GM food creates scare among farmers

Rejection of GM food by many countries appears to have triggered large-scale protests by farmers in India, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Nov 6, 2006, 21:35:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The contamination of GM rice produced in US and its rejection by many countries worldwide appears to have triggered large-scale protests by farmers on field trails of GM rice approved by the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

A police complaint has also been lodged against the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee of the ministry and (Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company) MAYCO, the company producing the seeds in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh.

The ministry, earlier this year, had allowed MAYCO to conduct limited field trails in 10 areas on GM rice, a first of its type for the food product. A few months after the ministry's approval, the European Union reported contamination of US GM rice produced in Arkansas province. The entire consignment was returned by EU, followed by Japan and some Latin American nations, thereby putting the US rice industry into crises. Later, US government confirmed contamination of just 0.06 per cent.

The ripples were also felt in India, one of the largest rice producing nations of the world, when Rice Exporters Association of India demanded a suspension of the GM rice field trails till its safety is ensured.

However, Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) activists destroyed fields in Rudrapur village in UP on Sunday claming the trails were being conducted in violation of Environment Protection Act. Last month, GM rice crop was destroyed by BKU activists in a field in Haryana. BKU has accused the company of violating the Genetic Engineering guidelines by not informing the farmer that his land was being used for GM rice trials and local agriculture officer about the trials, said Dharmender Malik, BKU activist.

In Karnataka, the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) discovered a similar violation where BT Lady Finger (Bhindi) was sowed in fields without proper information to the farmer and the Panchayat president. Similar protests have also been reported from Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, where the maximum farmer suicides have been reported from area under BT Cotton cultivation. Now, BKU and CSA had demanded an investigation into the violations by Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of the environment ministry.

When contacted, a member of GEAC, said the issue would be discussed in the next GEAC meeting with progress of field trails of various GM crops will be reviewed.

Email 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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