GM WATCH COMMENT: This press release relates to the latest stage of the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) brought by Aruna Rodrigues and her co-petitioners over GMOs, which is due to be heard again by India's Supreme Court (SC) on the 31st January.
The PIL has already lead the Court to ban all new GM field trials in India. However, an exception was made at the request of Delhi University for trials of its GM mustard (DMH-11).
The petitioners are contesting this exemption on the grounds that Delhi University did not make all the relevant scientific information available to the Court, in particular that the GM mustard involves a Terminator-style sterility producing GURT (Genetic Use Restriction Technology).
The petitioners are also drawing attention to the Government of India's total inability to provide adequate independent scrutiny and regulatory control over GMOs, due to its direct alliance with the US Government and with US and other multinationals to promote GM crop commercialisation in India.
The petitioners also draw attention to the revealing prevalence of conflicts of interest in the regulation of GM crops in India. They note, for instance, that the key GM Regulator, the GEAC, has as its Co-chair, Charudatta Mayee, who is simultaneously a Director of the ISAAA, an international network established to promote GM, funded by biotech majors like Monsanto, Bayer and Dupont.
Similarly, Dr Deepak Paintal, the promoter of Delhi University's GM mustard, is the chairman of the Review Committee for Bt Brinjal (aubergine/eggplant) set up by the GEAC. In other words, he oversees a body of regulation that he himself is subject to.
---
DELHI UNIVERSITY'S IMPLEADMENT APPLICATION TO THE SC TO FIELD TEST MUSTARD DMH-11 COMPROMISES A CRITICAL BIO-SAFETY PROTOCOL OF THE COURT, FOR THE ADDED REASON THAT IT IS CONFIRMED TO BE A STERILISATION TECHNOLGY BASED ON POLLEN GURTS (GENETIC USE RESTRICTION TECHNOLOGY)
THE CONFLICT OF INTEREST IN THE REGULATION OF GM CROPS IS DEEP AND PERVASIVE. THE UNION OF INDIA IS OPENELY COLLABORATING WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO COMMERCIALISE GE CROPS IN INDIA: TO SUBJECT INDIANS TO THE RISKIEST & FASTEST EXPERIMENT ANYWHERE WITH REGARD TO GM FOODS AND ANIMAL FEED.
PRESS RELEASE:
In continuation of the PIL filed in July 2005 in the Supreme Court for a moratorium pending a comprehensive biosafety protocol, Petitioners have filed two submissions in January 2007, which provide the following evidence:
1. Contamination from Field Trials Risk India's Bio-safety in Perpetuity
At this juncture, contamination is the critical issue precisely because of outstanding safety concerns that GMOs present; that the bio-safety risk through contamination by more than one method is confirmed, and transgenic or gene contamination is a biological certainty. Since this involves a time-scale of perpetuity, it is therefore unacceptable.
For this reason, it is necessary to apply the precautionary principle to this hazardous technology through an immediate moratorium on ALL FIELD TRIALS without which this Petition will be rendered infructuous. The hazards of GE are fully applicable to DU's Mustard DMH-11. Brassica (B) species including B juncea (Indian mustard) present particularly high contamination risks. DMH-11 is also engineered to be resistant to glufosinate, Bayer’s herbicide. Glufosinate is toxic, carries environmental and health hazards and in Canada triple herbicide tolerance including to glufosinate is a matter of serious concern. The extensive contamination of certified canola seed with transgenes for herbicide tolerance is staggering. The Canadian canola crop extends over some 5 million hectares, of which roughly 60% are planted with transgenic varieties. It now seems unlikely that transgene-free canola can be produced in western Canada.
The fact that DMH-11 is also a GURT greatly exacerbates the bio-safety risk. It therefore enjoins a more rigorous application of injunction applied to it and not by any means, less. The science is that the Barnase construct has "the potential to act as a GURT and is consistent in its effects with purposefully made GURTs, because the barnase plant and its POLLEN can restrict access to fertile plants" (Dr.JH). GURTs are rightly banned by COPs 8 (of the CBD) and that is also the intention of the Indian Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Act 2001 which bans the registration of any GURT.
DU places great emphasis on an integral proprietary technology in DMH-11 in which "any possible leaky expression of the barnase gene is completely avoided." This begs the question of whether the field trial is indeed purely a research exercise or is commercial testing. On the other hand, if the researchers had no commercial interest in the "proprietary technology", they could release the details and the results of safety tests for the larger scientific community to consider. Dr. Jack Heinemann states conclusively:
"zero expression is impossible to prove and highly unlikely to be achieved. The researchers are making a powerful claim when they say 'any possible leaky expression of the barnase gene is completely avoided.' This claim is for an achievement that would not be a minor incremental advance on the science of gene expression, and therefore should not simply be accepted without proper review of the evidence". (Dr. JH, Director, Centre of Integrated Research and Biosafety, University of Canterbury)
"it does not seem entirely sane to undertake safety tests involving known toxins in the open environment. Such tests on the safety of the ablation (to kill) toxins should have been undertaken on plants grown in a controlled glass house environment prior to being released in the open environment for agronomic tests." (Prof. Joe Cummins, Professor Emeritus of Genetics, University of Western Ontario)
2. The G of India's Intent is to Promote & Commercialise GE.
The recent Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, (KIA) with Monsanto elected to a pivotal role, is the key in the joint political plan, involving the potent combination of the most powerful country in the world, the US with the largest democracy in the world, India, to push the commercialisation of GM crops in India, with global implications. By their own admission, (Union of India), the recruitment of our centres of education, i.e. universities and state agricultural universities (SAUs) is being rapidly deployed to aid the process.
