GM field trials: Indian Regulator proposes but most states decline

GM field trials: Regulator proposes but most states decline

A Business Standard survey shows a majority of the states still firmly against the move while some others are open to consider it only conditionally

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) has approved field trials for 11 crop varieties but that clears only the first hurdle in the way of genetically-modified crops. Another major hitch could come from state governments, most of which do not seem to be in a mood to give their go-ahead anytime soon.

A survey conducted by Business Standard reveals that a majority of the country’s states are still firmly against the move, while a few are open to considering only conditionally. Some others are either neutral or might take a decision after the Lok Sabha elections.

According to GEAC officials, maize, mustard and rice are among the crops that have got approval for trials, but the states that are major producers of these crops remain opposed.

A piece of good news, though, has come from Maharashtra and Punjab, two of the largest agricultural states, which have favoured field trials for GM crops.

Officials say the use of high-yield GM crops could prove beneficial, given the growing demand for food grains, vegetables and oil seeds. But apprehensions of health hazard on the use of such seeds for consumable agricultural commodities seem to be playing a spoilsport. India had suspended field trials of these crops a few years ago but the GEAC approval last week for 11 varieties brought the issue back in the limelight.

The environment & forests ministry had in July 2011 made it mandatory for companies, institutes and research bodies to get no-objection certificates from states concerned before conducting trials. Also, GEAC analyses the sites for these trials on several parameters, including whether these are located too close to sanctuaries or water bodies.

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) has approved field trials for 11 crop varieties but that clears only the first hurdle in the way of genetically-modified crops. Another major hitch could come from state governments, most of which do not seem to be in a mood to give their go-ahead anytime soon.

A survey conducted by Business Standard reveals that a majority of the country’s states are still firmly against the move, while a few are open to considering only conditionally. Some others are either neutral or might take a decision after the Lok Sabha elections.

According to GEAC officials, maize, mustard and rice are among the crops that have got approval for trials, but the states that are major producers of these crops remain opposed.

A piece of good news, though, has come from Maharashtra and Punjab, two of the largest agricultural states, which have favoured field trials for GM crops.

Officials say the use of high-yield GM crops could prove beneficial, given the growing demand for food grains, vegetables and oil seeds. But apprehensions of health hazard on the use of such seeds for consumable agricultural commodities seem to be playing a spoilsport. India had suspended field trials of these crops a few years ago but the GEAC approval last week for 11 varieties brought the issue back in the limelight.

The environment & forests ministry had in July 2011 made it mandatory for companies, institutes and research bodies to get no-objection certificates from states concerned before conducting trials. Also, GEAC analyses the sites for these trials on several parameters, including whether these are located too close to sanctuaries or water bodies. BS

U.S. Tops As Largest GM Crops Cultivator, India At 4th Rank

Bangalore: In a country like India where agriculture contributes around 70 percent of the country’s revenue, genetically modified (GM) crops are now increasingly cultivated by the agriculturists for India’s immense population. According to the latest survey carried out by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, India is the fourth world's largest cultivator of genetically modified (GM) crops, reports Deccan Herald. The country produced three times more than what China sows.

With a massive production of 70 million hectares under genetically modified crops like maize, soybean, cotton, canola, sugar beet, alfalfa, papaya and squash, super power nation, U.S. is the largest grower of GM crops followed by Brazil, Argentina and India.

The survey further claimed that as of 2013, Indian cultivator genetically engineered Bt cotton in 11 million hectares (ha) of land with an adoption rate of 95 percent.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the Indian Science Congress in Jammu recently said, “While safety must be ensured, we should not succumb to unscientific prejudices against Bt crops. Our government remains committed to promoting the use of these new technologies for agriculture development,” reports Deccan Herald.

