The burning of a GM rice field at Karnal in Haryana has prompted rice and basmati exporters to see red in GM trials. They want a stop to the trials. But the Government has ridiculed the exporters panic as nothing but opportunism in the face of an ongoing trade standoff between the US and the European Union over the contaminated rice. |
The rice exporters today shot off a letter to the Department of Biotechnology that gives approvals for field trials to stop the trials immediately or face jeopardising rice exports worth Rs 3030 crore. |
|
The All India Rice Exporters Association in its letter addressed to the member secretary of the Department's Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation T V Ramanaiah demanded that field trials should be conducted only after the Government met the European Union regulatory authorities and arrived at a mutually agreeable tolerance and testing protocol for rice. |
|
Ramanaiah, speaking to Business Standard today however, ridiculed these concerns saying that the exporters were merely trying to make some quick bucks by exploiting the current trade standoff between the US and the EU over rice contamination. |
|
They want to take advantage of the opening in the European markets and so want the government to give a clean chit to their rice. But they should remember that it is a fight between the two bulls (US and EU) and the Indian exporters might just get crushed if caught between them, he said. |
|
On the demand that the government should go to consumer and regulatory authorities abroad to get a testing protocol acceptable to both countries, he asked: Will the exporters get orders for 100 years from these agencies? Will they guarantee to buy rice from India for another 100 years if we agree to their protocol? |
|
The rice exporters said that their concern stemmed from the fact that the European Union has zero tolerance for contamination of rice with GM rice. |
|
They treat it like poison, the letter says. The exporters were responding to Ramanaiah's own statement reported by Business Standard that fear of contamination should then stop states from growing non basmati rice itself. |
|
Ramanaiah today said that the EU may keep changing its standards and Indian Rice Research cannot be held hostage to this. He said that the trials at Karnal were done with sufficient biological and physical isolation measures. |
|
No crops were planted within 200 metres of the field and also a non transgenic rice was planted in adjoining areas to be destroyed later. |
|
This was to prevent pollen contamination to other crops. Again the fields were covered with tarpaulin, Ramanaiah said. The EU today tolerates 0.1 per cent GM contamination in maize. If it allows similar contamination in rice tomorrow, then Indian exporters will be nowhere, said Ramanaiah. |
|
|
|