ARCHIVE
Vol. 1, No. 1
JANUARY-JUNE, 2011
Research Articles
Research Notes and Statistics
Field Reports
Symposium
Book Reviews
TRANSGENIC VARIETIES AND
Questions for
Professor M. S. Swaminathan
Review of Agrarian Studies: Can transgenic varieties provide new – and hitherto unavailable – technological means to further increase agricultural productivity, enhance farmers’ incomes and improve the crop composition of India’s agriculture?
M. S. Swaminathan: Transgenic varieties
combine genes from totally unrelated species. For example, we can now transfer
genes for salinity tolerance from mangroves to other species. Recombinant DNA
technology is part of the evolution of genetics that started with the
rediscovery of Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance in 1900. In the early part of the
last century, various techniques like irradiation, the use of chemical mutagens,
and doubling chromosomes through colchicine treatment
were adopted to develop novel genetic combinations. Today, such gene transfer
can be done with ease through recombinant DNA technology. Both molecular
marker-assisted breeding and gene transfer are now playing a very important
role in developing novel genetic combinations to meet the challenges rising
from biotic (i.e. pests and diseases) and abiotic (i.e.
drought, flood, sea-level rise, etc.) stresses. They will gain further
importance in the emerging era of climate change.
Priority should go towards solving those problems that cannot be
solved with the currently available Mendelian
technologies. For example, we need more climate-resilient varieties, such as
wheat varieties tolerant to high night temperature, salinity- and
drought-resistant plants, and plants resistant to new pests and diseases. Also,
we should concentrate on the development of transgenic varieties rather than
hybrids, since, in the case of hybrids, farmers will have to purchase seeds every
year from the company. By contrast, they can keep their own seeds of transgenic
varieties.
Review
of Agrarian Studies: Do transgenic varieties pose any threat to biodiversity?
What are the consequences of large-scale introduction of such varieties into
actual cultivation?
Professor Swaminathan: Transgenic varieties will not pose a threat to biodiversity,
since the seeds can be kept by farmers. The threat
comes from hybrids, whose seeds will have to be purchased every year by the
farmer. Hybrids are those that exhibit hybrid vigour
through a combination of two very different parents. They will not, however,
breed true if grown again. Hybrids can be either conventional or transgenic. In
crops like maize, hybrids are used extensively in view of the possibility of
producing seeds economically.
The replacement of numerous local varieties with one or two
hybrids will undermine the sustainability of production, since genetic
homogeneity enhances genetic vulnerability to pests and diseases, as well as to
abiotic stresses.
Review
of Agrarian Studies: Do transgenic food crops pose hazards to human health?
Professor Swaminathan: Transgenic food crops can cause harm to human health if they
are not tested very carefully for biosafety aspects.
In the USA, three different official agencies subject transgenic crops to
thorough examination for their potential adverse impact on human health,
biodiversity, and environment. These three agencies are: FDA (Food and Drug
Administration), EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and APHIS (Agricultural
Plant Health Inspection Service). It is only after such thorough studies in
government laboratories that clearance for large-scale cultivation is given.
Review
of Agrarian Studies: Transgenic biotechnology represents the first great technological
revolution in agriculture in which – at least in India – ownership, research,
distribution, and utilization are controlled almost entirely by multinational
corporations and the private sector. What are the consequences of this
phenomenon for pro-people development?
Professor Swaminathan: It is popularly said that the green revolution was a product
of public sector enterprise, while the gene revolution is a result of private
sector enterprise. The first is the result of public-good research, while the
second is the result of commercial-profit research covered by intellectual
property rights. What is therefore important is to step up public-good research
in the field of biotechnology by supporting universities and government
research institutions. Fortunately, in our country, there is a considerable
amount of work in progress in public-good research institutions for making
biotechnology a pro-small farmer development.
The important requirements for successful transgenic plant
breeding involve issues of economics, ecology, ethics, and employment. In the
field of economics, the cost, risk, and return structure will determine farmers’
choice of technologies and decision in investment. In the case of ethics, it is
important to ensure that all farmers, irrespective of the size of their holding
and their risk-taking capacity, are enabled to derive advantage from new
technologies. In the area of employment, it will be useful if women’s Self-Help
Groups are formed in villages to produce hybrid seeds. They can be given
training in seed technology in Krishi Vigyan Kendras or other
institutions where the pedagogic method is learning by doing.
