Bharat Dogra
I
n the mid-1980s when edible oil shortages were becoming a serious problem, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had initiated an oilseeds technology mission which combined an increase of import tariffs with a host of enabling measures for oilseed farmers, both of which enabled them to reach record levels of oilseed production, thus making the country almost self-reliant in edible oils for some time time.
In the 2020s faced with edible oil shortages, the NDA government has responded with a very high risk agenda based on highly hazardous crops which can destroy India’s rich heritage of oilseeds (groundnut, mustard, sesame, coconut and many minor oilseeds which yield not just edible oils but have important medicinal benefits as well) for all time to come.
The most contentious component of this high-risk agenda of the NDA government just now is the hurry it shows to introduce a genetically modified (GM) and herbicide tolerant (HT) variety of mustard. While this is being done on the basis of claims of higher yield increase, several reviews have already pointed out that such claims are false and that safe alternatives are already being pursued by farmers in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh that achieve higher than claimed yields.
These safe alternatives are also free from the health risks of hazardous chemical herbicides which are an essential component of GM/HT Mustard.
What farmers need are not new hazardous varieties but more facilitating conditions in the form of better price and procurement support. What is more, further increase can be achieved by scaling up several initiatives which have proved encouraging in smaller eco-friendly initiatives that are additionally useful for enhancing mustard’s medicinal properties. The basis of false yield claims for GM-Mustard is the same as the one used frequently earlier for GM crops; it consists of comparing these varieties not with the best available in non- GM varieties but deliberatively with relatively less yielding non-GM varieties.
However the more important point is that the debate should not be limited to yield claims alone since the issues of environmental and health safety are much more important in the case of GM crops. The most crucial asecct to note is that India has, so far been kept free of GM-food crops (the only GM crop so far permitted here is GM Cotton or Bt cotton), which means that India is still safe from the hazards associated with GM food and GM crops. When Jairam Ramesh as Environment Minister introduced his famous and internationally acclaimed moratorium on Bt brinjal in 2010 and when Parliamentary Committees as well as eminent scientists mobilized to guard against earlier NDA efforts to introduce GM Mustard (even as a Technical Experts Committee of the Supreme Court of India had clearly recommended against this), these were valiant, evidence-based efforts to protect the safety of India’s farming and food system. And this continues to be of the most crucial importance.
While GM crops have been propagated for years by a handful of giant multinational companies as these are most helpful for their patent-driven efforts to control world-level farming and seeds, the view of independent, eminent scientists has been overwhelmingly against GM crops. As a group of eminent scientists from several countries organized under the Independent Science Panel (ISP) stated in their report of 2003 tiled “The Case for A GMO Free and Sustainable World”:
“GM crops have failed to deliver the promised benefits and are posing escalating problems on the farm. Transgenic contamination is now widely acknowledged to be unavoidable, and hence there can be no co-existence of GM and non-GM agriculture.”
In other words, those farmers who do not opt for GM crops will also be exposed to their adverse impacts.
The late Prof. Pushpa M. Bhargava has been widely acknowledged to be the top authority on this issue in India. He was founder of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and former Vice Chairperson of National Knowledge Commission, and was chosen by the Supreme Court as its independent observer when a case relating to this was being heard in the apex court. Just a little before his tragic death he prepared a review of all the scientific literature on this issue. In this review he stated that “there are over 500 research publications by scientists of indisputable integrity, who have no conflict of interest, that establish harmful effects of GM crops on human, animal and plant health and on environment and biodiversity.” What about the papers written in support of GM crops. The review by Prof. Bhargava informs us,
“On the other hand, virtually every paper supporting GM crops is by scientists who have a declared conflict of interest or whose credibility and integrity can be doubted.”
Prof. Bhargava had warned that the ultimate goal of this attempt in India is to obtain control over Indian agriculture and food production by foreign interests. As more direct efforts by giant multinational companies attract more suspicion, they use the services of their front-men to get GM crops introduced.
If GM food crops are introduced, this means denying farmers the domestic markets and export markets that comprise of health conscious consumers. Such risks are more in the case of oilseed crops as edible oils obtained from them are used to prepare so many cooked and processed foods, and mustard oil is also used for several medicinal purposes in India.
Many serious hazards associated with most GM crops are ignored by GM Crop promoters as their agenda is to promote business interests primarily. This is unfortunate and unscientific. As the ISP report quoted above says, “By far the most insidious dangers of genetic engineering are inherent to the process itself, which greatly enhances the scope and probability horizontal gene transfer and recombination, the main route to creating viruses and bacteria that cause disease epidemics.” Shouldn’t this worry us, particularly in these times?
Further this report stresses,
“Most important of all, GM crops have not been proven safe. On the contrary, sufficient evidence has emerged to raise serious safety concerns that, if ignored, could result in irreversible damage to health and environment. GM crops should be firmly rejected now.”
