September 2, 2013

Updated: September 2, 2013 00:03 IST

Sow the wind, reap a storm
G. PADMANABAN

Those opposing GM crops ignore scientific evidence of their harmlessness and are
depriving the nation of the wider benefits of agri-biotechnology
It is unfortunate that the technical group appointed by the Supreme Court has chosen to stick
with its recommendation for an indefinite moratorium on GM crop trials. There is fierce
opposition from activists even to the introduction of the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Bill
(BRAI) in Parliament, meant to evolve a scientific basis for the regulatory process.
With all this negative propaganda, science has become a casualty. In our country, agricultural
biotechnology has been reduced to Bt (Bacillus thuringensis toxin)-crops and further restricted
to Bt cotton and Bt brinjal. Transgenic (or genetic modification) technology, which includes Bt
crops, by itself occupies a large canvas to combat abiotic stresses and improve nutritive quality of
the grain. In turn, transgenic technology is only one component of agri-biotech, which includes
non-GM options such as marker-assisted selection breeding (MAS), reverse breeding, grafting
non-GM scion onto GM-root stocks etc. In addition, there is a gamut of strategies to alter specific
genes (e.g. zinc finger nuclease, SiRNA etc) to generate desirable variants in a given crop.
Missed opportunities
While there is a huge effort to make regulatory protocols complex and time-consuming for GM-
crops, many of the strategies leading to creation of mutants are outside the purview of such
regulations. Even in conservative Europe, the following analysis is an eye opener: Twenty five
years of risk research on GM crops have established [that Biotechnology is not per se riskier than
conventional breeding technologies] beyond reasonable doubt. We need to highlight the
opportunities missed by not accepting GM crops. These include lost revenues for farmers,
breeding companies and consumers, brain drain and lost technology innovations, reduced
agricultural productivity and sustainability, foregone health benefits, especially reducing
malnutrition, and many more realized or expected virtues of GM crops( EMBO reports, vol. 13,
493-497, 2012).
Ingo Potrykus, who developed the Golden rice, laments unjustified and impractical legal
requirements are stopping genetically engineered crops from saving millions from starvation and
malnutrition (Nature 466, 561, 2010). In India, the embargo on Bt brinjal has demoralised
researchers in the field. We need a huge work force to handle all the strategies mentioned. China
is going full steam with almost 6,000 PhDs in agri-biotech alone (Chinese Academy of Sciences),
whereas India has 8,900 PhDs in all sciences put together!
GM is not a stand-alone technology. It can blend with conventional technologies, including
organic farming. In fact, it is ideal to have a Bt crop as central to organic farming, since the
overall objective is to decrease use of chemical pesticides. A leading organic farmer told me that
his products are 60-per-cent organic! Biopesticides also work through chemicals and not by
magic! MAS can be applied if appropriate germplasms are available and accessible in nature.
Thus, drought-tolerant maize and quality protein maize have been developed using MAS. Golden
rice has been developed using the GM approach with two genes, one from daffodil and another
from a soil bacterium.
If India has become a cotton-exporting country from a cotton-importing one, Bt cotton has
played an important role in this change. The sustainability of Bt cotton would require both gene
pyramiding along with IPM, NPM strategies, including crop rotation. A huge volume of peer-
reviewed literature exists on the environmental and health safety of Bt crops. But activists tend to
use anecdotes and negative activist-supported publications to oppose the technology.
All this negative propaganda does not sound convincing in the light of the fact that millions of
people and cattle in the globe have been eating Bt corn for over 15 years without any
authenticated report of health or environmental problems. People have also been eating corn or
soya-based foods, such as oil and breakfast cereal. Livestock fed on Bt corn are the main source of
meat products, imported even by Europe. One needs to worry about water availability, loss of soil
fertility and hostile weather conditions. Scientists are already looking for a cold shock protein to
overcome drought stress, or a nitrate reductase gene that lets the organism grow with 100 times
less nitrogen than normal. It is another matter that the patent on cold shock gene has been
rejected in India for the wrong reasons. It is indeed surprising that a single gene can protect
against so many different stresses. Genes from plants with deep roots that can use water and
nutrients very efficiently are of great interest. These areas of research are extremely important
but is getting lost in all the hypothetical risks while millions of children suffer from under- and
malnutrition.
