Activists vow to step up resistance to GM mustard

A group of activists today said they will step up their resistance to approval of GM mustard and demanded fixing liability on crop developers for providing "false" evidence to the country's biotech regulator.
At a specially-convened meeting, farm activists, scientists and others presented fresh evidence on the "fraud and hazard" of GM mustard.
They made detailed presentations to Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) and said they will not allow Indians to be made "lab rats" in an "irreversible and irresponsible experiment".
The Environment Ministry after seeing the presentations said a high-level committee will "look into" all the aspects raised by them.

"The demands put forward by the team include rejection of the current application in toto and immediately of all the three genetically modified organisms (GMOs), fixing liability on crop developers for false and incorrect evidence provided wilfully to regulators...
"... Blacklisting such applicants in the regulatory system and putting out all documents pertaining to DMH-11 R&D from its inception into the public domain immediately," they said.

Last month, the activists had severely criticised the Ministry for "not giving" enough time to them to raise concerns regarding commercialisation of transgenic mustard, whose research and testing, they alleged, was done in a "fraudulent and unscientific" manner.

Delhi University's Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants (CGMCP) has sought permission for environmental release of its transgenic mustard variety from the GEAC.
The activists said the Delhi University's CGMCP had in its application asked for approval for "environmental release" of three GMOs in one dossier.
All the three GMOs being considered for approval are 'Herbicide Tolerant' with serious ecological and health implications apart from socio-economic ones, they said.
"They made presentations on various issues including that of data inadequacy. We will look into it. We told them that GEAC looks after only the biosafety issue. The other issues like agronomy and seeds is looked after by other committees.

(Reopens DES 53)
The Ministry said Assessment of Food and Environmental
Safety (AFES) for Environmental release of GE Mustard (Brassica juncea) hybrid DMH-11 and use of parental events (Varuna bn3.6 and EH2 modbs2.99) for development of new generation hybrids has been placed on the website for comments by stakeholders and general public for a period of 30 days.
The Coalition had also alleged that K Veluthambi who is the chair of sub-committee and co-hair of GEAC was a "GM crop developer" till his retirement recently, working on GM rice development for disease-resistant transgenic rice, with DBT and Rockefeller support.
It had alleged that another member of the sub-committee S R Rao, Advisor DBT is also on the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board, funded by Syngenta.

According to the minutes sent by the Coalition, the committee granted leave of absence to six of its members including B Sesikeran during its 128th meeting while it granted leave of absence to Sesikeran in its 127th meeting held in February this year.