Cultivation of Genetically Modified Food Crops in India

Genetic Modification (GM)

Worries are accumulating about the exponential growth of genetically modified crops. Fuelled by giant International Corporates, India among other countries is committing millions of hectares of farmland to these crops. Such GM-crops pose risks to humans, animals, soil and other food and wild plants, for unknown decades, with no known path for reversal. Among human health risks concern is expressed about the following:

Allergies: Brazil nut protein inserted in soybean and processed into protein supplements caused anaphylactic shock in consumers. This confirmed that genetic engineering could lead to the expression of allergenic proteins. ‘Science News’ reported in July 1999 that a study of Ohio crop pickers and handlers shows that Bt "can provoke immunological changes indicative of a developing allergy. With long-term exposure, affected individuals may develop asthma or other serious allergic reactions."

Toxicity: Novel proteins produced in GM-plants have the potential to cause human toxicity; hence further tests and scrutiny are needed, over long decades and across other species.

In 1989, a genetically engineered version of tryptophan a dietary supplement produced toxic contaminants. Before the FDA-USA recalled it, the mutated tryptophan wreaked havoc. Thirty-seven Americans died, 1,500 were permanently disabled, and 5,000 became ill with a blood disorder, eosinophila myalgia syndrome.

Antibiotic resistance: Concern has been expressed about antibiotic markers such as kanamycin that are used in plant transformation. These are still used to treat infections in humans especially tuberculosis which is still widespread in India. Increased exposure to them might cause infections to become resistant to antibiotics, rendering these medicines ineffective.

Environmental risks

Unintended effects on non-target species: Laboratory studies have reported damage to the larvae of monarch butterfly feeding on the pollen from GM-plants. Further research is needed into this aspect. Long term effects spanning decades for various species are unknown. Reversal is un-planned and unknown too.

Effects of gene flow to close relatives: Pollen dispersal can lead to gene flow, but only trace amounts are dispersed more than a few hundred feet. The transfer of conventionally bred or transgenic resistance traits to weedy relatives could worsen weed problems, but such problems have not been observed or adequately studied, over long periods of time, for various geographic zones and climates.

Related Issues

Increased weediness: Some new traits introduced into crops – such as pest or pathogen resistance – could cause transgenic crops to become problem weeds. This could result in serious economic and ecological harm to farm or wildlife habitats.

Pests developing resistance to pest-protected plants: Insects, weeds and microbes have the potential to overcome most of the control options available to farmers, with significant environmental impacts, and this fairly rapidly unlike advanced species like mammals who have evolved complex DNA over hundreds of millennia. Are farmers adequately counselled on stringent safety practices? Evidence from around the world indicates that this is not the case. Further, random mutations due to the GM-plants could affect pests and microbes and lead to unknown animal diseases. No mitigation processes are laid down since the randomness itself is unknowable. Nature takes millennia for such activities while Corporates hope to reach solutions in decades. This is not logical.

Concerns about virus-resistant crops: Engineered plants containing virus resistance may facilitate the creation of new viral strains, introduce new transmission characteristics or cause changes in susceptibility to other, but related, viruses. Engineered plants are unlikely to present problems that are different from those associated with traditional breeding for virus resistance. The great advances made with Bt-Cotton just some 15 years ago, have got bad reports in the past two years in India. Again here, interspecies gene manipulation was done. It is forgotten, that pests learn biologically to adapt much faster than advanced species like humans. So pest attacks are reported on Bt-cotton. Please refer the section 'Genetic Modification' of the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton

Threats to biodiversity: Gene exchange could spread to wild relatives that are rare or endangered, especially if the exchange happens in centres of crop diversity. Scientists must increase their awareness of these and other problems arising from potential gene flow from GM-crops. The genetic varieties of various species (plant life) today exist only in some parts of S.America and Asia. India is known for its widest bio-diversity. Going for short term gains and putting bio-diversity to unknown risk is not logical thinking. One does not know what the new man-made species will do to the existing ones ... after decades.

