Beware of Bangladesh’s Bt brinjal

Bangladesh has approved the commercial release of Bt brinjal. This is the first genetically modified food crop in South Asia to hit the markets.

The development should be viewed against the fact that a High Court bench had barred its release in the absence of independent research on the subject.

There is still no scientific consensus on the safety of Bt brinjal. The Court of Appeals in The Philippines recently upheld its decision to stop field trials of Bt brinjal due to the lack of ‘full scientific certainty’ that they were safe for humans and the environment.

POISONED PRODUCT

The approval of Bt Brinjal in Bangladesh is similar to the hasty clearance given to Bt Brinjal in India in 2009, which was reversed in February 2010.

Pushpa Bhargava, Founder Director of India’s Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, had revealed alarming facts about the manner in which safety tests were conducted for Bt brinjal.

Bhargava, in his submission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, pointed out that brinjal has alkaloids in it — two major and two minor. According to his statement, the level of one of the alkaloids in Bt brinjal increased by 30 per cent, making it potentially toxic.

However the report, on the basis of which Bt brinjal was cleared by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), stated that there was no difference in the alkaloid levels. After public consultations and scientific inputs from all over the world, Bt brinjal was put under a moratorium by the then Environment and Forests Minister, Jairam Ramesh.

The decision was unanimously endorsed by a multi-party Joint Parliamentary Committee and implicitly by the report of a Technical Expert Committee of the Supreme Court.

Impact on trade

Bt brinjal aims to reduce excessive use of pesticide and prevent crop damage by fruit and stem borer. However, this can be controlled by alternative means, without posing the risks that genetic engineering entails.

As reported by the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, the pest has been effectively controlled using non-pesticide management strategies in Andhra Pradesh. An added concern is the impact that the commercialisation of Bt brinjal could have on Bangladesh’s export market, as a number of countries either reject or strictly regulate GM crops.

In fact, as of now, only five countries account for almost 90 per cent of the total agricultural land under GM crops.

In 2006, for instance, an experimental variety of GM rice from the US was rejected in the export markets, leading to losses over a billion dollars to US farmers. As a result, Bayer Cropscience paid $750 million as settlement to the farmers.

It is important to understand the implications that the commercial release of Bt brinjal in Bangladesh can have for India.

Both India and Bangladesh are centres of origin and diversity for brinjal, with over 2,000 varieties. Scientists point out that the genetically engineered genes will unquestionably lead to contamination of wild and cultivated brinjal varieties.

Irreversible trans-boundary contamination has, for instance, been documented in Mexico in wild varieties of corn.

The Convention on Biological Diversity, to which both India and Bangladesh are parties, recommends that all measures should be put in place to protect centres of origin and diversity of crops.

Ineffective laws

It is alarming that at present there is neither an effective law on biodiversity or biosafety in Bangladesh, nor a legally constituted authority to regulate trade, production and distribution of GMOs.

This puts at risk our thousands of traditional varieties of brinjal. Moreover, the movement of Bt brinjal into the vegetable markets of India and of Bt brinjal seeds into farmlands are more than likely.

It may be recalled that Bt cotton was first introduced in India illegally and then regularised as a fait accompli .

The fact is that five out of six members of a Technical Expert Committee, appointed by the Supreme Court, have called for a moratorium on field trials for Bt in food crops till their safety is established.

Given that Bt brinjal from Bangladesh can pose a real and irreversible threat to food diversity that Indian farmers enjoy, the Government of India has an obligation to take up the issue with Bangladesh of how, and whether, biosafety for India can be assured.

(The author is a researcher at the LEAF Initiative — initiative on issues relating to livelihood environment agriculture and food.)

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