<b>Letters:</b> Biosafety of our food

This refers to the editorial "A Bill too long delayed" (May 2). The Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI), a single-window clearance approval mechanism for genetically modified (GM) crops and a tool to circumvent public opposition to such crops, poses a frightening picture. The BRAI Bill is fundamentally flawed - it is creating a regulation to promote biotechnology rather than protect biosafety. Moreover, it is housed within the ministry of science and technology, which raises an issue of conflict of interest. In addition, the BRAI Bill is against the federal nature of the country since it reduces the role of state governments to a recommendatory capacity by taking away their decision-making power, even though agriculture is a state subject. The need of the hour is a biosafety protection law, as recommended by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, which clearly mentioned that BRAI is not a way forward to regulate GM crops. In 2003-04, the idea of an independent regulatory authority, termed then as the National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority, was formally mooted for the first time in the report of a task force set up by the ministry of agriculture, headed by M S Swaminathan. It recommended the environment's safety, the well-being of farming families, the ecological and economic sustainability of farming systems, the health and nutrition security of consumers, among others. The current BRAI Bill is nowhere close to these recommendations, and needs to be replaced with an all-encompassing biosafety law.

Neha Saigal, Mumbai

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