Review
of Agrarian Studies: Is India doing enough to make transgenic seed technology a
public enterprise – and a public good?
Professor Swaminathan: There is a considerable amount of work being done with support
from the Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India. Other
public-good institutions like ICAR, CSIR, and ICMR are also undertaking and
supporting useful research in harnessing the power of recombinant DNA
technology for addressing the issues of resource-poor farmers and consumers. We
need to step up such work substantially.
Review
of Agrarian Studies: Are the official mechanisms established in India to
monitor and evaluate genetically modified organisms and biosafety
adequate?
Professor Swaminathan: Unfortunately, our official mechanisms are inadequate since
they do not have their own testing facilities. I therefore recommended, in a
report submitted to the Government in 2004, that “the
bottom line of our national agricultural biotechnology policy should be the
economic well-being of farm families, food security of the nation, health
security of the consumer, biosecurity of agriculture
and health, protection of the environment, and the security of national and
international trade in farm commodities.”
There is currently a move to establish a National Biotechnology
Regulatory System through an Act of Parliament. The National Biotechnology
Regulatory System should be capable of examining thoroughly the different
aspects of biosafety and biosecurity.
First, issues relating to the environment, including the impact on biodiversity, will have to be studied. Secondly, issues
relating to the risks and benefits in terms of economics will have to be
studied in a transparent and trustworthy manner. Finally, genetically modified
plants should be subjected to evaluation from the point of view of their
chronic effects. In the case of plants like brinjal,
whose native home is India, every effort should be made to collect and conserve
the native germplasm. All efforts in the area of
introduction of new technologies should be based on the “four C” principle,
that is, conservation, cultivation, consumption, and commerce.
Review
of Agrarian Studies: Should Bt brinjal be banned?
Professor Swaminathan: Bt brinjal need not be banned, but
there should be caution that one or two hybrids do not replace hundreds of
native varieties, all of which have distinct quality characters. India is the
home of brinjal and we have rich genetic diversity in
this crop. Steps should be taken to conserve this wonderful gene pool. Also,
studies should be carried out on the chronic effects of consuming Bt brinjal throughout one’s life.
M. S. Swaminathan is Chairperson, M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, and a Member of the Rajya Sabha (the Upper House of the Indian Parliament).
Comments
David A. Andow
Transgenesis provides new opportunities for crop improvement, but careful
planning is needed to ensure that it will lead to increased agricultural
productivity and enhanced farmer incomes in India. As Dr Swaminathan
has emphasized, India should prioritize the development of varieties that
farmers can save, instead of hybrid varieties, which require farmers to
purchase seed from seed companies every year.
The
strategy of using transgenesis to address problems
that cannot be solved with the currently available Mendelian
technologies may be a good one. However, Mendelian
technologies are improving every year, and the number of problems that cannot
be addressed by Mendelian technologies is shrinking.
For example, transgenic crop varieties tolerant to high night temperature, high
soil salinity, and drought are being promoted strongly at this time. However,
there remain significant physiological limits to what can be accomplished.
Wheat can be made to be more drought-tolerant, but it is unlikely to become as
drought-tolerant as barley, and it is highly unlikely to be able to grow in
brackish water, as mangrove is. Indeed, as the physiology of drought tolerance
is improved, site-directed mutagenesis (not a transgenic technology) coupled
with marker-assisted selection may become more powerful than transgenesis in increasing physiological tolerance in
plants. The large Danish grass seed company, DLF-Trifolium
(which is a farmer-owned company), uses transgenesis
to identify genes and alleles with valuable properties, but then uses
high-throughput germplasm screening and
marker-assisted selection to create the varieties with the desired properties,
completely circumventing the need for commercial transgenic grass varieties.
All crop
varieties pose some threat to biodiversity, which is related in part to the
novelty of the new gene combination. There are several issues that should be
evaluated: gene flow, effects on species and ecosystem processes, and
evolutionary effects (NRC 2002).