A Clear Case for Golden Rice

MELBOURNE – Greenpeace, the global environmental NGO, typically leads protests. Last month, it became the target.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphPatrick Moore, a spokesperson for the protesters – and himself an early Greenpeace member – accused the organization of complicity in the deaths of two million children per year. He was referring to deaths resulting from vitamin A deficiency, which is common among children for whom rice is the staple food.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThese deaths could be prevented, Moore claims, by the use of “golden rice,” a form of the grain that has been genetically modified to have a higher beta carotene content than ordinary rice. Greenpeace, along with other organizations opposed to the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), has campaigned against the introduction of beta carotene, which is converted in the human body into vitamin A.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphMoore’s mortality figures seem to be on the high side, but there is no doubting the seriousness of vitamin A deficiency among children, especially in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. According to the World Health Organization, it causes blindness in about 250,000-500,000 pre-school children every year, about half of whom die within 12 months.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe deficiency also increases susceptibility to diseases like measles, still a significant cause of death in young children, although one that is declining as a result of vaccination. In some countries, lack of vitamin A is also a major factor in high rates of maternal mortality during pregnancy and childbirth.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphFirst developed 15 years ago by Swiss scientists, golden rice specifically addresses vitamin A deficiency, and the first field trials were conducted a decade ago. But it is still not available to farmers. Initially, there was a need to develop improved varieties that would thrive where they are most needed. Further field trials had to be carried out to meet the strict regulations governing the release of GMOs. That hurdle was raised higher when activists destroyed fields in the Philippines where trials were being conducted.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphCritics have suggested that golden rice is part of the biotech industry’s plans to dominate agriculture worldwide. But, although the agribusiness giant Syngenta did assist in developing the genetically modified rice, the company has stated that it is not planning to commercialize it. Low-income farmers will own their seeds and be able to retain seed from their harvests.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphIndeed, Syngenta has given the right to sublicense the rice to a nonprofit organization called the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board. The board, which includes the two co-inventors, has the right to provide the rice to public research institutions and low-income farmers in developing countries for humanitarian use, as long as it does not charge more for it than the price for ordinary rice seeds.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphWhen genetically modified crops were first developed in the 1980’s, there were grounds for caution. Would these crops be safe to eat? Might they not cross-pollinate with wild plants, passing on the special qualities they were given, such as resistance to pests, and so create new “superweeds”? In the 1990’s, as a Senate candidate for the Australian Greens, I was among those who argued for strong regulations to prevent biotech companies putting our health, or that of the environment, at risk in order to increase their profits.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphGenetically modified crops are now grown on about one-tenth of the world’s cropland, and none of the disastrous consequences that we Greens feared have come to pass. There is no reliable scientific evidence that GM foods cause illness, despite the fact that they receive much more intense scrutiny than more “natural” foods. (Natural foods can also pose health risks, as was shown recently by studies establishing that a popular type of cinnamon can cause liver damage.)

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphAlthough cross-pollination between GM crops and wild plants can occur, so far no new superweeds have emerged. We should be pleased about that – and perhaps the regulations that were introduced in response to the concerns expressed by environmental organizations played a role in that outcome.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphRegulations to protect the environment and the health of consumers should be maintained. Caution is reasonable. What needs to be rethought, however, is blanket opposition to the very idea of GMOs.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphWith any innovation, risks need to be weighed against possible benefits. Where the benefits are minor, even a small risk may not be justified; where those benefits are great, a more significant risk may well be worth taking.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphRegulations should, for instance, be sensitive to the difference between releasing a GM crop that is resistant to the herbicide glyphosate (making it easier for farmers to control weeds) and releasing GM crops that can resist drought and are suitable for drought-prone regions of low-income countries. Similarly, a GM crop that has the potential to prevent blindness in a half-million children would be worth growing even if it does involve some risks. The irony is that glyphosate-resistant crops are grown commercially on millions of hectares of land, whereas golden rice (which has not been shown to pose any risk at all to human health or the environment) still cannot be released.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphIn some environmental circles, blanket opposition to GMOs is like taking a loyalty oath – dissidents are regarded as traitors in league with the evil biotech industry. It is time to move beyond such a narrowly ideological stance. Some GMOs may have a useful role to play in public health, and others in fighting the challenge of growing food in an era of climate change. We should consider the merits of each genetically modified plant on a case-by-case basis.

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EU set for groundbreaking vote on GM food

EU set for groundbreaking vote on GM food

European ministers are on the cusp of deciding whether to allow the cultivation of a new form of genetically modified (GM) maize in the EU.

Pioneer 1507 is a type of maize developed by DuPont and Dow chemical that is able to resist moths, such as the European corn borer and has already been approved as a component of animal feed.

The vote is very much up for grabs, with the European Council split on whether to allow the cultivation of the new crop. It has been over a decade since the original application to cultivate Pioneer 1507 was submitted.

In September, the European Court of Justice decided that the EU had unreasonably delayed a decision on Pioneer 1507.

Should ministers approve the crop it would provide the first challenge to Monsanto's dominance of the small European GM market.

The EU has only ever approved two other GM crops for cultivation - one strain of maize and a potato. However, the maize was later blocked by a court ruling.

While GM food continues to receive strong criticism from European environmental groups, the developing world has embraced GM food with amazing effects.

In the second half of the 20th century American biologist Norman Borlaug was responsible for the development of strains of wheat that boosted production and is credited with saving over a billion lives.

