'Bt cotton fields can kill farm animals'

The Andhra Govt advises farmers not to allow animals to graze on Bt cotton fields, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jun 18, 2007, 11:15:10 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Andhra Pradesh government has advised farmers not to allow animals to graze on Bt cotton fields after four institutes reported the presence of toxins in them.

Goats and sheep grazing on post-harvest Bt cotton fields were found dead in Warangal and Adilabad districts in 2006 and in the first two months of 2007.

The Andhra Pradesh Forensic Science Laboratory, the Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute, the Western Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory and the department of agriculture, NG Ranga Agriculture University found the presence of nitrates and nitrites, and residues of organophosphates in Bt cotton plants.

Dr L Mohan, director, Andhra Pradesh animal husbandry department, said: “The deaths have resulted in huge economic losses for farmers.”

Andhra Pradesh, which had earlier moved the Monopolistic and Restrictive Trade Practices tribunal against the high price of Bt seeds, said no bio-safety studies of Bt cotton seeds had yet been conducted.

MK Sharma, managing director, Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech India Ltd, makers of the genetically modified Bt cotton, said: “Bt cotton is being grown in nine states, and no such complaint has come except from a few villages in Andhra. We conducted safety studies before the trials and all Bt seeds were found to be safe.”

The Andhra government has informed the union ministry of environment and forests about its findings. The ministry has ordered a probe.

chetan@hindustantimes.com

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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