Gene flow can threaten native germplasm, change
indigenous crop varieties, affect export markets, create super-weeds, and
endanger plant species. Soil fertility, endangered species, pollination,
secondary crop pests, honey production, silk production, etc., may be adversely
affected. Resistance evolution to either a transgenic insecticidal toxin or a herbicide can also adversely affect crop productivity. The
possibilities should be evaluated prior to commercialization by competent
authorities in India. On the basis of my evaluation of India’s assessment of
biodiversity risks for hybrid Bt brinjal (Andow 2010), the Indian Government needs to improve
the present evaluation system to make better-informed decisions about the
potential effects on biological diversity.
David A. Andow is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Insect Ecology at the University of Minnesota. He is Coordinator of the International Project on GMO Environmental Risk Assessment Methodologies, and the author of “Bt Brinjal: The Scope and Adequacy of the GEAC Environmental Risk Assessment.”
References
Andow, D. A. (2010), Bt Brinjal: The Scope and Adequacy of the GEAC Environmental Risk Assessment, Sunray Harvesters, | |
NRC (National Research Council) (2002), Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation, National Academy Press, Washington, D. C. |
Ronald J. Herring
Dr Swaminathan’s interview reflects an
emerging consensus on transgenic crops: all cultivars are genetically modified,
but transgenic techniques offer unique potential in many circumstances.
Disaggregation is important. A trait that reduces demand for labour, however bred into the plant, may be less desirable
in specific cultivars and labour markets, for example,
than an insect-resistant trait. India has experience with two of the latter: Bt
cotton and Bt brinjal (baingan, aubergine,
eggplant, Solanum melongena).
Cotton and brinjal jointly constitute
a puzzle. The same transgene [cry1Ac], producing the
same insecticidal protein, in the same regulatory system produced very
different outcomes. Bt cotton has done well in agro-economic and environmental
terms; Bt brinjal in field trials offered even
greater benefits to farmers in net income and pesticide reduction, but failed
to receive regulatory clearance.
The rationale for transgenic brinjal
is that recombinant DNA techniques could introduce a trait – insect resistance –
that is absent in the genome. India’s biosafety
system normalizes every technique of genetic modification Dr Swaminathan mentions except
rDNA. Transgenic brinjal
was subjected to special regulation solely because of the means of modification
that introduced the trait. In politics, rDNA plants
have been successfully constructed as uniquely risky plants: “GMOs”. Biosafety regimes in many
countries make this strong assumption. Assuming risky plants, control seems
imminently reasonable, but is extraordinarily difficult to operationalize
or administer. Biosafety regimes introduce, but only
pretend to solve, the Goldilocks paradox: regulation should be not too little,
not too much, but just right. If too little, a real hazard might result. If too
much, unintended economic and political consequences could follow. Strict biosafety regulation favours multinational
life-science firms comfortable with regulation that suppresses local
competition. Bt cotton offers one example: the only monopoly Mahyco-Monsanto ever had was one conferred by official
regulation in New Delhi. Politically, biosafety
institutions disproportionately empower small numbers with appropriate cultural
capital, skills, and connections – typically not farmers.
Democracy must then ask of biosafety
regulators: do transgenic plants produce more hazards than cultivars bred by
other means? The European Commission
Directorate-General for Research recently answered the question in a
publication entitled “A Decade of EU-funded GMO Research (2001–2010)”:
The main conclusion to be drawn from the efforts of more than 130 research projects, covering a period of more than 25 years of research, and involving more than 500 independent research groups, is that biotechnology, and in particular GMOs, are not per se more risky than e.g. conventional plant breeding technologies. (Ibid., p. 16)
Similar conclusions flow from a meta-analysis by Ricroch, Bergé, and Kuntz (2011). Finding evidence of
some hazard unique to transgenic plants, as opposed to plants bred otherwise,
is easy in political discourse and administrative law, but not in peer-reviewed
science. Mutagenic plants, for example, seem somewhat riskier than
transgenic plants (Batista et
al. 2008), but are not
subjected to special scrutiny in India, Europe, or the US. India has 259
registered mutagenic cultivars, none of which went through the Genetic
Engineering Approval/Appraisal Committee. One is a brinjal,
Dehra Dun local, transformed by gamma radiation for solasodine
production, introduced in 1975. It is one of five mutagenic eggplants in the
world in the registry of the International Atomic Energy Agency; the other four
are in Italy.1 Had the Bt trait that produced volatile
politics in 2009–10 resulted from bombarding brinjal’s
genetic material with gamma radiation, rather than insertion of a single gene
from a soil bacterium widely used in organic biopesticides,
it would not have faced the bar of biosafety
regulation at all: no GEAC, no Minister Ramesh. Bt
proteins may present some hazard, but no biosafety
testing anywhere has been able to find evidence. Only one claim was publicly
cited for raising the bar for Bt brinjal, but Professor Séralini’s method was dismissed
by the GMO Panel of the European Food Safety Authority.
