on GMOs

November 26, 2006

In This NEWS Bulletin*******************************1. Chhattisgarh state government to order probe on Bt Rice field trials.2. Ingo Potrykus advocates the case for GOLDEN RICE in India3. India gets Rs 12,000 million aid form World Bank for National Agricultural Innovative Programme - ICAR DG lauds France for developing its GOLDEN RICE4. India calls upon biodiversity-rich countries to help address common biosafety concerns5. GM Crop trials - Environmental disaster in making, says Kavitha Kuruganti6. India to host global R & D conference - Chattisgarh govt to order probe into Bt rice trial http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=147310 ASHOK B SHARMA Posted online: Saturday, November 25, 2006 at 0248 hours IST NEW DELHI, NOV 24: After the Uttar Pradesh government, it is now the turn of the Chattisgarh state government to order an inquiry into a Bt Rice trial close to the state capital - Raipur. State officials have expressed their displeasure as neither the state and district authorities nor the local panchayat were informed about the trial. For the first time in the history of GM crop field trials in India, a state minister had to rush to the trial spot

to undertake damage control exercises as the local media and activists started reporting violations. On Thursday, the state agriculture minister Nankiram Kawar visited the Bt rice trial plot in the field of the farmer, Jagdishlal Arora in Purara village close to Raipur after receiving reports from local media that Mahyco’s Bt rice field trial has been conducted without information to state authorities and worse, that crop residues have been allowed to lie around including some grain without being destroyed as per biosafety guidelines. He ordered immediate destruction of the remaining crop in the field by burning. The major cause of concern is that this trial was conducted about

one km distance from the world’s richest collection of rice germplasm available with the Indira Gandhi Krishi Vidyalaya, the state agriculture university. Mahyco officials when contacted said: “since the questions cover biosafety and statutory aspects, it is best to approach the regulatory authorities for details.” The local Councillor Vinod Bhaghel said that she had no information about the trial nor did the district authorities in the agriculture department. However, some of the officials were told about the trial only towards the end of the season, that too when the DBT asked them to be part of a monitoring team to visit the plot. According to Prabhat Tridatta, a senior official in the state agriculture department the state government has not given permission to the trial and that after collecting detailed information,

they will write to the Central government about their concerns. Jacob Nellithanam of Chhattisgarh-based Richharia Campaign said : “The field trial close to rice germplasm bank is a violation of biosafety norms and against the tenants of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to which India is a party.” Ilina Sen of Chattisgarh Jaiv Suraksha Manch said :”The team that went to visit the trial at the behest of the department of biotechnology (DBT) has found that the Bt okra plot next to the Bt rice plot has already been harvested and that the Bt Rice plot was in mid-harvest. The team admitted that given this situation, they were unable to ascertain the safety and efficacy of the technology.” --------- Golden Rice still at development stage - Ingo Potryus advocate its case for India http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=147150 ASHOK B SHARMA Posted online: Thursday, November 23, 2006 at 0332 hours IST NEW DELHI, NOV 22: The delay in the release of provitamin A rich Golden Rice for mass

cultivation in India has led to an avoidable loss of 240,000 lives, says the co-inventor of the product Ingo Potrykus. The transgenic Golden Rice contains two novel genes - one from maize and other from a soil bacterium. It does not contain an antibiotic resistance marker gene. The only novelty being the protein from the bacterial gene - phytoene-desaturase, said Potrykus and claimed that no environmental risk or health problem was involved. According to him, Golden Rice would minimise vitamin A malnutrition on basis of traditional normal diet. Potrykus is perturbed over the ‘extreme precautionary regulation’ for genetically modified (GM) crops in India. "It led, so far, to a delay of at least six years in the use of Golden Rice with a consequence of an avoidable loss of 240,000 lives," he said. He was also very critical of the ‘anti-GMO lobby’ for stalling the process of approval of GM crops and alleged that the delay in Indian regulatory process was due to ‘European influence’. Golden Rice in India is still at the stage of development in the labs and the developers are yet to apply for permission for contained field trials and hence Potrykus charges against Indian regulatory authority seems to be misplaced. Potrykus who is also the chairman of the Humanitarian Golden Rice Board and Network that

the technology to Indian public sector scientists for public good. Indian scientists can isolate their own genes and use their own constructs and develop their own provitamin A rice lines. Scientists at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and BRRI are transferring the new trait into 8 carefully selected Indian rice varieties. Golden Rice, after its approval in the country "would be made available free of charge with limitations within the framework of humanitarian use." The

