A gene threat on our plate

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Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has declared that the Central government has no objection to genetically modified (GM) crops in India if they pass rigorous field trials. Though the final decision has to be taken by the Supreme Court, where the matter is pending, the Centre’s stance is worrying as it flies in the face of several scientific studies that raise serious questions on GM crops. Questions have also been raised over the competence of “experts”, who have been included in the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) panel. For instance, the inclusion of Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule on the panel could be a case of nepotism and potential conflict of interest. To be able to examine the BRAI Bill, which the panel is supposed to, the experts need to possess at least a doctoral degree, besides several years of extensive research experience in the field of genetics and biotechnology, both of which are clearly missing in this case.

GM crops are plants whose DNA is genetically engineered to produce varieties that are supposedly resistant to diseases, insects, pests, droughts and some specific herbicides. Many GM crops are engineered to produce insecticidal proteins originally found in Bacillus thuringiensis; hence the abbreviation ‘Bt’. Although this technology could hold promise for better crops in the future, it has currently generated a lot of controversy around the world, owing to the likely toxicity associated with long-term human exposure to toxic herbicides, unknown allergens and insecticidal proteins. Environment Minister M Veerappa Moily’s recent approval of open-air field trials of transgenic varieties of rice, wheat, maize, castor and cotton, ignores the threat they pose to India’s native varieties of these crops, especially Basmati rice.

A 2006 study carried out by researchers from Cornell University (USA), the Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy and the Chinese Academy of Science found that after seven years of Bt cotton farming in China, secondary pests previously controlled by pesticides increased in number, necessitating the use of higher amounts of pesticides. This significantly reduced the profit earned by hundreds of farmers across five major cotton-producing provinces in China, as they had to spend a significant part of their earned income on purchasing pesticides.

A similar phenomenon has also been seen in India. Biotech giant Monsanto recently reported to the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee constituted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests that pink bollworm had developed resistance to Bt cotton (Bollgard I) in Amreli, Bhavnagar, Junagarh and Rajkot districts of Gujarat. After Bollgard I failed, the company started advising farmers to buy Bollgard II. This means that as pests eventually develop resistance to Bt cotton, Indian farmers will be forced to buy new and expensive brands of GM seeds.

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According to public health activist Dr Mira Shiva, Monsanto and Mahyco recently earned over $200 million in profit by increasing the price of cotton seeds from Rs 7 per kg to Rs 3,600 per kg. More shockingly, 1,200 farm sheep died in Andhra Pradesh, after grazing in post-harvest Bt cotton fields. In Germany, too, biotech giant Syngenta was charged for covering up cow deaths resulting from the consumption of GM corn. It should be remembered that Monsanto is also credited with producing the herbicide ‘Agent Orange’ that was responsible for the deaths of 4,00,000 people in Vietnam during the 1960s.

Farmers, physicians, embryologists and environmentalist groups around the world have expressed concern over the safety and efficacy of GM crops and it is, therefore, necessary to investigate further into this emerging “business model”. What gets missed out in the frenzy to promote GM crops is the fact that agricultural productivity can be improved with organic farming as well. Visiting a village in Bihar that had successfully improved rice cultivation without resorting to GM seeds, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz had said last year that the farmers were “better than scientists”.

Evidence from laboratory experiments around the world clearly indicates that glyphosate (Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide) induces genetic mutations in rats and other animals. There are many more studies pointing to the fact that Roundup is toxic to animals and humans alike. For example, a European study published in the journal Toxicology in 2009 reported that glyphosate-based herbicides were responsible for causing the disruption of endocrine (hormone regulating) systems in human cell lines. HepG2 cells derived from the human liver were exposed to glyphosate in this study.

Another study published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology stated that Roundup induced cell death in human embryonic kidney cell line 293 starting at 50 ppm (parts per million) levels that were far below agricultural dilutions. Yet another study highlighted the fact that glyphosate was cytotoxic to the bone marrow cells obtained from Swiss albino mice, which were exposed to this herbicide.

A study on genetically modified maize by the University of Caen, France, demonstrated that many edible genetically modified organisms (GMOs) contained hormone-disrupting pesticide residues more than 1,000-fold higher than the conventional “safe” levels. According to a study conducted in Ireland, kidneys of pigs fed with GM maize tended to be heavier than those belonging to pigs from the control group (fed with non-GM maize).

A group of researchers from Cambridge University, King’s College London School of Medicine and the Institute of Biology in São Paulo, Brazil, recently found that the genetic engineering industry knew since the early 1990s that glyphosate induces serious birth defects in babies. However, this fact was intentionally kept secret for many years, so that companies and shareholders could continue to earn millions of dollars.

Eminent French molecular biologist Gilles-Éric Séralini recently requested independent scientific laboratories around the world to carry out more elaborate toxicological studies for assessing the risks associated with GM crops. But he was denied a visa to visit India, a decision that activists allege was taken at the behest of the pro-GMO lobby.

A safety document published by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cites a research article clearly showing that adult earthworms fed with Bt corn litter showed no significant change in weight for the first 160 days. However, after 200 days, the same earthworms showed a statistically significant 18 percent loss in body weight as compared to a 4 percent weight gain in the control population that was fed with non-Bt corn litter. Surprisingly, the EPA document cites a large number of other “research findings” published, not by independent agencies but by companies like Monsanto, and history tells us that these findings are often fabricated by the industry.