Uncertainties in Gene Splicing:

In the early last century and even earlier in historic times, cross-breeding of popular plant seeds (as in rice and wheat) was done of naturally occurring seeds interacting within the 'plant species'. The current development in GM-plants, is NOT cross-breeding but is 'purposeful experimental gene splicing between unrelated species'. Here is the difference, for which mankind has no previous or historical reference to guide it. The earlier process could and does occur naturally, but the recent work is only man-made and totally un-natural. This is where logical thinking suggests one has to be careful. The current usage of one decade for such GM-plants, is not adequate and calls for decades of strictly controlled trials and monitoring of effects, not only with humans, but also across many plant and animal species, in various climate and geographic zones.

“New Research on the Impact of GMOs on Health.” Soil Association, GM briefing 19. Updated 13-04-2006.

Further, animal studies have shown graver outcomes of consuming genetically modified food

These studies have shown: Changes in cell structure and cell function; Changes in blood chemistry; Damage to the walls of the gut; Potential for haemorrhage; Generational effects, i.e. death of the off-spring; Inserted genes transfer to existing bacteria in the gut giving rise to new organisms.

The threat to honey bees (“Catastrophic bee population decline may be related to Bt-spliced GMO crops.” http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4682.cfm )

Scientists, farmers and activists point to a disturbing development about honeybees in the US. Millions of these insects have disappeared over the last half-year, their hives are empty. Bees are used as pollinators for various crops and the value that they generate in the US is estimated at over USD14 billion per year.

“Genetic engineering is far from precise”, warns Dr Ricarda Steinbrecher, consultant genetic scientist of Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific and also director of EcoNexus, a public-interest research organization based in the UK. “There are a number of steps in the genetic engineering process and most of them are subject to various uncertainties. A single gene mutation can have serious effects. Yet genetic engineering is all about creating mutations. The outcome can be tremendous, and totally unpredictable and unexpected.”

The problem is so severe that it has been called the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Nobody knows why the bees are dying. There is evidence though that GE crops contribute to this, in particular insect resistant crops producing the Bt-toxin.

Though healthy bees do not seem to be affected by Bt pollen, scientist Hans-Hinrich Kaatz in Germany has found that bees infested with parasites and fed with Bt pollen were affected and died at a high rate. Beekeepers have for years reported that honeybees suffer from high rates of parasites and diseases. As reported earlier in a German journal Der Spiegel, this appears to be new evidence that Bt pollen is a contributing factor in the death of the bees. The areas where the bees have disappeared have a lot of Bt crops.” It is clear that Heuristic Algorithms do not work here.

Ricarda Steinbrecher, “Ecological Balance and Biological Integrity What Is Wrong with Nature?” Women's Environmental Network. Synthesis/Regeneration 18 (Winter 1999)

The study of epigenetics (above genetics) shows that the effects of genetic manipulation often go beyond what is theorized. For instance, other genes in the organism can undergo physical damage by the process of insertion itself.

Other possible impacts are gene silencing i.e. the plant that is being genetically engineered may ‘silence’ (turn off) that particular gene permanently. Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher explains, “In 1992, a study was published about GE-petunias in Germany. One summer, these GE petunias started to produce white and pink flowers instead of the characteristic red ones. Investigations revealed that the plant had somehow shut off the gene producing red flowers. Again, this was a totally unexpected effect. Gene silencing in GE plants has been repeatedly observed. We now know that environmental factors as well as homologies of the GE gene and the plant’s own genes can trigger gene silencing.”

Denise Caruso. “A Challenge to Gene Theory, a Tougher Look at Biotech.” July 1, 2007 http://www.nytimes. com/2007/ 07/01/business/ yourmoney/ 01frame.html?

Meanwhile the $73.5 billion global biotech business may soon have to grapple with a discovery that calls into question the scientific principles on which it was based.

Researchers found that the human genome might not be a “tidy collection of independent genes” after all, with each sequence of DNA linked to a single function, such as a predisposition to diabetes or heart disease.

Instead, genes appear to operate in a complex network, and interact and overlap with one another and with other components in ways not yet fully understood. According to the institute, these findings will challenge scientists “to rethink some long-held views about what genes are and what they do.”

