Brazil govt agency flags 'hazards, uncertainties' in GM crop

A government agency in Brazil, the world's second largest producer of GM crops, has cited over 750 studies, including some from India, to highlight "hazards and uncertainties" related to commercial cultivation of such varieties of crops.

The report comes amidst anti-GM activists in India upping the ante against commercial cultivation of GM mustard and the country's biotech regulator- Genetic Engineering Approval Committee- awaiting a final report from a sub-committee.

The report 'Transgenic Crops hazards and uncertainties: more than 750 studies disregarded by the GMOs regulatory bodies' was conducted by Special Secretariat for Family Farming and Agrarian Development of Brazil.

It states that the transgenic plants are produced in only five countries- the US, Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada - totaling around 95 per cent of the 180 million cultivated hectares on the planet.

India allows cultivation only of transgenic cotton on commercial scale.

Highlighting issues related to bio-safety, prioritising environmental, human and animal aspects associated with the use of the technologies concerned, the report takes inputs from around 750 articles, published between 1980 and 2015.

One of the several Indian studies the report quotes from is that by M Swaminathan wherein he argues that farm incomes show that Bt cotton was a clear leader in production and gross output value, but only when grown as a standalone crop.

On the fields of small and marginal farmers, where cotton was usually inter-cropped with sorghum, the relative income advantage of Bt cotton declined, he has argued.

Swaminathan had in his study further said that expenditure on chemical pesticides was higher for Bt cotton than for other varieties.

The report said populations of insects totally insensitive to Bt toxins already exist in five of the largest species considered as pests.

"While the first populations were confirmed in the USA in the beginning of the 2000s, resistant insects are currently noted in all the great countries producers of transgenics, including Brazil.

"This break of resistance, which has been considered as responsible for suicide waves between cotton producers in India, has already taken associations of Brazilian producers to bring an action in order to denounce the misleading advertising of the biotechnology companies which continue to sell these transgenic varieties as being 'resistant to insects'," the report said.