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As MD, weren’t you privy to these things?
When I talked to colleagues, they spoke of this terminator gene. But I can’t say for a fact. What one does hear now is that Bt cotton seeds are much more expensive and I hear Monsanto has got 63 companies which produce Bt cotton seeds and it collects royalty from them. That is published information. I have no first hand knowledge of it.
Monsanto creates herbicides and pesticides; Bt seeds are supposed to resist them. Isn’t that a conflict of commercial interest?
Monsanto developed a herbicide called glyphosate to kill weeds in crops but found that it destroys soyabean also. So they created a genetically altered soyabean that can resist glyphosate. So you make a herbicide to kill the weeds, then you make a seed to resist that herbicide — so it’s making money on both sides! (Laughs) Later I heard even that soyabean is not so successful. Yields are coming down. That’s what published information says.
Apart from dangerously inadequate government clearances, what are your other concerns about Bt brinjal?
A whole lot of concerns. For one, India’ biodiversity will be gravely tampered with. For example, we have more than 2,400 varieties of brinjal in the country. Brinjal is a highly cross-pollinated crop. So if you have Bt brinjal growing in some field, its pollen can easily get transferred by wind or insects to other fields. Monsanto has itself filed suits against many people in Canada for growing Bt cotton without license, but for no fault of theirs. It’s the wind and insects that had carried pollen and created Bt cotton in their fields! Monsanto vs Schmeezer (CHECK SPELLING) is just one famous case in Canada. The court judgment went in favour of Schmeezer.
The same thing will happen here in India. They say 30 meters is sufficient to separate BT and non-BT brinjal. I don’t believe that. There’s no way anyone can control the gene flow because you cannot control wind and where insects will fly. And once that cross-contamination takes place, our entire biodiversity will be at stake. Our native brinjal has a wonderful property – it can control Type II diabetes. We don’t even know what properties Bt brinjal will have once its genetically transformed.
So we are back to inadequate testing and malafide government clearances?
Yes, we need independent long-term trials, thorough research and peer reviews to get a clearer idea of harm and good. In this case, it’s the first time such technology is being introduced into a regular food crop. Yet there have been no trials for birth defects in successive generations. Lab rats fed on GM soyabean have apparently developed ulcers and tumours in their kidneys and liver. That’s what published research says. Approving Bt brinjal for commercial release the way the GEAC was set to was like letting a genie out of a bottle.
In your opinion, is there any need for Bt brinjal at all?
No, BT brinjal’s entry point is itself suspect. The Knowledge Initiative Commission set up under the PM has got three companies as permanent members, among them Monsanto and Dow Chemicals. So naturally they push their point of view. Bt Brinjal was just the entry point. There is talk of BT rice, wheat, potato and what not. If this had gone through, very soon the whole country would have been Bt-ed! When Hillary Clinton came recently, she made no bones about the fact that she was here with the sole purpose of bending India’s agriculture policy to American interests.
Defenders of Bt crops say it’s necessary for our food security. Two decades ago we were applauding the Green Revolution. For a while, with increased pesticide use, crop production went up. But then the land degenerated and we now think of it as a mixed experiment if not complete failure. So it’s not good to think of all this only in terms of short term gain. You remember the thyladomide case? Foreign companies would like to introduce a product as quickly as possible, make money as quickly as possible and get out as quickly as possible. It is our government that has to be more cautious and protect our interests. That’s where our government and regulatory bodies fail to do their duty.
Why are you speaking up now? Why not earlier?
There was no occasion for me to talk until Jairam Ramesh held his public consultations. I have not spoken against Monsanto per se, but against BT technology. I have a lot of doubts about it. I am expressing this as an Indian citizen.
Pay special attention to this statement in the second article, and compare it with Monsanto’s claim of a stringent regulatory process in the first article:
…as far as herbicides are concerned, we did do some internal tests, but sometimes we used to just produce foreign data — not location specific Indian data — and the Insecticides Board just accepted it. They had no means of verifying what we gave them. We did some demonstrations, but we never had any controlled plots for research or anything elaborate like that.
Corrupt to the core, and expanding its market base rapidly, this pariah of a corporation is not only stealing our future, but our children’s future as well. We should all take the lead from India and expose Monsanto and its premeditated adulteration of our food supply with biotech crops for what it is before it completely takes over any chance of our being able to produce clean food for future generations. Monsanto must be stopped.
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