In his book ‘Genetic Roulette’, which was endorsed by several eminent experts working on food and farming issues at world level, author Jeffrey M. Smith has summarized the results of a lot of research on GM crops which indicated the following possibilities of various health risks, based on lab research on animals—stunted growth, impaired immune systems, bleeding stomachs, abnormal and potentially precancerous cell growth in the intestines, impaired blood cell development, misshapen cell structures in the liver, pancreas and testicles, altered gene expression and cell metabolism, liver and kidney lesions, inflamed kidneys, less developed brains and testicles, enlarged livers, pancreas and intestines, reduced digestive enzymes, higher blood sugar, inflamed lung tissue, increased death rates and higher offspring mortality.
Here is Michael Antoniou, a molecular geneticist at King’s College, London, member of the ISP on the subject:
“If the kind of detrimental effects seen in animals fed GM food were observed in a clinical setting, the use of the product would have been halted and further research initiated to determine the cause and find possible solutions. However what we find repeatedly in the context of GM food is that both government and industry plough on ahead with the development, endorsement and marketing of GM foods despite the warnings of potential ill health from animal feeding studies, as if nothing has happened. This is to the point where governments and industry even seem to ignore the results of their own research!”
The available evidence of serious health risks and irreversible environmental risks, which increase in times of climate change, has become available despite many cases of victimization of scientists, suppression of research results, pre-mature ending of important research and even outright fraud to suppress this evidence of adverse impacts. Giant multinational companies leading in GM crops at world level have been made to pay millions of dollars by law courts repeatedly for the health hazards caused by them; they even try to hide their identity by merging with other companies, like the company which caused the Bhopal gas leak.
Most claims of higher yields through GM crops have turned out to bogus. The Union of Concerned Scientists, USA, published a report ‘Failure to Yield’ in 2009 confirming that “after 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, GM crops have failed to increase yields’ and that ‘traditional breeding outperforms genetic engineering hands down.’ In a joint letter written to former Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh 17 distinguished scientists from several countries had stated that claims of yield increase by GM crops are not correct. What is more they stated that this technology is “conceptually flawed, crude, imprecise and poorly controlled…”
To make such a technology the basis for increasing oilseed production in India is an extremely high-risk proposition best discarded, keeping in view also the much wider and much more serious risks of GM food crops and the fact that GM Mustard is being used to force open the gates for more GM food crops as well. We should say a firm no to not just GM mustard but in addition to all GM food crops as well.
The other path chosen recently of increasing edible oil supply by palm oil plantations is also environmentally a high risk path. This will involve disruption of rich biodiversity of ecologically sensitive areas like the North-East region and Andaman Nicobar Islands. The process of obtaining oil from palm fruit can be highly polluting. Concentration on this will deny much needed healthy oilcake to dairy animals. Once cheap palm oil dominates the edible oil increasingly, this can further adversely impact traditional oilseeds.
Our efforts to increase oilseeds production and edible oil supply should be based on using the rich biodiversity, rotations ad mixed cropping systems of many traditional oilseed/edible crops including groundnut, mustard, sesame, coconut as well as a host of minor but valuable oilseeds with their own distinct nutrition, health and other value.
Opting instead for high-risk GM Mustard and in addition palm oil plantations could prove to be a very serious error, one that may permanently harm Indian agriculture and our environment, not to mention our food security.
An Afterword
Do Not Neglect Due Process
Why do the union government authorities and its regulating agencies appear to be in such an unseemly hurry to introduce GM food crops in India? Why are they ignoring the evidence against GM food crops collected in the course of the government’s own processes in the past?
When Jairam Ramesh was the Union Environment Minister and the decision on Bt. brinjal was pending, he had initiated one of the most democratic processes which was much appreciated all over the world, involving holding of public hearings, consultations with all state governments and obtaining the views of a range of eminent experts. All this had provided a firm base for his very well-documented, ably argued strong case for the moratorium on Bt brinjal, and a lot of this evidence is also relevant to preparing a strong case against GM food crops. If to this we add the later strong trashing more specifically of GM/HT Mustard by the Technical Expert Committee of the Supreme Court of India as well as the strong objections raised by a Parliamentary Standing Committee, we must wonder why after ignoring all such already accumulated strong evidence against GM Mustard which became available from very recent democratic processes, such support has revived for the hurried introduction of GM Mustard? Contrast the highly democratic processes witnessed during Jairam Ramesh’s tenure in 22009-2010 with the intense lobbying these days– low on reason, high on rhetoric—that seeks to present release of GM Mustard as accomplished and necessary fact, bypassing democratic discourse, ignoring farmer organizations, health concerns, ignoring state governments—just to serve the commercial agenda of the strong multinational lobby.
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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food, 14 Questions about GM Crops and A Day in 2071.
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