New norms for field trials of GM crops

Govt decides that no trails will be allowed without the consent of the Panchayat or gram sabha, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Dec 21, 2006, 23:29:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In the first major repercussion of farmers' revolt against field trials of GM crops, the government has decided that no trails will be allowed without the consent of the Panchayat or gram sabha of the area where trials are to be conducted.

In a decision taken last week and communicated to the state governments this week, the ministry of Environment and Forests has called the GM seed manufacturers to provide all details of field trails to the Panchayat members before conducting trails. They have also being asked to bring in more transparency in conducting the field trials.

In November, the Chattisgarh government had lodged a complaint with the ministry against a multi-national GM seeds manufacturing company alleging that the trials were conducted near Raipur without informing the government. The field was destroyed by the government officials in presence of state agriculture minister, prompting the state government to lodge the complaint.

Considering objection of the Chattisgarh government and farmer action against GM rice fields in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of the ministry also decided that in future no approval for field trials would be issued unless the specific locations to conduct the trials are provided by the companies.

The GEAC has also decided to issue show cause notices to companies under Environment Protection Act for violations of regulations for conducting field trails. A failure observed by the members of the committee was that not 'satisfactory information' was provided to the community before conducting GM crop field trials. The failure was noted specifically to trials in Guntur and Gulbarga districts of Andhra Pradesh, as pointed out by Centre for Sustainable Agriculture.

In a bid to further strengthen the safety net around fields where GM crops trials are being done, the GEAC has asked the companies to comply with both 'physical' and 'biological' safety measures. The physical measures include isolation of field where the trails are being done and cover the field with tarpaulin sheet to prevent any contamination. The biological measures include planting non-transgenic rice around the experimental crop to act as pollen trapper to nullify contamination chances.

The GEAC also said that the state Agriculture Universities will monitor that these containment measures are undertaken by the seed companies.

Email Chetan Chauhan: 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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