GM CROPS IN PAKISTAN

Firms pitch GM crops in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Three multinational companies and a number of national firms have approached the Ministry of Food Security seeking licences to grow genetically-modified (GM) crops in Pakistan.

A senior federal government official, refusing to give his name, said that “a request in this regard has been received by the Ministry of Food Security a few weeks back and it is being reviewed.”

He added that the ministry had received the request to grow GM maize and cotton. He identified the firms as Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta.

When approached, the director general of Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (Pak-Epa), Asif Shuja, said: “The three companies have also approached us. But we are only concerned with the assessment of environmental impact of these companies.”

Asked to comment on the genetically-modified food products, he said: “It’s a long debate as research is still continuing internationally whether genetically-modified products have an impact on human health.”

A number of Pakistani companies have also approached Pak-Epa for launching genetically-modified food products, but “we have not given a no-objection certificate to any of them,” Shuja said.

“Many of the local companies want to import genetically-modified food products from China and we have not given any approval in this regard,” he added.

Shuja said the Ministry of Climate Change had also established a committee to review the requests from these companies.

Meanwhile, Dr Jawad Chishtie, a public health and environment management specialist, said: “Genetically-modified products have been rejected in Europe, and most recently in France, for damaging crops and endangering human health.”

He warned that effects of genetically-engineered organisms were not yet known to researchers and “they are suspected of causing dangerous allergies and even cancer.”

He said GM seeds had terminator genes which did not allow the same crop to be planted again from harvested seeds. “Once a genetically-modified agri-product is planted, the farmers are trapped into buying the seed and its related pesticides each and every year from the same company,” he said. Internews