farmers will be able to save seeds for the next season. The seed multinational, Syngenta, however, maintains the rights for commercial exploitation and those interested in commercialisation of the product would have to get a licence from that company, said Potrykus. Potrykus, however, hopes that Golden Rice would be released for farmers’ field by 2012 and would rescue 40,000 lives per year and prevent 125,000 cases of blindness. He estimated annual loss of lives in India due to vitamin A deficiency at 71,600.-------------------------------- India gets Rs 1,200-cr World Bank aid for farm sector - ICAR DG lauds France for developing its GOLDEN RICE http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=147126 ASHOK B SHARMA ECONOMY BUREAU Posted online: Thursday, November 23, 2006

at 0226 hours IST NEW DELHI, NOV 22: India has received the financial assistance of Rs 1,200 crore (Rs 12,000 million) from the World Bank for implementation of National Agricultural Innovative Programme (NAIP). France has also assured India to help replicate its successful cooperative involvement in food processing sector. The Rs 1,200-crore soft loan package from the World Bank would be deployed to ensure that India attains 400 million tonne production of foodgrain (wheat and rice) by 2010,

said the director-general of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Mangla Rai, while delivering his keynote address at Assocham summit on second Green Revolution on Wednesday. He said the Rs 1,200-crore loan would be utilised for the next five years in a manner so that it yields the richest possible benefit to agriculture and make it prominently rewarding to farmers to ensure fulfilment of the dream of Green Revolution-II. He also announced that ICAR on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with China to ensure high yield rice production in India. ICAR has identified many more such countries to arrive at understanding for technological transfer so that India enhances its food production and feeds its population with

nutrient variety of all sorts of food articles. Rai said that ICAR would shortly call for projects from various stakeholders such as agriculture research institutes, training centres, research laboratories and devoted NGOs to suggest it ways and means as also technologies for developing high yield varieties of seeds to enhance India’s agriculture production. He said that ICAR had been receiving favourable responses for developing new technologies not only from within but country like France

which has developed Golden Rice that contains rich vitamins to completely eradicate the problem of blindness in rice spread areas. The French inter-ministerial delegate, Nicolas Forissier said that though India and France has different farming system, both the countries faces major challenges. He said both the countries need to preserve their social cultural heritages. France has family farms and 70% of its farm produces are value added and

processed and the average prices received by French farmers are not remunerative enough. He said that cooperative movement in France was engaged in funding and processing of products. Most of the processing industries are in the small sector generating employment. In this context, he offered to help India replicate the French cooperative experience. He assured that French companies would help set up storage facilities in India. In his inaugural address, minister of state for agriculture Kantilal Bhuria emphasised

the need for initiatives to boost Indian agriculture sector saying that the national policy on agriculture seeks to actualise the vast untapped growth potential of Indian agriculture, strengthen rural infrastructure to support faster agricultural development, promote value addition, accelerate the growth of agro business, create employment in rural areas.------------------------------- India for common biosafety concerns http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=146960 ASHOK B SHARMA ECONOMY BUREAU Posted online: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 at 0153 hours IST NEW DELHI, NOV 20: India has called upon other biodiversity-rich countries to work out a model for cooperation and make common efforts for conservation of biological diversity, ensuring biosafety and development. Inaugurating an international conference on the implications of the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety

in Capital on Monday, the environment and forests minister A Raja said,"As responsible members of the international community that harbours the major part of the world's biodiversity, I would appeal to make our common biosafety concerns and our common desire for development of a model for cooperation." The minister said the perceived benefits of genetically modified crops, namely better weed and insect control, higher productivity and more flexible crop management were adding more countries to the biotechnology bandwagon. But at the same time, the progress of biotechnology was associated with a number of risks to biodiversity protection, food security, health and economy, in addition to ethical and religious concerns and equity considerations.