Tiruvadi Jagadisan, former managing director of Monsanto’s operations in India, said on record that the Central Insecticide Board simply accepted foreign “data” supplied by the company and did not even have a test tube to validate it. At times, the data itself was faked by Monsanto! “I retired from the company as I felt the management of Monsanto, USA, was exploiting our country,” said Jagadisan in a recent interview. He also had inside information that a “terminator gene” was going to be incorporated into the GM seeds marketed by his employer. He worked with Monsanto for nearly 20 years and made the above facts public in February 2010.

In 2007, the US embassy in France advised the US government to start a trade war against European countries that opposed GM crops, according to a leaked WikiLeaks cable. Nina Fedoroff was the then science and technology adviser to the US Secretary of State. She was sent to India in February 2010 to try to prevent a moratorium on Bt brinjal.

There is a growing speculation that companies like Monsanto often use their financial strength to bribe government officials, university researchers and the mainstream media. Quite often, articles supporting the production of GM crops are written by scientific “experts”, who turn out to be Monsanto-funded officials or researchers with obvious industry connections. For instance, many current and former employees of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — Margaret Miller, Michael R Taylor and Michael A Friedman, to name a few — have an obvious conflict of interest with Monsanto, as all of them were employed by this company at some point in their careers.

Corporate lobbying is heavily encouraged in the US, especially during the Presidential elections. Nasdaq-listed multinational giants often use this “opportunity” to exploit government loopholes in order to safeguard their business interests. Bills specifically customised to serve the needs of industrial empires are regularly approved by US lawmakers as a direct consequence of extensive lobbying and alleged government misconduct.

A recent example of industrial malpractice and US government inefficiency came to light when 1,00,000 patients taking the prescription drug Rofecoxib (marketed under the brand name Vioxx) suffered massive heart attacks. Rofecoxib was patented and marketed by Merck & Co, an American pharmaceutical company that practises extensive lobbying in the US. In November 2004, The Lancet, a reputed medical journal, published the results of its analysis on this drug. It concluded that unacceptable cardiovascular risks of Vioxx were evident as early as 2000. The journal heavily criticised Merck for selling such a dangerous drug and also criticised the FDA for its failure of regulatory oversight.

Quite disturbingly, a significant number of poor and illiterate people in India are being regularly exploited by clinical research organisations working on behalf of their American partners. Clinical trials of two drugs, Bayer’s Rivaroxaban and Novartis’ Aliskiren/Enalapril accounted for the most number of deaths in India. As many as 2,644 Indian patients died during the clinical trials of 475 new pharmaceutical drugs in the past seven years, according to documents presented to the Supreme Court. Deaths from clinical trials rarely occur in the western world. This is a clear example of how our own government often ignores the interests of citizens while approving MNC-driven projects in India.

Studies conducted around the world show that GM crops are prone to serious risks and are likely to have significant health hazards and environmental impacts owing to known factors such as increased herbicide and pesticide usage, human consumption of Bt toxin, herbicide exposure, monoculture promotion and damage to farm soil. Long-term toxicological studies need to be carried out by independent agencies having no conflict of interest or financial tie-ups with American and other multinational biotechnology firms.

It is in everyone’s best interest to thoroughly test and regulate the production of GM crops before they start harming the children and farmers of India. Monsanto has been banned in Austria, France, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Madeira, New Zealand, Peru, South Australia, Russia and Switzerland and is hence trying to aim at relatively softer targets like India and some African nations. According to many agricultural scientists from India and abroad, the BRAI Bill, in its current form, is likely to do more harm than good as it will dilute the existing regulatory system, obviously in favour of the powerful agribiotech lobby. While no country should encourage anti-science policies, it is equally important to understand that high-risk technologies cannot be allowed in the open market until and unless they are scientifically tested and proven to be safe beyond reasonable doubt.

The basic aim of science and technology is to improve the quality of human life. People in the anti-GM community are definitely not against science; all they want to know is whether GM crops address the issue of long-term safety and public health. It is hence important to resolve the issue of GM crops using unbiased scientific methods. Following is a five-step proposal towards that end:

♦ Set up a scientific advisory panel comprising five independent research laboratories. Research scientists serving on this panel should have no obvious or hidden industry/government connections.
♦ Study the long-term effects (for two years or more) of herbicides (such as Roundup) and GM fruits/vegetables/ crops on the overall health of laboratory mammals such as mice, rats etc, before permitting open-air field tests. Short-term testing (around 90 days) would be insufficient to draw any conclusions.
♦ Encourage independent researchers from Indian universities to initiate animal toxicology studies similar to the above.
♦ Hold conferences to discuss the scientific data collected by research committees/ universities and publish the findings in peer-reviewed science journals.
♦ Only at the end of the process, either permit the cultivation of GM vegetables, fruits and other crops in India or impose a ban on all GMOs that have significant health hazards.

Moreover, the Supreme Court should intervene and substantially reduce the prices of approved varieties of GM crops such as Bt cotton and the anti-GM community should continue supporting scientific innovation that would lead to better organic farming, without resorting to GM seeds.

If biotech firms are so confident about the safety of their products, why are they always opposed to long-term testing and independent evaluation of GM products before they hit the market? Are short-term profits more important than long-term public safety? What has India learnt from its decade-long investment in GM crops?

The government should examine all the scientific studies on GM crops before letting companies like Monsanto, Cargill and Syngenta continue their business practices in India. It’s high time we realised that uncontrolled corporate greed and business malpractice are the new enemies confronting us.

(The writer is a biomedical researcher and wishes to remain anonymous) 

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