Every US President since George H.W. Bush (1992) has made support of genetically engineered crops a matter of highest national priority. The control over the world's seed supply is the cornerstone of Monsanto's aim of supremacy over world agriculture, where "NATURAL SEEDS ARE VIRTUALLY EXTINCT". Transgenic contamination of the seed stock will preclude choice and is irreversible. If genetic engineering (GE) fails, then seeds will be our only recourse. Recovering the original genetic seed stock will however be impossible, which is the ultimate aim of biotech in order to gain control and domination over global crops.
In March 1998 the US Patent Office granted Patent No. 5,723,765 to Delta & Pine Land for a patent titled, Control of Plant Gene Expression. The patent, which is Terminator, is owned jointly, according to Delta & Pine's Security & Exchange Commission 10K filing, 'by D&PL and the United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Agriculture.'
The patent has global coverage. USDA's (United States Department of Agriculture) Phelps stated that the US Government's goal in fostering the widest possible development of Terminator technology was 'to increase the value of proprietary seed owned by US seed companies and to open up new markets in Second and Third World countries.'
D&PL is now in the process of being bought over by Monsanto. The acquisition will give Monsanto an unprecedented monopoly position as a seed supplier and the owner of the Terminator patent. Monsanto's tactics worldwide (including in India), and it also includes those of Bayer, Sygenta and the full biotech industry, should in the normal course be of the greatest concern to the Union of India and the national Regulator. Patents lapse over time; not so the biological control over a nation’s food crops. The fact that biotech plans have not alerted a national bio-safety and food security antennae, demonstrates a serious and dangerous break with the process of objective enquiry that may not be countenanced in a Regulator. It is proof of a mindset that is disastrous for India, must rank as the greatest betrayal of the nation’s sovereign interests and is therefore reason for a corrective course of action to be applied with the greatest sense of urgency.. Monsanto's corporate interest of profit and domination over many decades, has taken priority over human concerns and therefore represents the corporate 'ethics' and culture of the company. Keeping company with other biotech majors like Bayer, it includes some of the worst human rights excesses committed by an organisation. In order to put a perspective on matters, i.e. the complexion of a government that finds it fit to support the likes of such as these, a telling description bears repetition:
On February 22, 2002, a court found Monsanto guilty on all six counts of negligence, wantonness and suppression of the truth, nuisance, trespass, and outrage. Outrage, according to Alabama law, usually requires conduct "so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society."
The fact is: that India's GM and agricultural policy is being manipulated and steered by such a corporate entity and others like it, with the full backing of the US Government, to fulfil scary and anti-sovereign objectives of domination of global food supply with emphasis on the 3rd world. That the Indian Government should be aiding and abetting such a policy is dumbfounding. It defies rational sense and debate.
Two significant and further aspects of the conflict of interest within the Government and its Regulator, the GEAC, are: (a) The Co-chair of the GEAC, Charudatta Mayee, is simultaneously a Director of the ISAAA, an international network established to promote GM, funded by biotech majors like Monsanto, Bayer and Dupont; (b) Dr. Paintal the promoter of DU's mustard DMH-11 is also the chairman of the Review Committee set up by the GEAC for Bt Brinjal. He therefore oversees a body of regulation that he is himself subject to.
It is also a fact that the Indian Constitution is being subverted through trade-related politics and pressure brought on India at the WTO by the USA. The Indian Government is accordingly committed to embarking on a sleuth of measures to bend Indian regulations to allow both the commercialisation of crops and full scale GM imports without labelling into India. Bio-safety and the precautionary principle have been comprehensively ditched.
The solutions lie in (a) the election of independent members to the GEAC; (b) however, on its own, this measure will be insufficient to ensure the long term protection of India's national interest. It is therefore quite necessary to institute the office of an overseeing, autonomous and independent body, an OMBUDSMAN, which is instituted by an Act of Parliament to underpin its constitutional mandate of the protection of India's Biosafety. It has been suggested that a comprehensive working paper by civil society must form part of the guidelines for this Body to ensure its independence and objectivity. It is recognized that the level of research, experience and expertise on GE that is available in the 'North' developed world is not matched in India. The presence therefore of world class independent scientists as advisors/consultants to the Ombudsman is also seen as part of a process that ensures a climate of world class excellence in the workings of such an institution.
Since it is civil society that is now bearing and will in future bear the brunt in perpetuity of the Regulators' reckless rush to commercialise this technology in India in partnership with the US Government and Monsanto, how we proceed is of the uttermost national importance. It therefore requires the most serious application of wills and hearts of National Government and civil society to ensure that India gets it right, NOW, for we will not get a second chance.
Aruna Rodrigues with co-petitioners:
Petitioner No1
Mhow, M.P.
PV Satheesh,
H'bad
Devinder Sharma,
N Delhi
Rajeev Baruah
Mhow
Dated 25th January, 2007
---
Say "No" To India's Crops Being Genetically Engineered http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/no-to-indias-crops-being-genetically-engineered.html