After Pesticides - GM Brinjal (egg plant)
After Pesticides Orissa to have Genetically Poisoned Food
What will you think if you were told that Bt Brinjal would be available in Orissa very soon? Maybe you will not give it much thought. It is after all brinjal in another name. However this very variety of brinjal and its proposed introduction into Orissa has food safety activists up in arms. They point out that it is a genetically modified (GM) food and not enough safety studies have been done by the government before introducing it into the food chain. The government has relied on the tests conducted by Mahyco, a seed company that is introducing this variety of genetically modified brinjal into the country. Orissa is one of the targeted states.
What is Bt Brinjal?
The word Bt refers to the toxin producing soil bacterium Bacillus Thuringiensis whose toxin was earlier used in sprays to control pests in crops. Now the toxin producing gene of this bacterium is being introduced into the plant genome so that the entire plant becomes toxic. The logic is that this will do away with the practice of spraying pesticides from the outside.
While the seed company reports maintain that this process renders the plant toxic only for the targeted pest, the experience in India with Bt Cotton shows otherwise. Bt Cotton contains the same gene that is now being introduced into brinjal. However the process of genetically modifying the cotton plant has resulted in the Bt toxin becoming a thousand times more toxic than naturally produced by the soil bacterium as stated by Professor Dave Schubert of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California who says, "The Bt toxin is 1000 times more concentrated than in Bt sprays, which do not themselves have a history of safe use." Thus the Bt toxin which was never safe in any form gets magnified a thousand times due to the GM process and now it is entering our food chain.
Cotton is not a food crop.
But all who come in contact with Bt Cotton suffer from various allergies, a claim substantiated by doctors of the Jana Swasthya Abhiyan in India. Cattle and other domestic animals have died in large numbers in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh forcing the Animal Husbandry Department of the State issuing an official notice warning farmers against grazing cattle on Bt Cotton fields. Recently Dr Sudhir Kumar Kaura, a Genetic Scientist from Haryana has appealed to the President of India to ban GM crops in India citing the deaths of lakhs of animals from Bt Cotton and also the health impacts on humans.
GM food fed to mice in laboratory experiments conducted by concerned scientists all over the world has brought forth disturbing findings. The adverse effects have ranged from deaths to organ damage, stunted growth, stomach lesions and disturbance in production of digestive enzymes, to name a few. Recently government studies in Austria and Italy have confirmed that the mice experimented upon suffered disturbance in immune systems and infertility after consuming GM maize. What is more disturbing is that animals are refusing to eat and are shying away from GM food, a phenomenon observed even in India. There are instances of people dying from consuming GM foods.
So why is this technology being allowed into India?
This is exactly what Dr Pushpa Bhargava, a renowned molecular biologist and founder director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), who was instructed by the Supreme Court of India to look into the method of approval of GM crops into India, is asking. Dr Bhargava examined the current procedures adopted by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) and was shocked to note that this Committee was approving applications based upon trials conducted by the seed companies. He has called for a moratorium on the entire approval process.
But is the government listening? It does not seem so. The GEAC has gone forward and allowed the entry of Bt Brinjal into Orissa even as the Orissa government is yet to deal firmly against the illegal cultivation of Bt Cotton in the state, going on for the past three to five years. The Agriculture Minister, Sri S N Nayak, has gone so far as to declare on the floor of the Orissa Assembly that he will not allow Bt Brinjal into the state.
What will happen when Bt Brinjal is commercially cultivated? Will it be safe to eat? Statements issued by the Institute of Science in Society reveal that current safety studies are grossly inadequate. In fact, figures cited in such studies actually point out that eating even a few morsels of GM brinjal is likely to cause severe allergies. Dr Bhargava, in an interview given to The Hindu, has gone so far as to comment that the rising incidence of illness in the US can be attributed to GM foods entering the food chain.
GM brinjal will be followed by cabbage, okra, cowpeas, papaya and even rice. Efforts to genetically alter food crops to produce pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are already taking place, drawing the ire of doctors who are calling for an end to this dangerous practice. Environmentalists are worried about contamination of other crops, evidence of which has been found in all countries where GM crops have been cultivated. Most countries across the world have banned GM organisms.
Can you now imagine what will happen when Bt Brinjal enters Orissa? If the sturdy Europeans are not being able to tolerate them, what will be the effect on the poor and malnourished people of the state? How will the vegetarians now view brinjal after bacteria genes are inserted into them? What will happen to the 226 varieties of brinjal grown across the state and which are sure to become contaminated? What will happen to the lakhs of farmers, distributors and retailers of this essential food of Oriyas’ who will be adversely affected when consumers start avoiding it altogether as they will not be able to distinguish between the ordinary brinjal and the genetically altered one? What will happen to the food culture of Orissa which boasts of the many modes of brinjal preparations?
How will this unnatural process change the nutritional and medicinal value of brinjal recommended for such diverse diseases as rheumatism and diabetes? Is anyone looking? The Health Minister is silent on the entire issue even as thousands of faxes of the “I AM NO LAB RAT” campaign denouncing GM food and asking for an outright ban pour into his office from all over India everyday. The National Institute of Nutrition which is responsible for safe food is unwilling to conduct tests. The doctors of the Indian Council for Medical Research and the Indian Medical Association have no clue about how this food will affect the health of the people, let alone devise a cure.
What is the compulsion behind thrusting such a dangerous food down the gullets of the largely ignorant people of the country? As per an article on the Bt Cotton farmer suicides that has appeared in a leading foreign daily the Government of India has committed itself to the introduction of such food when it was negotiating for loans from the IMF in the early eighties. We are now slaves in our own country; laboratory rats in the most dangerous mass experiment on human beings ever conducted in history.
(Photos courtesy India Together, The Hindu and www.iamnolabrat.com)
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