Bhubaneswar (Orissa): A spate of reports in the past two days citing various scientists and others targeted at the Bt Brinjal decision-making process by Jairam Ramesh is very unfortunate and unacceptable. UNCAGE condemns such malicious campaigns by biotech proponents and their PR agencies. It is unfair that democratic processes in which thousands of citizens participated, including hundreds of scientists of the country, were being discounted and the outcome being questioned.

While there could certainly be shortcomings in the decision-making processes and while there could be different views on the decision made by the Minister for Environment & Forests, it is important to uphold democratic decision-making on an important issue pertaining to the seed and food sovereignty of the nation.

While agreeing that Jairam Ramesh’s consultation processes as well as his decision fell short of an ideal situation that a majority of people wanted, these consultation processes were a first-of-its-kind, in line with India’s Cartagena Protocol commitments. 

“It is unfortunate that certain scientists are insinuating that some sort of gate-keeping was done to keep them and their voices out of the consultation – how is that even possible? Is it possible to appoint some people at each consultation venue to recognize who is coming, whose stand is what and then keep a select set of people out? 

The people who got a chance to speak were picked up randomly and quite a few scientists and civil society activists and even farmers who spent their hard earned money to take part in the consultations did not get a chance to speak. However, this cannot be used to insinuate that gate-keeping was happening to keep out “dissenting voices”, said Kavitha Kuruganti, member of Coalition for GM Free India, of which UNCAGE is a part. 
She pointed out that several well known biotech proponents spoke in all these consultations and had as much a chance as others to voice their views. In fact, the Minister specially invited some people like Dr K C Bansal of IARI, Dr Balasubramanian of TNAU, Mahyco’s MD Dr M K Sharma etc., to speak. In Bhubaneswar too three scientists aired their positive views on Bt Brinjal without being harassed in any manner. 

Reacting to the prominent front page story this morning of a English national daily saying that “scientists” slam ‘key study’ behind Bt Brinjal ban, we point out that everyone knew that Seralini only did an independent analysis of Mahyco’s Bt Brinjal biosafety dossier. This was the first time ever anyone studied the data independently since even the regulators had not bothered to do so earlier. Even the MoEF note on Bt Brinjal on February 9th 2010 calls it a “report” that the Minister received, which it is. Therefore, to wrongly call it as a ‘Study’ and then to have a story that points out that it is not a ‘Study’ is just misleading.

Coming to Prof Seralini’s work, while the ECII (Expert Committee II on Bt Brinjal) relied on dated papers and unpublished papers from Monsanto wherever it suited them to take their decision in favor of Bt Brinjal’s release, one of the most recent scientific papers on GMO safety and safety evaluation is from December 2009, where Prof Seralini and his team have published a paper in the prestigious International Journal of Biological Sciences. This published paper illustrates how deeper and different safety evaluation actually shows the unsafe nature of 3 GMOs that have been approved in the past. 

Prof Radhamohan of UNCAGE pointed out that after a majority of people including farmers, scientists, civil society representatives, medical professionals and others expressed their concerns and views against Bt Brinjal in the consultations, after more than eleven states have written to the Centre saying NO to Bt Brinjal’s approval at this point of time, after both the Supreme Court observers in the apex regulatory body have written to Jairam Ramesh against its approval and after scores of experts from India and abroad have also written to him cautioning against an approval, what choice did the Minister have? 

While the Coalition would have liked him to reject Bt Brinjal on the simple precautionary grounds that this controversial product is unneeded given safer and sustainable alternatives and knowing that Genetic Engineering in our food and farming is inherently hazardous, it expressed its appreciation of the Minister’s difficult position while coming up with his decision and said that it hopes that the Minister will now address more fundamental issues around GM crops in Indian food and farming systems.