20 February 2003

GE COTTON REPORT SOWS CONFUSION/TOP NUTRITION EXPERTS EXPRESS FEARS  ABOUT LACK OF GM FOOD CHECKS

1.Report on success of GE cotton sows confusion
2.No check on quality of GM foods, say experts

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1.Report on success of GE cotton sows confusion

By T V Padma
Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EB20Df02.html

NEW DELHI - Civil society groups have been taken aback by a new scientific report that sings the praises of the superlative yields of genetically engineered (GE) cotton in India, at a time when ground realities speak of massive failures.

It was left to leading voluntary agencies to point out that the report in the leading international journal Science in February was outdated and based on data from field trials carried out in 2001 by the Maharashtra Hybrid Company (MAHYCO), a subsidiary of the US seed giant Monsanto Corp.

The report spoke of a 70 to 80 percent yield increases of Monsanto's patented Bt cotton, compared to conventional hybrids. Bt cotton is genetically engineered to contain a gene borrowed from a common soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which produces a substance lethal to the bollworm that devastates more than half of India's cotton crop.

The wide international publicity given to the Science report, authored by researchers from the University of California, Berkley, and the University of Bonn, Germany, underplayed the fact that it relied on data from trials in India in 2001 - and was not from commercially grown cotton, activists here say.

These trials were the ones that decided the Indian federal government's clearance of commercial production of Bt cotton in March the following year.  "Thanks to the publicity, there is an erroneous impression that the study was based on the crop season that ended. In reality, the analysis is based on the data MAHYCO-Monsanto had collected in the final year of field-testing in 2001, a year before the crop was commercialized," says Devinder Sharma, a leading food policy and trade analyst.

Data in the Science report was recorded in the third and last round of trials by MAHYCO-Monsanto before the cotton was cleared, and not on data after the cotton was commercially grown in actual field conditions. The controversial clearance for commercial production of Bt cotton was given last year despite the fact that a case against "illegal" trials filed by voluntary agencies and farmers' organizations was pending in India's apex Supreme Court.

Not only was MAHYCO-Monsanto entrusted with carrying out its own field trials, unusual in a country which has large, well-funded agricultural research organizations, but the results were never made public. India's first crop of Bt cotton sown by farmers last year in several cotton-growing states, was, by the accounts of several farmers' organizations, a failure. There were in fact a clamor for compensation.

With no independent scientific assessment in place, the government and scientists ignored these failure reports often brought to their notice by activists and farmers' groups. This was the data that "still remains hidden from the public gaze in India", and "has no relevance to the crop harvest in 2002-03", Sharma says.

The report also errs in treating savings in crop losses as yield increases, says Sharma. "But then for an industry under tremendous pressure for public acceptance of its risky technology, playing the yield card was a simple way to hoodwink the masses," he observed.

Commercial clearance to Bt cotton was granted on the grounds that it has been fully tested in Indian conditions, that it does not require pesticide sprays and gives higher yield and farmers higher incomes. "All the claims on the basis of which the clearance was given have been proven false by the total failure of Bt cotton in states where it was cleared for planting, including Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh," points out Vandana Shiva, director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFTSE).

A field survey conducted by the RFSTE from October 23 to November 2 last year in two cotton-growing states - Maharashtra in western India and Andhra Pradesh in southern India - belied claims of super yields and successful warding off of the bollworm pest by Bt cotton. In a statement, RFSTE said there continued to be substantial attack of bollworm and sucking pests like jassids, aphis and thrips on Bt in Maharashtra.  It has documented instances of several farmers in Yawatmal district in Maharashtra and Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh saying they sprayed pesticides for bollworm and sucking pests several times in their cotton fields.

Additionally, the cotton crops were attacked by two fungal diseases, root rot and wilt, which was confirmed by plant disease scientists at the Zonal Agricultural Research Center in Yawatmal district in Maharashtra and Warrangal district in Andhra Pradesh. RFSTE also says that contrary to claims of 15 quintals per acre with Bt cotton, yields have been as low as 20 kg per acre in some areas.

Yields in cotton in general could have been lower last year due to a crippling drought - the worst in the past 12 years. Nevertheless, even Monsanto said in a statement that Bt cotton did suffer from a condition called root wilt seen in times of severe moisture stress, proving it is certainly not drought resistant.

RFSTE says even the claims of higher income for farmers are also farfetched.

Many poor farmers recorded poor yields and lower prices for the genetically engineered crop, despite paying much more for the Bt-cotton seed and spending more on pesticide sprays.

RFSTE's field survey also found no effective safeguards for biosafety. Farmers growing Bt cotton did not plant adequate "refugia" or areas planted plants with ordinary cotton to prevent accidental transfer of pollen to nearby non-genetically engineered plants.

The performance of Bt cotton in India has been mired in controversy since the country prepared itself for its first harvest of the genetically engineered cotton last year. In December 2002, Environment and Forests Minister T R Baalu told parliament that the performance of Bt cotton was "satisfactory" in the first year of its planting.

But three voluntary organizations - Greenpeace India, Center for Resource Education and Sarvodaya Youth Organization said their investigations showed otherwise. "The government has conveniently ignored other important issues like the inferior quality of Bt cotton, the weakness of Bt cotton wherein the stalk breaks and the plant falls, unfavorable market rates for Bt cotton and the fact that Bt cotton farming is labor-intensive which increases the costs incurred by the farmer,”° said Kavitha Kuruganti, a Greenpeace campaigner.

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2.No check on quality of GM foods, say experts

KALPANA JAIN
TIMES OF INDIA, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=38001008

NEW DELHI: Close on the heels of the government decision to allow imports of genetically modified (GM) foods on a case-by-case basis, top nutrition experts here have expressed fears that there are no systems as of now to adequately assess the risk or even to detect unapproved genetic modifications.

Ramesh V Bhat, deputy director at the Food and Drug Toxicology Research Centre, National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), says that while kits are available to detect approved genetic modifications, there is no way of knowing if an unapproved variety is being slipped in.