The property-like rights granted by biosafety
regulation to Mahyco-Monsanto’s Bt cotton hybrids did
not arise in Bt brinjal. More open-pollinated
varieties (OPVs) from the public sector than hybrids
from the private sector were planned for release. Public institutions developed
locally popular varieties with the insect-resistant gene donated by Mahyco. The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University developed
four Bt brinjal varieties; the University of
Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, six;
the Indian Institute for Vegetable Research developed Bt brinjals
as well. Mahyco planned to concentrate on hybrids,
assuming that many farmers would eventually switch to hybrids for yield
advantage. Farmers would have been able to choose between two types of
insect-resistant cultivars: lower-cost varieties with saveable
seeds, and higher-yielding, more expensive hybrid seeds. These arrangements
were noticeably absent from the political discourse at all levels.
The politics of rDNA brinjal reflected a common urban bias: farmers receive
lagged and uncertain access to products of the genomics revolution taken for
granted by urban populations via biotech products in industry, medicine, and
pharmaceuticals (Herring 2008).
Bt brinjal faced a biosafety
burden of proof that, in strict construction, is impossible to meet. The
Government of Kerala requested a moratorium for at least 50 years until
complete safety is proven. By that standard, the peanut could not be approved
for cultivation. Branded as GMO, Bt brinjal resurrected
newly effective political forces that had been sidelined by wholesale farmer
acceptance of Bt cotton. One effect was to discourage public sector scientists,
who Dr Swaminathan rightly sees as the best hope for
progress in transgenic crops in India. Were brinjal
farmers not so few, small-scale, unorganized, and politically powerless, they
might have succeeded in contesting biosafety claims
for rejecting Bt. Were rDNA plants not subject to
unique regulation, brinjal farmers’ lack of political
capacity would not have mattered.
Ron Herring is Professor of Government at Cornell University, where he teaches agrarian political economy. He is the author of Land to the Tiller (Yale and Oxford University Press) and Transgenics and the Poor (Routledge).
Notes
1 Registered with the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques
in Food and Agriculture, and FAO/IAEA Agriculture and Biotechnology Laboratory,
Seibersdorf, of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
References
Batista, Rita et al. (2008), “Microarray Analyses Reveal that Plant Mutagenesis May Induce More Transcriptomic Changes than Transgene Insertion,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105, 9, pp. 3640–45. | |
Herring, Ronald (2008), “Opposition to Transgenic Technologies: Ideology, Interests, and Collective Action Frames,” Nature Reviews Genetics |
|
Ricroch, A. E., Bergé, J. B., and Kuntz, M. (2011), “Evaluation of Genetically Engineered Crops Using Transcriptomic, Proteomic and Metabolomic Profiling Techniques,” Plant Physiology, February, pp. 111.173609. |
K. R. Kranthi
Genetic modification
of crops will certainly assist farmers in the near future to move away from
chemical-intensive agriculture. Investment in public sector research for the
discovery of new genes that confer economically important traits for resistance
to biotic and abiotic stress will pave the way
towards developing transgenic varieties that can be provided to farmers at low
cost, and also ensure establishment of self-reliant agriculture.
Dr Swaminathan’s
response to the question whether the official mechanisms established in India
to monitor and evaluate genetically modified organisms and biosafety
are adequate – “our official mechanisms are inadequate since they do not have
their own testing facilities” – is extremely important. It is ironical that
though 90 per cent of biosafety and 100 per cent of agronomic
evaluation experiments, and all other ecological and laboratory assessment
studies that are prerequisites for environmental release and approval, are
carried out only by ICAR institutions, the final decisions on biosafety clearance, and commercial approval of hybrids and
varieties, are made by two bodies: the GEAC, which is a part of the Ministry of
Environment, Government of India, and the RCGM, which is a part of the DBT
under the Ministry of Science. Though all the experiments on GM crops are
conducted by ICAR/NARS, these institutions have had very little influence on
the final approval of GM varieties and hybrids. The RCGM and GEAC continue to
control the regulatory process of approving specific GM hybrids or varieties
despite their limited knowledge and understanding of agricultural sciences,
though based on data generated by ICAR/NARS institutions. Even now, it is not
too late to establish the requisite testing facilities under the appropriate
Ministries.