More recently, the development of golden rice allows farmers to grow crops which can provide up to 60 per cent of a child’s vitamin A daily requirements from only 50 grams of rice.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 170m to 230m children and 20m pregnant women are vitamin-A deficient and, as it weakens the immune system, that 1.9m to 2.7m die of it each year, more than from Aids, TB and malaria.

Yesterday, the European commissioner for Health Tonio Borg, said EU ministers needed to take the opportunity to act:

The Court's decision on maize 1507 confirms the urgency of re-launching discussions on the cultivation proposal made by the Commission back in 2010.

While a majority of EU ministers are hostile to GM there may not be enough to secure a qualified majority. However, the Commission indicated that if a "predominant majority" were against the proposal it seek to avoid approving the crop for cultivation.

Here's how the votes are set to stack up so far.

For

UK, Sweden, Finland, Spain and Estonia.

Against

France, Italy, Austria, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Malta, Luxembourg, Greece, Romania and Hungary.

Abstain

Germany and Bulgaria.

Source: cityam

EU allows DuPont Pioneer's GM supercorn

EU ministers have allowed the controversial cultivation of a new genetically modified crop, TC1507 corn from the US firm DuPont Pioneer. Opponents failed to muster enough support against the move.

In a vote Tuesday, European affairs ministers allowed for the introduction of TC1507. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) do not oppose the technology. However, Agriculture Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, has said he would do whatever he could to make the introduction of GM corn into Germany more difficult.

"We do not want to have the cultivation of [TC1507] in Germany," Friedrich told Bayern2 radio.

The corn had been under discussion since last year. At the time, a court ordered ministers to decide the corn's fate by this week.

Although the European Food Safety Authority declared the variety safe, critics warn that TC1507 could endanger butterflies and moths and ultimately human health. The insect-resistant corn variety is intended for use as animal fodder and for biogas production plants.

‘No unified opinion'

Britain, Spain, Finland, Estonia and Sweden led the corn's "yes" bloc. France and Hungary led opposition to the maize. Germany's federal government abstained from the vote because of a pro-contra split among the 16 regional states, or Länder.

Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks of the center-left Social Democrats, was a firm contra. "As environment minister, I am against approval of genetically modified corn," Hendricks told the daily Neue Ruhr Zeitung on Tuesday for publication in the newspaper's Wednesday edition. She called it "unfortunate that there was no unified opinion" in the German government.

Ironically, then, it was Germany's own abstention that helped ensure the European Union would allow the corn, propagated by the US firm DuPont Pioneer. Ahead of the vote, EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg had said that if the European EU's complex voting arithmetic were to produce a further deadlock among the ministers representing the bloc's 28 members, approval for TC1507 would be automatic.

The General Affairs Council ministers decided the issue on Tuesday under "qualified majority voting." This complex system weighs member states according to their size to ensure that a representative majority of the EU's 500 million population decides an issue, not the simple number of countries for or against.

In this instance, some 19 member states opposed, a clear majority, though they mustered just 210 votes out of a required 260 to block the measure - meaning that abstentions proved crucial. Belgium, Portugal and the Czech Republic, with 12 votes each, had also abstained, but even as a bloc the three countries could not have prevented the corn's passage.

Supercorn or Frankenfood?

Cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMO) stokes suspicion in the EU and all over the world on health and environmental grounds. However, GMO enjoys a special place in the business of agriculture - especially in the United States.

GMO crops have won repeated safety approvals, and in Tuesday's debate several ministers noted that they are imported into the EU in large amounts and, having been fed to animals, had by now entered the human food chain. And there is the simple fact that GMO seeds can be carried on the winds from farm to farm and country to country, making personal preference or national law powerless to stop the spread.

Earlier Tuesday, Harald Ebner, the genetic expert of Germany's environmentalist Green party, had urged Merkel's coalition government to exercise a "no" vote in Brussels instead of abstaining. Referring to surveys that show 88 percent of Germans opposed genetically modified foodstuffs, Ebner had said that if the country were to abstain, Merkel would "show that she does not act according to the opinion of the people of Germany."

For one example, Till Backhaus, the agriculture minister in Germany's northern state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, had warned against TC1507. "In my opinion there is a lack of basic accompanying studies to show what impact this plant will have on flora and fauna," Backhaus had said ahead of the vote.

Reuters, AFP, dpa

Supreme Court hears landmark GM crop case

Two West Australian farmers are back in Perth's Supreme Court today in a case that could have consequences for the growing of genetically-modified crops. An organic farmer is suing his neighbour for loss of income and damages after his property was allegedly contaminated with the neighbour's genetically modified canola. ABC

DuPont Biotech Corn Moves Toward EU Approval

Bloc Is Poised to Clear Its Second Genetically Modified Crop Despite Opposition From Member States

WSJ