For example, antibiotics were once considered miracle drugs that, for the first time in history, greatly reduced the probability that people would die from common bacterial infections. But doctors did not yet know that the genetic material responsible for conferring antibiotic resistance moves easily between different species of bacteria. Over use of antibiotics for virtually every ailment has given rise to “super-bugs” that are now virtually un-killable.

The principle that gave rise to the biotech industry promised benefits that were equally compelling. Known as the Central Dogma of molecular biology, it stated that each gene in living organisms, from humans to bacteria, carries the information needed to construct one protein.

The scientists who invented recombinant DNA in 1973 built their innovation on this mechanistic, “one gene, one protein” principle.

Because donor genes could be associated with specific functions, with discrete properties and clear boundaries, scientists then believed that a gene from any organism could fit neatly and predictably into a larger design — one that products and companies could be built around, and that could be protected by intellectual- property laws.

Even more important than patent laws are safety issues raised by recent research findings. Evidence of a networked genome shatters the scientific basis for virtually every official risk assessment of today’s commercial biotech products, from genetically engineered crops to pharmaceuticals.

“The real worry for us has always been that the commercial agenda for biotech may be premature, based on what we have long known was an incomplete understanding of genetics,” said Professor Heinemann, who writes and teaches extensively on bio-safety issues.

http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=42&page=1 The so-called evidence-based therapy

A major player in the GE field is Monsanto, and this trans-national has been the focus of many people’s movements throughout the world.

In mid-May 2004, the US Department of Justice investigated Monsanto’s activities in Indonesia, amid charges of bribery of government officials. Indonesia was the first south- East Asian country to approve GE-plants commercially.

In China mostly cotton is grown, and the people are reportedly hostile to more GE varieties. GM-cotton is perceived as damaging the environment.

Sri Lanka attempted to ban these crops in May 2001, only to succumb to US pressure. This is the case with Thailand, Philippines and Japan, while in India the cotton crop has performed poorly enough to drive sizeable numbers of debt-ridden farmers to suicide.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/DES Issues of human rights and natural justice

Drugs are released to the market after extremely costly multi-stage testing, yet their intended effects and side effects can both be unpredictable. In the case of thalidomide the effects were seen immediately in the form of deformed babies, so the use was stopped soon. But in the case of DES, the effects surfaced many years later by which time a lot of damage was done.

In 1971, DES (di-ethyl stilbesterol an estrogen-like drug) was linked to clear cell adenocarcinoma in a small number of daughters of women who had used DES during pregnancy. This uncommon cancer of the vagina or cervix is usually diagnosed between age 15 and 25 in DES-exposed daughters. Some cases have been reported in women in their thirties and forties. The risk to women older than age 40 is still unknown, because the women first exposed to DES in utero are just reaching their fifties, and information about their risk has not been gathered. So, decades of accurate, persistent and consistent research and data mining across the world is needed before Corporates into the GM game start pushing their products.

US-India Agricultural Knowledge Initiative Agreement

This agreement came packaged with the recent India-USA Nuclear Deal, to monitor agricultural research, education and dissemination and exchange of knowledge between US and India. Dr. Krishan Bir Chaudhary, Executive Chairman, Bharat Krishak Samaj has voiced his reservations in this matter. Major stakeholders in agriculture in India, like farmer's organizations, State governments, Standing Committees of Parliament, civil society organizations and eminent academics, have not been consulted in preparing the framework of the agriculture deal, nor in determining the focus areas. All features of the agriculture deal must be in consonance with existing Indian policy and legislation, the National Biodiversity Act and the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act. No mention is made in the deal of key issues of genetic engineering, like respecting crops in their centres of origin, of protecting socio-economic interests of rural and tribal communities and implementing a regime for generous liability and redress in case something goes wrong with a genetically engineered crop or fish or animal. The new varieties should be made available to farmers through public research institutions as done during the Green Revolution and should not be given to the private sector for commercialization.