Dr Swaminathan
stresses the need for transgenic varieties in preference to hybrids. The
experience with Bt cotton in India clearly shows that Bt cotton hybrids have
spread rapidly in a short span of time, to occupy an area of more than 92 per
cent of the total cotton acreage. These have thus replaced the popular
varieties of cotton that were developed by public sector plant breeders over
the last 60–70 years, and which had been occupying at least 60–65 per cent of
the area under cotton before the introduction of Bt cotton. The species Gossypium arboreum and Gossypium herbaceum,
which have their evolutionary origins in India, together occupied about 25 per
cent of cotton acreage before 2002; they are now confined to small patches of
land which account for less than 1 per cent of the area under cotton in India.
Farmers do not prefer the conventional varieties any longer because of the peer
pressure related to the lure of Bt cotton hybrids in the market. It has become
very difficult to obtain seeds of G. hirsutum or any of the Desi
varieties in the market, or even from public sector institutions.
Transgenic varieties
confer several advantages. Apart from enabling farmers to preserve and reuse
the seeds, the straight varieties perform better with reference to the transgene trait due to the stable “homozygous” condition,
in comparison to the segregating trait in bolls of F-1 hybrids due to the “hemizygous” state. Twelve countries other than India have
been cultivating Bt varieties and have been harvesting much higher yields (more
than 1,000 kilograms of lint per hectare) compared to India (about 500 kilograms
of lint per hectare), where only Bt hybrids are cultivated. Hybrid seed
production is tedious, labour-intensive, and expensive. It does not lend
sustainability and stability to farming systems. Moreover, in producing more
bolls per plant, hybrids make use of more fertilizer and water, produce more
vegetation, and deplete more nutrients from soils, apart from requiring more insecticide
for protection against sap-sucking pests. Conventional varieties, especially
the Desi species, are innately more tolerant to
moisture stress, drought, disease, and pests, and therefore need less input of
fertilizers and insecticides. The yield of Bt hybrids has been stagnant at an
average of 500 kilograms of lint per hectare for the last five years, and is
unlikely to increase. Increasing plant population above the national average of
10,000 plants per hectare is not possible with hybrids due to the high seed
cost. The global average population of varieties is 1,10,000 plants per hectare,
and many countries are raising their yields by increasing the population of
their compact varieties. Reducing the costs of cultivation would be possible
only by reverting to varieties of appropriate architecture that suit the varied
agro-eco regions and diverse soil types of India. Varieties, not hybrids, can
strengthen genetic diversity and lead to long-term sustainability.
K. R. Kranthi is Director of the Central Institute for Cotton Research (Indian Council of Agricultural Research), Nagpur. In 2009, he won the International Cotton Advisory Committee’s International Cotton Researcher of the Year award.
Abbreviations
AICRP |
All-India Coordinated Research Project |
CSIR |
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research |
DBT |
Department of Biotechnology |
GEAC |
Genetic Engineering Approval Committee |
GM |
Genetically modified |
ICAR |
Indian Council of Agricultural Research |
NARS |
National Agricultural Research System |
NBRA |
National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority |
RCGM |
Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation |
Suman Sahai
1. Dr Swaminathan rightly points to the
potential of marker-aided selection (MAS) for breeding crops with desirable
traits. MAS accompanied by conventional breeding can combine the search for
valuable genes with tried and tested breeding technologies to develop crop
varieties, bypassing the biosafety concerns raised by
genetic engineering. In my view, the technologies of the future are MAS and Apomixis. The latter is a nascent and developing technology
that would enable the ‘freezing’ of hybrid plants with their combination of
favourable traits in such a way that it can become true breeding. Apomixis is a process that would allow hybrids to breed
true so that farmers can save the seeds for replanting.
