|
: The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of the Ministry of Environment in India, the statutory body for biosafety regulation, approved the commercialisation of Bt brinjal on October 14, 2009, in spite of its threat to independent science, public health, farmers’ survival, the environment, and democracy. Members of the ‘expert’ panel that ‘approved’ the Bt brinjal for biosafety are themselves involved in research on Bt brinjal. This creates a major crisis for the integrity of science. Such conflict of interest has no place in any regulatory system, least of all in biosafety regulation which is intended to avoid harm to public health and the environment from genetically engineered organisms.
Genetically engineered (GE) Bt crops such as Bt cotton and Bt brinjal have a gene for producing Bt toxins from a soil bacteria bacillus thuringensis. Unscientific biosafety assessments rest on the false assumption of “substantial equivalence” which treats GE organisms as equal to the naturally occurring organism. This assumption is false because while the naturally occurring Bt in the soil organism is an endotoxin and needs to be processed in the gut of the caterpillar family, the transgene (or GE) Bt engineered into plants is a ready-made, active toxin. It is therefore toxic not just to the bollworm and other caterpillar pests, but to non-target species, including mammals and micro-organisms. Reports on animal deaths from Andhra Pradesh as a result of feeding on Bt cotton need to be studied in depth because what is killing animals is also a threat to humans.
Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology undertook a survey to compare soils on which Bt cotton had been grown with those without Bt cotton soils. Beneficial soil organisms, such as bacteria that decompose biomass and enzymes that fix nitrogen had decreased by 20%. No such study has been done by Monsanto Mahyco, the company introducing Bt brinjal and cotton. While the Bt brinjal used a hybrid of two toxins, Cry1Ab and Cry1Ac, the tests done by the company used only Cry1Ac proteins. This is totally unscientific. Further the toxicity tests were restricted to only 90 days, which do not show long-term impacts, such as the risks of cancers and tumors. Bt brinjal contains 16-17 mg/kg of Bt insecticide. It is a recipe for feeding Indian citizens poison. Bt brinjal also has an antibiotic resistance marker which induces resistance to the antibiotic kanamycin. This could be a public disaster since...
| Single Page Format | 1 - 2 - 3 - Next |
Discuss this story on expressindia forums
|
|
 |
 |
 |
About Us | Contact Us | Advertisers | Site Map | Make us your homepage | Work for Us | RSS | Subscribe | Electronic Edition | Privacy Policy© 2010: The Indian Express Limited. All rights reserved throughout the world