The main concern appears to be that MNCs would ultimately decide on the agriculture of this
country. The fact remains that they are the ones who have made the scientific discoveries and
also had the muscle power to make the lab-to-land transition. This must also be the main reason
to encourage agri-biotech research in Indian research institutions all the way, beyond glass
houses. If MNCs are only interested in Bt and HT genes to make profits, let our institutions
concentrate on abiotic stresses and nutrition quality. Our scientists should concentrate on
developing Bt cotton varieties instead of hybrids.
Aid the scientists
The greatest challenge is to develop a single cereal, say rice, whichis nutritionally adequate and
can withstand biotic and abiotic stresses. A real indigenous success story will dispel the fear of
the unknown in public minds. I am aware that scientists in India have very good leads
languishing in the laboratories. Without field trials no claim can be really substantiated. One
should talk to these scientists to understand their frustration. The hurdles are so many: funding,
activists, loss of trial crops, no publications, no product, no career.
Give the scientists all the facilities and freedom and if they do not deliver, haul them up. How
does China deal with MNCs and also allow indigenous efforts to develop Bt rice? Why are we
afraid of collaborations on an equal footing? Are we afraid of MNCs or the technology? With all
the information on safety available over decades, it is time to deregulate the deployment of the
main Bt genes in use. GM labelling of such a crop is not warranted. In any case, given the level of
awareness in the country, both among the literate and the illiterate, GM labelling is unlikely to
succeed. There is no GM labelling in the U.S. and people are quite healthy! If drought-resistant
cereal is obtained by MAS as well as GM technology, would we label both as genetically modified?
India needs to have an agriculture technology policy. Expert groups need to decide year after year
as to which crop, which trait and which strategy has to be used. Agriculture needs to be treated as
a knowledge-driven industry and not just as a traditional vocation. The farmer needs technical
help on a day-to-day basis and not left to fend for himself. We cannot let Bt brinjal embargo seal
the fate of this country. If there are contentious issues in the BRAI Bill, these can be debated only
if the Bill is introduced. One can only hope and pray that the Supreme Court would not be misled
by the recommendations of the Technical Expert Committee.
(The writer is a professor and Indian National Science Academy Senior Scientist at the Indian
Institute of Science, Bangalore, E-mail: geepee@biochem.iisc.ernet.in)


September 7, 2013
Updated: September 7, 2013 00:05 IST
Keep the pause button on GM pressed
JACK A. HEINEMANN


Questioning a technology, especially of the kind that has serious unknowns and
lacks clear social benefits, is not an attack on science
Jairam Ramesh, former Environment Minister for India, made the brave decision in 2010 to tell
his then apex regulator of genetically modified organisms (GEAC) that it had failed to properly
use available science to determine the safety to human health and the environment of Bt
brinjal, created using genetic modification (GM). His decision followed careful evaluation of the
science.
I was involved in Rameshs review. I read first hand the scientific evidence in my area of expertise
provided to the GEAC and its responses. I was heartened to see that his decision was validated by
the esteemed scientists that made up the Supreme Court Technical Expert Committee who have
advised the Court on the need for better research and better process before continuing to release
GM crops into the environment or using them as food.
Creating confusion
G. Padmanaban (Sow the wind, reap a storm, The Hindu, September 2) believes that the events
surrounding the evaluation of Bt brinjal and now extending to other kinds of GM plants is an
assault on science. He confuses science with technology. Science is the process of knowledge
creation (or discovery) whereas technology is the means of knowledge application. This confusion
causes some scientists to defend technologies that are questioned because they perceive
questions on the technology as an attack on science. It is not.
