Greenpeace glare on GM crop trial.

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Greenpeace glare on GM crop trial The Telegraph, India, Jan 12. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060112/asp/nation/story_5710719.asp G.S. MUDUR A GM cotton plant New Delhi, Jan. 11: Cotton farmer Ranchodlal Gonaji doesn’t hesitate to reveal that he sold 300 kilograms of genetically modified (GM) cotton under

field trials on his farm in Temariyan (Madhya Pradesh) that was supposed to be destroyed. In Punjab, farmer Jagshir Singh sold GM cotton grown during field trials for Rs 2,150 a quintal. And vegetable farmer Koteswara Rao in Guntur (Andhra Pradesh) admits that he cooked and ate GM okra (bhindi) on field trial on his farm. Greenpeace activists have released documents claiming that field trials of GM crops in India have violated biosafety guidelines governing trials of such crops. They have cited at least 15 instances where farmers who had leased their farms for field trials of GM crops had not been informed about the precautions to be taken during the trials. “The farmers had not been informed by either representatives of GM seed companies or government officials that they have to burn all standing GM crop after the trials are over,” Divya Raghunandan, genetic

engineering campaigner, said. A senior government official involved in approving field trials said the government had no information about such violations. “If such violations have occurred, it is wrong. The companies or farmers should be held responsible.” Field investigations by Greenpeace and a network of 20 non-government organisations across India have also shown that at several sites of field trials, farmers did not follow safety rules of adequately separating the GM crop on field trials from other crops. At a GM cotton field trial site in Andhra Pradesh, farmer Bommineni Reddy had cultivated vegetables and maize on the neighbouring plots instead of isolating the GM crops by at least 50 metres, the activists said. One farmer in Punjab grew paddy on the side of a plot where GM cotton was being field-tested. Speaking to The Telegraph

on telephone, a representative of a seed company in Madhya Pradesh admitted that he had not told farmer Gonaji to burn the GM crop on field trial. “But then we didn’t tell him to sell it either,” the representative said. The NGOs said the examples highlight the violation of guidelines during field trials. Penalties for violation of these rules are imprisonment for up to five years and fines. Farmer Gonaji who was in Delhi today said no one told him that the GM cotton on field test had to be destroyed. “How do I know this? The company representatives just stopped visiting me after a few weeks,” he said. "Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit." -

Aurobindo.

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