Although transgenic technology, theoretically, offers the potential to
create crops with new combinations of genes, its application is likely to be
restricted by the drawbacks of the technology itself. Paramount among these is
the question of biosafety, resulting from the
entirely unpredictable changes that can happen when ‘foreign’ genes are
inserted in unknown numbers and from unknown locations into chromosomes in a
host cell. The high level of uncertainty associated with genetic engineering
makes it difficult to ensure effective biosafety
testing. Several things can happen in a cell when it is genetically engineered,
and we do not always know what these are. Neither do we always know how cell
metabolism is affected, what new proteins are synthesized, or which of the new
proteins are safe and which dangerous. This makes safety testing a difficult
process because, “if you don’t know what to test for, what do you test?”
An important point has been raised about varieties versus hybrids. In
India, all transgenic crops are being produced as hybrids rather than as
varieties. There is no justification for this since hybrids do not offer any
advantage here. In this case, hybrids function as proxy Intellectual Property
Rights (IPR) by not allowing the farmer to save seed and forcing him to return
to the seed company to purchase seed. The Bt hybrids that are being developed
do not offer any advantage to the Indian farmer. In the US and in China,
several of the Bt cottons are developed as true breeding varieties, not as
hybrids. Despite the demand that transgenics should
be produced as varieties, the Indian government has refused to intervene at the
policy level.
2. Transgenic crops pose a threat to biodiversity in several ways. The
best understood of these threats is posed by cross-pollination. When foreign
genes like those that confer herbicide tolerance (HT) shift to natural
populations as a result of cross-pollination, the biodiversity of those
populations can come under threat. For instance, planting herbicide-tolerant
rice has resulted in the HT trait shifting to red rice, a relative of
cultivated rice and a weed, making red rice a much more persistent weed and
hard to eradicate. Similarly, selective advantage has been conferred on other
weed plants due to gene transfer. Countries that are centres of origin of major
crop plants do not allow the planting of genetically modified versions of those
crops because they are afraid of the impact of foreign genes on their crop
biodiversity. For this reason, China does not permit the cultivation of GM soyabean, Mexico does not allow GM corn, and Peru does not
allow GM potato. India is the only country that is going ahead with GM rice
despite it being the centre of origin of rice.
In a study published in Nature
in the late 1990s, it was shown that the toxic exudates from Bt corn roots
negatively impacted soil micro-organisms and damaged
the microbial diversity of soil. Constant exposure of pests to Bt toxin from Bt
cotton has led to their developing resistance, as well as to the emergence of
secondary pests. All this affects biodiversity and its equilibrium in a given
ecosystem.
3. Several studies have shown that transgenic crops can have damaging
effects on human and animal health. Adverse health effects of GM crops can
result from over-expression of an existing protein or other toxicologically
active substance, or from the expression of totally new substances. These would
not be found in the natural plant species, but could be seen in the plant from
which the foreign gene came. New, potentially dangerous proteins could also
result from new products synthesized by metabolic pathways that are altered
after the introgression of foreign genes. Once genes
foreign to the host genome are put into the cell, they would get inserted into
the host DNA randomly. This could change the code sequence of the
DNA in that region, resulting in the synthesis of new proteins. Such proteins
need not all be dangerous, but there is a good possibility of there being some
that are either toxic or with disease-inducing properties.
Where the new protein is known, testing can be done, but problems arise
when the toxicological hazard results from a pleiotropic
response, and involves multiple changes in either protein or metabolic constituents which cannot be predicted. In such cases,
testing is not possible and the hazardous elements can remain undetected.
Adequate and sensitive testing procedures for allergenicity
do not exist, especially in India. This means that animals and humans could be
exposed to undetected allergens. Before any further commercialization is
allowed, testing procedures of sufficiently stringent standards should be put
in place.
There are studies showing that rats fed on a diet of GM corn revealed
severe organ damage. They developed lesions in the kidneys and liver, and they had
compromised immune systems. Other studies on rats fed with GM potato showed
similar organ malformation and altered immune response. There are several
reports of stomach lesions in rats, false pregnancies in cows, uncontrolled
cell growth, and damage to the animal immune system, following feeding studies
conducted with GM foods. When the first GM tomato, “Flavr
Savr,” was fed to rats in 1994, many of them
developed lesions in the stomach, and 7 out of 40 rats died within two weeks.