There is much knowledge discovered or to be discovered that cannot be applied wisely at least
not now. GM plants are among the technologies that have both serious scientific unknowns and
lack a clear social benefit at least for now.
For over 30 years, GM has been promised to produce plants that will resist the stresses of
drought, heavy metals and salt, that will increase yield, reduce the use of toxic pesticides and
even fix their own nitrogen. To be fair, some GM crops have reduced the use of some toxic
insecticides for a brief period. To be precise, though, none of these promises has been sustainably
delivered to farmers.
Why not? Well, it isnt complex regulation holding them back. By the year 2005, over 1,000
applications were approved to field trial stress-tolerant GM plants in the United States alone.
None ever progressed out of the testing phase. The explanation for this is likely because stress
tolerance is not a solution to the causes of stress. No matter how tolerant you make the plant to
drought, using it in soil low in organic matter and unable to hold water will eventually further
deplete the soil of moisture and the plant will struggle or die. GM is an attempt to use genetics to
overcome the environment. This never works for long. That is why some call GM a distraction
from investing in real solutions to the problems faced by real farmers.
A symptom
Herbicide use is increasing in the U.S. since it adopted GM maize (corn), soybeans and cotton.
Insecticide use is down by a small bit, but extremely high compared to countries such as France
which do not use GM crops. Western Europes maize yields match or exceed the U.S. yields using
less pesticide. The yields in wheat and oilseed rape are increasing at an even faster rate in
Western Europe than in the U.S. and Canada. This indicates a dangerous trend: those countries
choosing to innovate in agriculture using GM are demonstrating lower productivity increases and
greater dependence on chemical inputs in all crops compared to economically and
environmentally comparable countries choosing to not use GM crops.
What is it about investing in GM products that seems to undermine other technologies in
agriculture? GM products attract the strictest intellectual property (IP) rights instruments
possible in agriculture (e.g., process patents). The use of those instruments concentrates
investment and drives out simple but even more effective technologies.
Now every government research centre and public university seeks to compensate for the fall in
direct public investment through licensing royalties from IP and the creation of partnerships with
the private sector. This necessarily changes the kinds of questions they favour being asked by
their researchers, the kind that will be supported by institutional resources or rewarded with
promotion. With these policies in place we shouldnt be surprised that every problem looks like it
has a GM solution even to researchers who claim to have no entrepreneurial motivations.
Prof. Padmanabans ambition for a crop that provides all nutritional needs and grows everywhere
demonstrates the poverty of the GM approach to hunger and malnourishment. Such a crop would
quickly become obsolete as it would also serve as a wonderful meal for every conceivable form of
pest. Meanwhile, it would undermine both biological and agricultural diversity as it became a
weed in its own right.
Instead of that approach, supporting communities with education on nutrition and farmers with
technologies that build up their soils, manage pests with little or no application of pesticide and
manufactured fertilizers gives them the means and independence to grow a variety of crops and
livestock to meet their dietary needs and sell their surplus in local markets.
This investment in agriculture is not as good at making intellectual property, but better for
growing food. To properly support Indias mainly small holder farming requires removing the
penalties and incentives on the public scientist to develop primarily technologies that bring direct
revenue to their institutions. Instead, invest in them with public money and measure their
success by the yields of farmers, the reduction of pesticides and fertilizer they use, and the
increase in their wealth and health.
No missed opportunities
India is not missing out on the benefits of GM. So far, there havent been any proven to exist, or
proven to be sustainable. GM crops are not designed to increase intrinsic yield and the largest
scale and longest term studies bear out that they dont yield more. Meanwhile, the cost of GM
seeds is the fastest growing expense for U.S. farmers who are simultaneously suffering from
weeds resistant to the herbicides excessively used on GM crops and pests resistant to the
insecticides over-used in Bt crops. That likely would be Indias experience had it commercialised
Bt brinjal which was developed with the least effective form of Bt for the target pest.
