Standing committee cites costs to environment and health
The parliamentary standing committee on agriculture has recommended shutting India's doors to genetically modified (GM) crops in a report tabled in the Lok Sabha.
Committee chairperson Basudeb Acharia said that the concernsregarding the potential and actual impacts of GM crops on India's food,farming, health and environment were vaild. "GM crops are just not theright solution for our country," he said at the release of the report inNew Delhi.
Acharia also criticised the union government for promotingGM crops. "The government should stop parroting the promotional lines ofthe biotechnology and seed industries and their cronies within the technocracyand stand by scientific reasoning and greater public good," he said.
The committee, over a period of two and a half years,travelled across the country and consulted the various stakeholders in thedebate including farmers, farmer unions, biotechnology industry reprsentativesand relevant departments in the union and state governments. It had also spokenwith senior scientists in the agriculture, nutrition and biotechnology sectorsas well has many civil society activists.
The report, titled 'Cultivation of Genetically Modified FoodCrops – Prospects and Effects', also cites the example of Bt cotton, the onlyGM crop cultivated in the country. Bt cotton has failed to improve thesocio-economic condition of cotton farmers. The report noted that thecultivation of Bt cotton had, in fact, furthered the distress of such farmersin the rainfed areas of the country. These areas have become imfamous aspockets of farmer suicides. The parliamentary panel also held a publicconsultation at Yavatmal in Vidharbha where Bt cotton growers had gutwrnedhingstories of the distress that is now symptomatic of the country's agrariancrisis.
The report highlighted the loopholes in the currentregulatory system on GM crops.
