Ineffective GM regime

Govt should lift the embargo on new seeds

The finding of a study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) that 32 per cent of the processed foods being sold in markets carry genetically modified (GM) ingredients reflects poorly on the country’s GM regulation and law enforcement systems. Local production and import of foods having genetically tailored contents are barred in India. Yet, nearly 80 per cent of the foods testing GM-positive in the CSE study were imported in contravention of the ban as well as the mandatory declaration by the importers that the products did not have any GM components. Interestingly, some of these products falsely claimed on their labels to be GM-free. Such brazen misleading of consumers is untenable. The ineffectiveness of the GM food regulatory regime had even earlier been exposed with the detection of widespread sowing of unapproved transgenic Bt-cotton seeds in major cotton-growing states.

Though India has not yet approved any GM food crop for cultivation — Bt-cotton being the only commercialised gene-tampered crop — yet the GM genes are believed to have already penetrated the Indian food chain. Over 90 per cent of the country’s cotton acreage is under Bt-hybrids carrying pest-slayer gene borrowed from a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis. Delinted Cottonseeds, which bear GM DNA, are routinely fed to cattle whose milk is part of regular human diet. In recent years, even cottonseed oil has begun to be used as a cooking medium individually or admixed with other edible oils. This oil, if not properly refined, can retain remnants of GM DNA.

The fundamental issue really is the impact that the genetically tweaked foods can have on health and environment. If the vociferous anti-GM lobby is to be believed, the GM genes can pose wide-ranging hazards and should, therefore, be eschewed. These activists also do not seem to have much faith in the rigorous pre-approval risk assessment trials of GM products. But most scientists disagree with them. A policy brief issued by the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences in August 2016 pointed out that no health, environmental or other kind of risk has been encountered anywhere from the genetically engineered food and other crops in past two decades. Similar views were aired that year by 107 Nobel Laureates in an open letter to all governments, maintaining that the GM crops were “as safe as, if not safer than those, derived from any other method of production”. The number of signatories to this communication has by now grown to 133. Several other scientific studies conducted in the countries where GM crops are extensively farmed and their produce regularly consumed, too, have not noticed any adverse effect of these products.

India, in fact, offers the most reassuring evidence of safety of GM products. Many farmers grow Bt-cotton most carelessly without observing the recommended safety measures. The GM foods are also being consumed, even if unknowingly, as revealed by the CSE report. Yet, hardly any deleterious fallout has been observed until now. The government should, therefore, take note of these facts and lift the ill-advised embargo on the approval of new GM seeds. The cutting-edge technology of genetic manipulation needs to be put to gainful use for the benefit of farmers, consumers and biotech-based industries. Otherwise, the valuable biotechnological expertise acquired over the years would go waste.