government fixes regulatory and safety aspects and a ban on the introduction of GM varieties in regions of their origin.

The final report submitted to the court last week and made public on Monday, does not mention 10-year moratorium on field trials as suggested in the interim report. Instead, it has imposed four conditions for “meaningfully” consideration for allowing trials.

The conditions suggested are setting up of a think tank to look into bio-safety issues, housing the new bio-technology regulatory in either environment or health ministry, identification of specific sites for conducting tests and mandatory stakeholder participation as part of risk management strategy.

Once these conditions are met, the technical expert committee (TEC) had suggested that the trials should be only allowed on land owned by GM crop application and not on leased land as done presently.

The TEC did not find any “compelling” reason for allowing commercial release of BT for food such as rice and brinjal first in India and gave global example of where transgencis such as soyabean, corn and canola are primarily for oil or feed after processing.

Another major recommendation of TEC could result in non-introduction of developed BT brinjal and rice in places where they are domesticated such as West Bengal, Orissa and Bihar, as it can result in reduction of “diversity” and “genetic purity”.

“Oryza nivara, medicinal rice, can also be at risk if GM rice comes to dominate the crop as has happened for cotton in India,” the report said, adding that India was not facing any shortage of grains like in the 1960s.

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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