The Hindu Business Line : Bt brinjal trials have GEAC approval: TNAU

Coimbatore, Feb. 23 A day after a group of environmentalists protesting Tamilnadu Agricultural University’s (TNAU) field trials of genetically modified (GM) brinjal by storming into its research farm here, the university on Saturday said demonstrators violated TNAU’s rights and also the Government of India regulations.

The university authorities said they have lodged a police complaint. The university registrar, Dr P. Santhana Krishnan, in a statement maintained that the GM crop trials were being held by the university with approval from the Department of Biotechnology and the Genetic Engineering and Approval Committee (GEAC) with specified bio-safety norms.

‘Research is monitored’

Being a public research body, TNAU’s research on GM crops is meant to benefit farmers, consumers and the society at large. The research is being undertaken as a network project by involving many universities and research centres and is closely monitored by agencies of the Government of India, it added.

Condemning Friday’s incidents, the university said the demonstrators, claiming to be members of the Erode Organic Farmers Collective and Pasumai Thaayagam, damaged plants at the brinjal research plot .

The group was also charged with defacing the university’s name board and the display boards at the research plots, besides “misguiding” a team of media persons brought to the site with “unscientific information and wrong facts” about the GM research trials conducted by the TNAU.

Against GM crops

More than 100 activists of the Erode Organic Farmers Collective, led by its leader Mr Selvam, and members of Pasumai Thaayagam, the environmental outfit of Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), marched to TNAU’s GM crop trial farm on Friday and staged a demonstration against the crop trials. They criticised the university for allowing itself to be converted into the “property” of Monsanto, the US life science company promoting GM crops in India. The members of these outfits alleged that once the trails were completed, it would pave way for the first GM food crop to be sold in the market whose consumption would have adverse impact on the health of human beings and animals.

Millions to feed

TNAU maintained that the Supreme Court, which has recently allowed GM crop research to continue, has in its observation maintained that the mere fear that GM food crop could spell hazard for the biosafety/environment could not be a ground to restrict the research in a country like India which has millions to feed.

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Bt brinjal trials have GEAC approval: TNAU