Farmers, citizens' groups, rally against GM mustard

NEW DELHI:Apprehending that the central regulator on transgenic crops, Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee ( GEAC), may decide in favour of commercial release of GM mustard during its meeting on Friday , a number of farmers' associations and citizens' groups, including the RSS-linked Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) on Wednesday demanded that the meeting be called off.
Over 8,000 citizens from across the country signed a petition against the move. In their letters to environment minister Prakash Javadekar, these groups warned the government of serious resistance on the issue all over the country if the GEAC allowed commercial release of GM mustard.

The groups are also agitated over the GEAC not putting data of scientific field trials in the public domain.

“We have demanded that the data emanating from field trials, conducted so far, be made public so as to allow scientific analysis of the same,“ national co-convenor of SJM Ashwani Mahajan told TOI.



Referring to the secretive working of the GEAC, Mahajan said, “In a democratic set-up, elected governments have constitutional and moral responsibility to share with public any information and data that has a bearing on their health, environment and biodiversity,“ Mahajan added.

CPI and Rajya Sabha member D Raja also wrote to Javadekar on the issue, seeking his intervention to call off the GEAC meeting. “The move to introduce GM crops into Indian food and farming systems is not in the interest of our agriculture and the country ,“ he said in his letter to the minister.

The central regulator is likely to decide on February 5 whether to allow genetically engineered mustard for commercial cultivation in India or not.

The GEAC, comprising government officials from different ministries and experts from outside, is likely to take a final decision on the basis of the results of scientific field trials of GM mustard.Though the GM mustard has already gone through two levels of safety tests on the basis of its field trials, the results of these tests are still under the wraps.

"These secretive processes, which are keeping out public scrutiny and public views on a very important matter that pertains to citizens is just not acceptable," said Sridhar Radhakrishnan, co-convenor of the Coalition for a GM-Free India.

He said, "We can only presume that they have something to hide from the public, and not everything is safe or fine here".

At present, only GM cotton (Bt Cotton) is allowed for commercial cultivation in India. Though the GEAC had in July, 2014 given permission to scientific field trials of many transgenic varieties of rice, wheat, mustard, maize and brinjal, it has so far not allowed commercial cultivation of any GM food crop in India.