NEWS FROM INDIA
1.Six months on, GM crops panel wants expert off board
2.Biosafety data of transgenic brinjal made public - finally!.
3.The murky GMO scene in India

NOTE: This says everything: the GEAC - India's apex GM regulatory body, is trying to have the scientist the Supreme Court appointed to bring transparency to its proceedings sacked.

EXTRACTS: In an equally hard-hitting written response, Bhargava threatened to file a case of defamation against GEAC for "casting personal aspersions" without addressing any of "the purely scientific and professional views" expressed by him at its meetings. "May I, in all humility, remind you that I am not a member of GEAC. I am an invitee to GEAC, not because GEAC chose to do so, but only because of a Supreme Court's decision," Bhargava added, by way of explanation for not submitting to what he called a "dictatorial set up." (item 1)

Here's data to ponder if you would like to question the objectivity of GEAC - GEAC co-chairman CD Mayee is the sole Indian representative on the International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications (ISAAA), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that is funded by biotech giants like Bayer Cropscience, Monsanto, Syngenta, Pioneer hi-bred and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research (BBSRC) whose field trial proposals come to the GEAC for approval time and again.

In one single meeting held on May 22, 2006, GEAC approved an astonishing array of 24 items for 91 field trials. 9item 30
---
---
1.6 months on, GM crops panel wants expert off board
Manoj Mitta
Times of India, 30 Aug 2008
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/6_months_on_GM_crops_panel_wants_expert_off_board/articleshow/3423882.cms

NEW DELHI: The marriage forced by the Supreme Court to introduce "transparency" took exactly six months to break down as the regulator for genetically modified organisms has come out with its intention to seek a divorce from independent expert P M Bhargava.

In its last monthly meeting held on August 13, the genetic engineering approval committee (GEAC) decided to "seek modification" of the February 13 SC order which had asked the 30-member regulatory body, which is part of the environment ministry, to invite Bhargava to participate in its deliberations. It is trying to get Bhargava off its back although SC said that the whole purpose of his induction was to take on board the concern of the petitioner, Aruna Rodrigues, that "the constitution of GEAC is not proper as it lacks independent experts, thereby leading to lack of transparency" in determining the bio-safety aspects of the GM crops that have already been cleared or are undergoing field trials.

The presence of Bhargava, founder director of the prestigious Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, in GEAC's meetings did serve the intended purpose of uncovering bio-safety compromises in the clearance already given to the commercial cultivation of Bt cotton and the proposal of making brinjal the first GM food crop in India.

GEAC, which is headed by additional secretary in environment ministry B S Parsheera, is miffed with Bhargava's attempts to reform the system. Bhargava was earlier in the news for his outspokenness as a member of the Knowledge Commission set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. According to the minutes of its meeting, GEAC made a series of allegations against Bhargava, a Padma Bhushan awardee:
Ӣ It held him responsible for "the malicious and distorted views on the regulatory process being reported in the newspapers periodically."
Ӣ His personal views, which were "without any scientific basis", were being used by NGOs to file PILs.
Ӣ His attempts to rake up public sentiments are "totally unprofessional and unethical".
Ӣ Bhargava committed a "breach of trust" by going to the media although he was not GEAC's spokesperson.
Ӣ Apart from advocating a moratorium on GMOs, Bhargava has "never provided any constructive inputs for streamlining the regulatory mechanism."

In an equally hard-hitting written response, Bhargava threatened to file a case of defamation against GEAC for "casting personal aspersions" without addressing any of "the purely scientific and professional views" expressed by him at its meetings. "May I, in all humility, remind you that I am not a member of GEAC. I am an invitee to GEAC, not because GEAC chose to do so, but only because of a Supreme Court's decision," Bhargava added, by way of explanation for not submitting to what he called a "dictatorial set up."

Refuting the allegation that he had only offered criticism, Bhargava said GEAC's own minutes would bear out his "many inputs" and that he had in addition submitted a comprehensive list of the risks of GMOs with suggestions of how they could be assessed "in an objective and transparent way."
---
---
2.Biosafety data of transgenic brinjal made public
Meena Menon
The Hindu, August 25 2008
http://www.hindu.com/2008/08/25/stories/2008082555781300.htm

MUMBAI: The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) has published information on biosafety studies of Bt brinjal, developed by MAHYCO, on its official website. The data in eight volumes, runs into more than 1,100 pages.

Sources in the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) confirmed that it was the complete data sent by the company which was analysed by the department and forwarded to the GEAC. Greenpeace, which has been demanding that the data be made public and is involved in a long Right to Information (RTI) battle, says the data looks comprehensive, but there is neither an official notification nor an assurance of its completeness from the authorities.

However, MAHYCO had sought a stay on the data being made public after an order of the Central Information Commissioner (CIC) last November. The Delhi High Court did grant the stay in December 2007 after MAHYCO, the Indian partner of the multinational agri biotech giant Monsanto, said the company could suffer commercial losses if the confidential data was disclosed to the public.

In the last hearing of the case in Delhi on August 20 there was no mention of the data being available on the website. Since the issue was sub judice and the DBT was one of the respondents it could not make the data public. DBT sources said there was nothing secret about the data and the only reason it did not share it with Greenpeace was because of the company’s objections as a third party that their business interests would be affected. Now GEAC in its own wisdom has decided to post the data on the Internet.

Greenpeace said it has been close to 30 months since the first application for the biosafety data and minutes of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) committee meetings were submitted under the RTI Act 2005 by Divya Raghunandan. Since then the data was consistently denied by the DBT till the CIC directed the department to disclose the data to the appellant finally in November 2007.