In addition, the safety issue still lingers over these products. It shouldnt. The science needed to
establish their safety exists and is affordable but it must be applied dispassionately and
transparently. That is all Jairam Ramesh asked.
Claiming that GM crops are demonstrated safe by the absence of specific health claims from
Americans is glib. There are no validated health surveillance programmes in the U.S. which could
both detect and diagnose the cause of the most likely manifestations of harm if they do exist.
Meanwhile, more research studies accumulate with evidence of adverse effects, some quite
serious. These studies require replication, but they run into roadblocks or fail to find new
funding. Most often these studies report low level health effects using animal feeding studies, so
it is not clear whether the effect would be the same, more or less in humans and more or less
likely to be caused using GM plants cooked and processed, as humans eat them, rather than raw
or processed the way they are provided to test animals.
Hunger, pestilence, and economic failure are the images of fear increasingly being used to drive
acceptance of GM crops. Ignorance, anti-science, ideology and hypocrisy are the insults used to
counter questions about the safety of GM crops coming from scientists and the public. What is
right for Indias agriculture is too important a question to leave to fear and insult to decide. I
think that both Ramesh and the scientists of the Technical Expert Committee knew this when
they asked India to pause on the use of GM products. Pause so that all voices can be heard.
Reflect on what the problems are and whether technologies solve them or mask them for a time,
or even make them worse later.
(Professor Jack A. Heinemann is Director, Centre for Integrated Research in Biosafety,
University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand)
Updated: August 21, 2012 12:19 IST
Genetically modified crops no panacea for food
security
The debate on the pros and cons of genetically engineered/modified crops is universal. In India,
in the face of vociferous protests, the controversy has only deepened leading to a moratorium
on cultivation of Bt Brinjal crop the first GM food crop sought to be commercialised. Gargi
Parsai spoke to Basudeb Acharia, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Agriculture, on its new report, Cultivation of Genetically Modified Food Crops Prospects and
Effects.
The government asserts that GM crops are essential for food security of Indias
growing population. What is your take?
GM is not the panacea. We have 2,200 varieties of Brinjal. If we allow GM Brinjal, all our
varieties will get contaminated and vanish as has happened in cotton. When the committee
members visited Yavatmal in Vidarbha, we asked farmers why they were growing Bt cotton if the
input costs were high and profits were low. They said they had no other option as alternate seeds
were no longer available.
Initially a 450 gm packet of Monsantos Bt cotton seeds was sold at Rs 1,700. Then after the
Andhra Pradesh government challenged this in court, it was brought down to Rs.750 per packet
but the royalty of Rs.250 per packet is paid to Monsanto that developed the seed. Last year, a
packet was sold between Rs.1,200 to Rs.2,000 because of the monopoly of this private seed
company. An artificial scarcity was created and the price was hiked. This will happen in Bt brinjal
too if it is allowed.
If our quest is for food security then why must we select this technology which has nothing to do
with food security? The only motive behind this is profit for the seed companies.
What are the major recommendations of your committee?
We have said that the government must not allow field trials of GM crops till there is a strong,
revamped, multi-disciplinary regulatory system in place. We studied the regulatory system in
different countries and found that the one in Norway was the best.
We have recommended a thorough probe into the permission given to commercialisation of Bt
Brinjal right from the beginning till a moratorium was imposed in 2010. Also that there should be
examination of research reports and assessment by independent scientists of Bt Brinjal by an
agency other than the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), which gave approval on
its own assessment, to avoid conflict of interest.
The panel recommended re-evaluation of all research findings in Bt cotton seeds in the light of
studies that highlighted inexplicable changes in the organs and tissues of Bt-cotton seed-fed
lambs.