Collateral Damage:

Bharat Ratna Shri C. Subramanium led Green Revolution in India of 1970s, came out with development of 'cross-bred within species' new seeds which were further 'cross-bred' over time in India (called High Yield Variety - HYV seeds). No doubt it substantially increased yield, but also caused use of humongous amounts of 'pesticides', 'chemical fertilizers', 'water' and 'pumping power'. More grain came with a price, which India is paying today (subsidies is only one of them). In most of the world today: processes needing 'large water, power, pesticides and chemical fertilizers' are frowned upon. This understanding has come after some 40 years. These HYV-seeds were badly needed for India then, but did not reveal unrelated issues for a long time. Such time spans must be considered normal for research and development involving human intervention in life processes.

It is pertinent to mention here that the HYV-seeds of the Green Revolution remained the property of the Indian farmer, however the new GM seeds will remain the property of the foreign owned Corporates who initiated development and research work, even if the same research work was finished and validated by India based and owned workers, research laboratories and farms. Worse, our farmers and scientists will work like indentured labour on Indian fields while our not-so-hidden masters will patent everything new we come up with. Is this equitable?

India Specific Issues

No reasonable person can outright reject scientific and technological work leading to probable progress for humankind, nor are we asking for bans or total rejection. We advice caution for decades, to study this new cross-species GM techniques. No doubt there is evidence to support 'gene splicing' for food, most of it supported by the creators and their research partners or grant receiving companies, universities and ‘experts’. This is called ‘performance conditioning’ and ‘conditioned assistance’. Yet one must not forget that ‘actual usage’ is hardly one generation old, most mention ten year usage. Human memory is not so weak as to forget that all such inventions have a tendency to show problems after forty or more years. Can India afford to risk its farms, seeds and bio-diversity for this? Caution is the only key when we deal with a billion plus citizens, most of who will never be well-informed to make a meaningful choice, if such is left by the creators of GM-foods.

Where are the monitoring, reporting and compensatory systems in India that can protect consumers and farmers alike, for generations, till any late ill-effects die out? A quarter of a century after Bhopal happened, there has still been poor justice for the affected, while the chemical company executives and owners got off without a scratch. What justice can we expect? The third generation of the affected at Bhopal, still show serious illnesses.

It is often said that in the Bt-Brinjal case, approval was given by the India scientists and India statutory organization (GEAC). Please view the following links which will reveal the type of 'clearance' and 'testing' that was done. Even the Union Minister acknowledges that reliable study is far off. Can we forget the Himalayan Glacier Melting fiasco? The IBNlive report is rather revealing.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/controversy-continues-over-bt-brinjal-approval/106190-3.html

http://biz.zeenews.com/news/news_content.aspx?newscatid=4&newsid=574

http://www.samaylive.com/news/what-is-bt-brinjal-and-its-controversy/674103.html

It is not surprising that India statutory and regulatory bodies are not yet strong and independent in their outcome ... but that is another story. Trials will be done in India, by India farmers and labourers, on India farms with India resources; yet Patents and IPR will be owned by foreign owned Corporates. There is no partnership! Liabilities will be limited in time and amount, who can predict the future? Where is the equity? The seeds will be sold by the foreign owned Corporates. Most will not be automatically reproducible, so India farmers will be permanently subject to foreign Corporate terms and rates for seeds and plantlets. Where is the equity? Is this what we want the India Citizens to suffer for generations? Is this politically, economically, technologically viable? Must we again suffer alien domination?

One cannot forget that the gene-modification is primarily done to improve yield and reduce pest attacks. This technique pre-supposes that the human metabolism and complex systems will rapidly adapt to the changes in the plant DNA. Currently, even the use of microwaves is being questioned since it causes damage to food DNA which is then likely to be treated as alien by the human metabolic system. Human and animal processes that evolved over hundreds of millennia are supposed to adapt in a human-generation. I think this goes against common sense. One needs to think this over carefully and not look for passing swallows hoping spring has come. The Second Green Revolution for India will only come from increasing productivity and training farmers thru other means – a long patient but surely a sustainable method.

Praful Vora, Volunteer & Convener, JNM

Prof Prabha Krishnan, Volunteer JNM.