The Government of India finally acceded to the overwhelming public opinion in India. The Environment Ministry announced its decision to impose a moratorium on the release of the transgenic brinjal hybrid developed by Mahyco, a subsidiary of global seed giant Monsanto. The central government was under pressure with 13 state governments making it clear their opposition to the commercial use of Bt Brinjal.
According to the Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, the moratorium will last “till such time independent scientific studies establish, to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals, the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment, including the rich genetic wealth existing in brinjal in our country.”
Environmental activist and a leading voice on food safety, Dr Vandana Shiva tweeted: GMO free movement wins a victory with Moratorium on BT Brinjal. This is a step towards food democracy.
As India wakes up in the morning and reads the news in leading newspapers, most media have conveniently ignored to publish the highlights of the minister’s report – available at the ministry website. Continue reading 'India says NO to Bt Brinjal'»
According to a report in India Today, “Former managing director of Monsanto India, Tiruvadi Jagadisan, is the latest to join the critics of Bt brinjal, perhaps the first industry insider to do so.”
Jagadisan, who worked with Monsanto for nearly two decades, including eight years as the managing director of India operations, spoke against the new variety during the public consultation held in Bangalore on Saturday.
On Monday, he elaborated by saying the company “used to fake scientific data” submitted to government regulatory agencies to get commercial approvals for its products in India.
The former Monsanto boss said government regulatory agencies with which the company used to deal with in the 1980s simply depended on data supplied by the company while giving approvals to herbicides.
“The Central Insecticide Board was supposed to give these approvals based on the location and crop-specific data from India. But it simply accepted foreign data supplied by Monsanto. They did not even have a test tube to validate the data and, at times, the data itself was faked,” Jagadisan said.
“I retired from the company as I felt the management of Monsanto, USA, was exploiting our country,” Jagadisan, 84, said from his home in Bangalore.
233 consumer and farmer groups in 26 countries have joined the “Definitive Global Rejection of GM Wheat” statement to stop the commercialization of genetically modified (GM) wheat and remind the biotechnology corporation Monsanto that genetically modifying this major crop is not acceptable to farmers or consumers. (1)
The 233 groups signed the rejection statement first launched by 15 Australian, Canadian and U.S. farmer and consumer groups in June 2009.
“Canadian farmers have just lost their export sales to Europe and other markets because of GM flax contamination from a GM variety deregistered a decade ago and never even sold. Our current experience with GM flax contamination clearly illustrates the crippling losses Canadian farmers will suffer if GM wheat is introduced,” said Terry Boehm, a flax and wheat farmer and President of the National Farmers Union in Canada. “Flax is yet another warning that once a GM crop is introduced, contamination is inevitable.” Continue reading 'GM Wheat rejected by 233 Consumer, Farmer Groups in 26 Countries'»
Kelly Brownell has long studied the relationship between rising levels of obesity in the U.S. and the way our food is grown, processed, packaged, and sold. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he discusses the common marketing and lobbying tactics employed by the food and tobacco industries.
Frontline magazine in India has published an interview with Joan Mencher, an anthropologist who has worked in India since 1958 on issues such as agriculture, ecology and caste.
About the state of Indian agriculture, Mencher says:
There were three processes that destroyed the traditional face of Indian agriculture. First, the Green Revolution; second, the 1991 liberalisation of the Indian economy; and third, the George Bush-Manmohan Singh summit in July 2005 [U.S.-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture], which really gave free entry to large American food corporations into India.
Continue reading 'The right to food'»
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