Having noticed several shortcomings in the functioning, composition, powers and mandate of
GEAC and the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation (RCGM) in their regulatory role, we
have recommended to our sister committees on Science and Technology and Environment and
Forests to do a comprehensive examination and report to Parliament.
There should be mandatory labelling of products from GM crops, unchecked import of GM
products should be stopped and we have suggested that alternate organic farming should be
encouraged, for which, as of now, there is no government support. An explanation has been
sought from the Department of Consumer Affairs as to why no examination was done of the lakhs
of tonnes of Bt cotton seed oil extracted from Bt cotton that has entered the food chain.
What are the chief concerns?
GM technology cannot be the monopoly of one company, as in Bt cotton. The benefits that were
assured from Bt cotton cultivation are not coming because new pests have appeared. Farmers
have to use more pesticide and chemical fertilizers, as a result of which there has been an
increase in input costs and reduction in profit margins leading to farmers indebtedness and
suicides.
Does it worry you that GM foods can enter the country without checks? Only if the
exporter or the importer makes a declaration will authorities know that GM
products are entering the country.
That is the weakness in law. There is only a Food Lab in Kolkata under the Ministry of Health and
which is not well-equipped. The new Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is
supposed to do it. The government must enact a legislation to protect the rights of consumers.
Today, consumers have no rights and no means to know which imported food contains GM.
There should be compulsory testing and labelling of GM food entering the country.
Now that the report is out, what do you expect the government to do?
The moratorium on Bt Brinjal should continue. All field trials of GM crops should discontinue.
They should only be done in confined area in labs, the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of
India (BRAI) Bill should be reviewed so that there is no conflict of interest as the promotion of
biotech and regulation cannot be under one body. You cannot compare with the United States as
in India, 80 to 82 per farmers are small and marginal.
Why do you think the government is allowing this?
Because of pressure from the United States. Because since 1991, the government is pursuing neo-
liberal economic policies all are inter-related. You will find the difference in the agrarian crisis
in the pre-1991 and post-1991 period. Suicides of farmers started from 1996-97. Before that there
were isolated incidents. Just as it is now there is pressure from the U.S. on India to allow 51
per cent FDI in multi-brand retail trade so that Walmart can come.
The industry-based Association of Biotech-led Enterprises-Agriculture Group
(ABLE-AG) has said implementation of your panels recommendations will hit farm
growth.
I do not agree. We were producing 52 million tonnes in 1950-51 and are today producing 257
million tonnes without using GM technology. If we have increased to such an extent, where is the
need for GM technology? From a food importing country we are now exporting, though it is also a
fact that a large number of population is not fed, whereas godowns are full.
We are not against new technology in the farm sector but it should be in the interest of farmers
without undermining the rights of consumers. As of now it is more inclined towards industry
without the accompanying safeguards, regulation and monitoring on pricing, monopoly, seed
sovereignty and biodiversity.
How was unanimity achieved on this sensitive subject among the 31 committee
members representing different political parties and ideologies?
We wanted to make an objective report. We invited those in favour of GM crops including
Monsanto and those who were not. We visited five States including Maharashtra, Goa, Kerala,
Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. We examined 18,000 documents 1,000 memoranda and 56
witnesses. The panel members met 100 farmers widows and heard from lakhs of farmers their
plight in each State. The arguments of those against were stronger. That is why the entire
committee is unanimous. There was not a single amendment or dissent.
Comments:
I am a molecular biologist and geneticst working in UK with expertise in toxicology too.
Although some forms of GM are good (increasing yield, drought resistance), the fact that the
GM seeds are sterile, is a proble. It is not advisable for India to bring them in with out
germplasm in pocession by India and not governed by patent issues, as that can allow serious
dependence of India on imported seeds. Remember, the problem with Nuclear reactors where
countries stopped fuel supply to reactors. Additionally GM crops that make toxins (BT cotton) is
outright dangerous, no matter what safety data the company shows. Butterflies and other
beneficial insects could be affted by these toxins and could change the biodiversity of the area.