He said developing countries were more prone to these risks. The 17 mega biodiversity-rich countries including India are developed. A significant part of the culture and economy of the developing countries were associated with biodiversity and thus loss of biodiversity would entail a heavy cost, he said. Raja said the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety has received support from most countries in the world as the only international legal instrument to dealspecifically with the issues related to genetic engineering and

genetically modified organisms. The minister, however, said India with its large pool of scientific talent, world-class information technology industry and vibrant agriculture and pharmaceutical sector was well poised to emerge as a significant player in the global biotech arena. He listed many advantages of applications of biotechnology, including use of biotech tools for development of non-GM crops. He urged the developing countries to put in place laws and regulations on biosafety and create infrastructure and

enhance capacity building to implement the norms. He also said that developing countries need technical and financial assistance for institution building, risk assessment and management. He informed that India was implementing a GEF-World Bank capacity building project on biosafety.------------------------------- FE Debate Will GM crops reduce dependency on pesticides and protect environment? Environmental disaster in the making http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=146846 KAVITHA KURUGANTI Posted online: Monday,

November 20, 2006 at 0020 hours IST A recent Cornell University report has answered this question very well through a study done in China to assess Bt cotton that is in its seventh year of cultivation there. Growing secondary pest populations have slowly eroded the benefits of Bt technology, the study concludes, pointing out that total pesticide use and expenditure for Chinese Bt cotton farmers is the same as their conventional counterparts. The study shows a three-fold increase of pesticide use now compared to the initial years of Bt cotton adoption, taking back the Bt cotton farmers to nearly the same levels of pesticide use as before the advent of Bt cotton, thanks to such changes in farm ecology. This is inevitable, as any knowledgeable farmer would tell you. Similarly, data from the US compiled from USDA data, 10 years after the adoption of GM crops, shows that the use of chemicals has only increased with GM crops even as super-weeds and super-pests (not easily controllable by the chemicals used earlier) are emerging. Experience in India from various studies shows that sucking pests are higher on Bt cotton and the pesticide use has not come down as promised. Further, there are newer diseases emerging on Bt cotton -- official monitoring by state governments records this. It should be realised that even a few sprays of pesticides will damage the farm ecology by killing beneficial insects too and GM crops incidentally are not guaranteeing a complete elimination of such pesticides! They target only specific insects with their reductionist science. That is not the case with many non-chemical alternatives, however. Very often GM crops are shown as part of an IPM (Integrated Pest Management) approach. A closer look will show that GM crops are actually defying many IPM principles. For example, IPM does not advocate a single chemical with the same mode of action and asks for alternation of methods/chemicals with different modes of action. In India, thanks to the

generous giving away of the ‘Bt’ genes on a payment by some institutions, all major crops are being converted into Bt crops -- Bt Brinjal, Bt Rice, Bt Tomato, Bt Cabbage, Bt Cauliflower, Bt Maize and so on. It does not take a genius to guess what kind of an environmental disaster this monoculture would lead to. What is also interesting to note is that the biotech industry would like to paint itself environment-friendly while on the one hand, there are no guarantees against potential environmental hazards from GM crops and on the other, most major players in the biotech industry are selling agri-chemicals and have a major chunk in the pesticide industry themselves! The same players who thrust agri-chemicals down our throats are now saying that

these chemicals are bad and therefore, GM crops should be adopted. How about getting accountable for the damage caused so far? Important also is the recognition that pesticide reduction and elimination can be achieved through simple political will as the Indonesian example shows us. This does not require the answer of GM crops, which comes with a baggage of several undesirable, unpredictable and irreversible environmental and health hazards. One of the glaring problems with decision-making related to GM crops is that the rationale of pesticide use reduction is being employed for glossing over the many ill-effects that they bring along. It should be realised that the basic problem that the farmer has begun with is pest management and not pesticide management. Our experience in thousands of acres of NPM (Non-Pesticidal Management of crops) shows that elimination of pesticide use itself is enough to restore farm ecologies and to improve the environment. (The writer is consultant, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Secandrabad, Andhra Pradesh, India) ----------------------------- Delhi to host global R & D conference http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=146962 ASHOK B SHARMA ECONOMY BUREAU Posted online: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 at 0157 hours IST NEW DELHI, NOV 20:

Inspired with the recent UNCTAD report ranking as the third major R & D hotspot, India is all set to host a global conference on R & D. President APJ Abdul Kalam will inaugurate the second global conference on ‘India R & D 2006 – Mind to Market’ to be held in the capital from December 4. Organised by the department of science and technology and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in partnership with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI), the conference will showcase India as a true R & D hub. The stress will be on the importance of commercialising R & D and to convince the world on the benefits of collaborating and investing in R & D. Briefing newspersons here on Monday, the secretary in the department of science and technology T Ramasami said, "The conference will look at the prospects of identifying the most successful enterprises in four or five select areas and connect them with successful minds for rapidly bringing innovations to commercial fruition." The effort would also be correlate industry turnover with the ability of the country to create IPR, he said. Ramasami underlined to need to rejuvenate the university structure in India to facilitate research and innovations. He said this question was also in the priority list of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. -------------------------------

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