New Delhi, India
June 22, 2005
by T. V. Padma,
SciDev.Net
Genetically modified (GM) crop
research in India is unfocused, and not regulated in a
transparent way, says a joint Swedish-Indian study.
The report, Agricultural
Biotechnology and Biosafety in India: Expectations,
outcomes and lessons, was published in April by the
Stockholm Environment Institute,
Sweden, and
Centre for Budget and Policy Studies in Bangalore, India.
It says it is unlikely that a
GM crop developed by an Indian public sector institute will
reach the market before 2007. For this to happen one or more
institutions would need to begin large field trials this year,
the public would have to accept GM crops, and agreements over
intellectual property rights for techniques patented by
transnational corporations would have to be successfully and
swiftly concluded.
Discussing national regulations
for GM crops, the study notes: "Neither the various stakeholders
nor the general public know whether there is a system of
biosafety accountability and how it operates."
The Indian study is part of the
'Comparative Asian Biosafety Project' supported by the Swedish
International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), and is
based on questionnaires and interviews with officials from
public and private sector institutes as well as civil society
organisations.
Late in
2004, Indian scientists were working on 19 GM crops. Most had
completed laboratory and greenhouse tests; and six — rice,
tomato, cotton, potato, tobacco and melon — had undergone
contained field trials. So far, none has entered large-scale
field trials.
The study says the Indian
Department of Biotechnology's emphasis since the 1990s on
capacity building has led to a growing number of projects
covering a wide variety of crops and traits, with no focus.
Different research groups are
working on the same crops and traits without coordinating and
dividing the work, it observes.
Public sector institutions that
want to conduct large-scale field trials and disseminate GM
technology lack financial, infrastructure and field staff
support, adds the study. It says this means the government both
promotes and holds back the GM crops at the same time.
Private sector efforts to
introduce GM crops in India began in 1995, when the seed company
Mahyco got government approval to import GM cotton seeds from
US-based Monsanto to breed with selected Indian cotton
varieties. Indian companies continue to import GM seeds from
North America and Western Europe to create hybrids with Indian
varieties.
The study also notes the total
absence in regulatory bodies of social scientists, research
representatives of civil society organisations, private sector
companies and institutions. It says "it is impossible to find
out" which criteria regulatory authorities use in their risk
assessments, and which issues they debate. This, it says, could
undermine government efforts to promote public trust in
biotechnology and biosafety systems.
Monsanto's Bt cotton is the
only GM crop to be commercialised in India so far. The study
says the Bt cotton case raises some serious questions about the
structure and implementation of India's biosafety regulatory
regime.
During research in Karnataka on
Bt cotton, the study found the monitoring and evaluation by the
Department of Biotechnology to be "cursory and very narrowly
focused."
It was limited to measuring the
Bt and non-Bt cotton yields, bollworm pest levels, migration of
the bollworm on trial plots, and the frequency and magnitude of
pesticide spraying.
It did not independently and
intensively assess risks such as pollen and gene flow to other
nearby plants, impact on the health of livestock feeding on Bt
cotton seeds, or potential agronomic and socio-economic impact
of Bt cotton.
It says it is difficult to
verify whether these omissions are limited to that district or
are common to all field trials on Bt cotton, as the main
regulatory authority Genetic Engineering Approval Committee
(GEAC) has declined to put it's reports into the public domain,
despite repeated calls by civil society organisations and the
media.
The study also notes the
government did not commission long-term safety studies nor
monitoring of the potential build-up of Bt-resistant insects.
Nor has the government
effectively dealt with Indian companies selling illegal Bt
cotton seeds — containing the same genes as the patented
Monsanto varieties' — at low prices. The harvest from one such
Indian company, Navbharat Seeds, reached the market in 2001, the
same year as Monsanto's Bt cotton was cleared for cultivation.
Since then, illegal Bt-cotton
varieties have proliferated and have been openly marketed in all
the major cotton growing areas of the country.
Read more about GM crops in SciDev.Net's GM
Crops dossier. |