Though it had come very late, this was a welcome step by GEAC, said Divya Raghunandan of Greenpeace who had filed the RTI way back in February 2006. Recently, Dr. P.M. Bhargava, special invitee of the Supreme Court in the GEAC, raised concerns on the veracity of the Bt cotton as well as the Bt brinjal data as the procedures followed were flawed.
---
---
3.The murky GMO scene in India
Uma Shankari
MeriNews, 
http://india.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=139624

*The chances of genetically-modified food, finding a place on your dining table are not remote. As consumers, we have a right to ensure that the food we eat and serve our family lovingly is not 'frankenfood'...

IF YOU thought that the chances of genetically-modified food finding a place on your dining table are remote, chew this. GM rice trials have been approved in 10 out of India’s 25 states. The GM crops under field trials in India are: Brinjal, cabbage, cauliflower, chickpea, cotton, groundnut, maize, mustard, okra, pigeon pea, potato, rice, sorghum and tomato (source- Press Information Bureau, July 26, 2007).

Multinational seed companies have promoted GM seeds as a key technology for feeding growing populations. But GM seeds do not solve the world's hunger problem; these merely destroy soil and the biodiversity.

Fewer than half a dozen giant multinational companies control the world market in GM seeds- Monsanto, Cargill and DuPont of the America and Syngenta of Switzerland.

GM technology arrived in India in 1995, when the American biotech giant Monsanto formed a joint venture with India’s Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company (MAHYCO). In 1998, Monsanto-Mahyco Biotech (India) Pvt Ltd introduced BT cotton across 40 locations in the country that carried a gene from a naturally occurring toxic bacterium bacillus thurigensis (BT) to resist a notorious pest - boll weevil. The government had allowed the field trials without scientifically carrying out mandatory bio-safety tests. The trials created a controversy and a petition was filed in the Supreme Court in 1999 by Vandana Shiva, president of the New Delhi-based research foundation for science technology and ecology, who said the field trials had violated the 1989 rules for the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) under the Environmental Protection Act 1986.

Without waiting for the outcome of the petition pending in the Supreme Court, the department of biotechnology gave the bio-safety clearance in March 2000, and Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) granted permission in July 2000, for large-scale field trials.

Here's data to ponder if you would like to question the objectivity of GEAC - GEAC co-chairman CD Mayee is the sole Indian representative on the International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications (ISAAA), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that is funded by biotech giants like Bayer Cropscience, Monsanto, Syngenta, Pioneer hi-bred and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research (BBSRC) whose field trial proposals come to the GEAC for approval time and again.

In one single meeting held on May 22, 2006, GEAC approved an astonishing array of 24 items for 91 field trials.

Smuggling transgenic material

Lax monitoring mechanisms could not stop the cross-flow of pollen to non-BT crops in field trials.

Greenpeace provided evidence in June 2001, to show that genetically modified (GM) food had illegally entered the Indian market ”” Hong Kong DNA Chips, an independent laboratory, conducted tests and showed the presence of Monsanto’s GM roundup ready crops in Pringles potato chips and Isomil baby food.

Another instance:

In 2001, MAHYCO’s investigators found BT gene in Navbharat 151, a special variety of cotton seeds sold by Desai, a farmer in Gujarat that were resistant to cotton plant’s main enemy, the bollworm.

GEAC ordered the government of Gujarat to recall and destroy every stock of the offending seeds and burn every field where this variety was growing.

Perhaps as a result of the publicity over Navbharat 151, GEAC granted licence in 2002 to Monsanto to market GM cotton.

The yields from GM seeds were high for a short initial period in India, creating a rush for the new seeds, but later the yields became low. Large-scale crop failures caused enormous miseries to debt-ridden cotton farmers from the northern state of Punjab to Karnataka in the south. Many farmers borrowed heavily to buy expensive GM seeds and herbicides and the low yield left them saddled with debts.

Intellectual property rights and patents

Amendments were made in 2005 to the 1970 Patent Act. These now allow for the production or propagation of genetically engineered plants to count as an invention.

Methods of agriculture and plants were excluded from patentability in the Indian Patent Act 1970 to ensure that the seed was held as a common property resource in the public domain. In this manner, it guaranteed farmers the inalienable right to save, exchange and improve upon the seed.

Monsanto used its influence in the American government circles to shape the trade related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) of World Trade Organisation (WTO). Under WTO rules on free trade in agriculture, countries cannot impose their own national health restrictions on GMO imports as it is considered to be an ‘unfair trade barrier’.

Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is being used as a protectionist instrument to promote corporate monopolies over technologies, seeds, genes and medicines. Through TRIPS, large corporations use intellectual property rights to protect their markets, and to prevent competition.

Wishes of industry cannot be put above the needs of consumers. Yet America fights the EU ’moratorium’ on importing GMOs to be discriminatory to its trade interests, and says GMOs are ’substantially equivalent’ to conventional foods. It does not favour labelling of food stuffs carrying the GM products.

Environmentalists’ concern

Critics claim that BT cotton will become vulnerable to pest attack in the long run and that the BT genes escaping from pollen grains might harm other crops in the neighbourhood and the environment.

Though the prime target for the BT is the cotton boll weevil, it does not discriminate between ’pests’ and other beneficial insects and organisms.

Environmentalists feel that BT cotton is no cure to the pest infestation while crop rotation is. And that as pest control measures, neem and garlic have proved more potent than pyrethroids and endosulphan.

London Institute of Science in Society chief biologist, Dr Mae-Wan Ho says that the technology is uncontrollable and unreliable, and typically ends up damaging and scrambling the host genome, with entirely unpredictable consequences that might unleash a deadly ’andromeda strain’.

GM food on the menu?

Readers, wouldn’t you be concerned if the food you so lovingly serve your family is just ‘frankenfood’? As consumers, we have a right to know what we eat, and to eat what we know, or believe, is right.