4. When a technology is controlled by the private sector, especially by
transnational companies, there is usually a lack of transparency. Hence, both
the agenda and the safety of the technology and its products become
questionable. Worse, these companies have a commitment to creating private
goods to maximize profits and to keep their shareholders happy, and not to
creating public goods that are needed by developing societies like India. The
drive to create IPR-protected private goods tends to ignore the needs of the
poor. That is why India’s first GM crop is cotton, which is a commercial crop.
Over 300 Bt cotton hybrids have been officially released in India, all of them
by the private sector and not the public sector, and all of them as hybrids so
that the farmers cannot save seed. GM technology in India has focused
disproportionately on the Bt gene that is owned by Monsanto and which earns
that company big money in license fees every time it is used. Pro-poor needs in agriculture are not addressed by such companies
in their choice of either crops or traits.
5. India could do much more to make transgenic
technology a public good. Public sector institutions here are chasing the Bt
gene and working to create hybrids, and violating biosafety
guidelines, just like the private companies. They must
develop greater confidence and stop imitating the private companies if they are
to have any relevance. Currently, their track record is not good.
6. The regulatory system in India is in dire
need of a thorough overhaul. Gene Campaign had filed a writ petition in the
Supreme Court in 2004, asking for a radically improved regulatory system. That
has not yet happened. The system currently in place lacks technical competence,
does not include the public as required by the Biosafety
Protocol, and is not transparent. It is riddled by conflict of interests, with
the same people putting in applications for approval and occupying positions on
the decision-making bodies.
7. Bt brinjal or any
other GM crop should not be given permission for commercial release in India
until we have a demonstrably improved regulatory system, and testing procedures
capable of ensuring the biosafety of transgenic crops
and foods. That is not the case today.
Suman Sahai is Chairperson of the Gene Campaign and winner of the 2004 Borlaug Award. She chaired the Planning Commission Task Force on “Agro-Biodiversity and Genetically Engineered Organisms” for India’s Eleventh Five-Year Plan.
S. Ramachandran Pillai
I am in broad
agreement with the views expressed by Dr M. S. Swaminathan
in his answers to the questions raised by the Review of Agrarian Studies. His lucid, straightforward, and sharp
answers will certainly help clarify many of the doubts that members of the
public have about the use of transgenic varieties. Groups in Europe that are
opposed to genetically modified crops use the biosafety
argument as a protectionist measure to keep non-European products out of their
markets. Their influence and propaganda, and that of multinational corporations
in the United States that produce transgenic crops, are creating much confusion
in the minds of people in India on the subject of the use of transgenic
varieties.
I argue strongly that
India should make use of advances in science and technology to increase
agricultural production. This is necessary to improve the living conditions of
the peasantry and agricultural workers, and also for the overall development of
the Indian economy. Agriculture is increasingly becoming an unviable venture
for vast sections of the Indian peasantry, particularly the poor among them.
Transgenic varieties can, I believe, help these sections come out of their
present difficulties.
As correctly pointed
out by Dr Swaminathan, both molecular marker-assisted
breeding and gene transfer are now playing a very important role in developing
novel genetic combinations to meet the challenges arising from biotic and abiotic stresses. The need to meet
such challenges is all the more important in the context of
climate change. As recommended by the National Farmers Commission,
priority should be given in genetic modification to the incorporation of genes
that can help impart resistance to drought, salinity, and other stresses.
Water-use efficiency as well as improvement of nutritive and processing
qualities should be accorded priority in the agenda of agricultural research.
While using transgenic
varieties, rigorous biosafety tests should be
conducted to examine the potential adverse impact on human health, biodiversity,
and the environment. Dr Swaminathan has pointed out
that three agencies – the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental
Protection Agency, and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service – are working to examine these issues
in the United States. Similar institutional arrangements are necessary in
India, where the present arrangements for testing and monitoring are totally
inadequate, and also, perhaps, incompetent.
There is widespread
anxiety among the general public about the risks of transgenic technology. In
view of this, it is important that all information and data relating to field
trials and safety assessments are in the public domain. The functioning of the
Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of the Government of India should
be made more transparent. It appears that, at present, field
trials and safety assessment studies are being conducted mainly by the
developers themselves. The present system needs a thorough change. We
have also learned from the experience of cultivating Bt cotton that there is an
important gap in our knowledge with regard to the cultivation of transgenic
varieties. Detailed economic evaluations are necessary when a transgenic
variety is introduced.
A mechanism must be
established to fix seed prices, and to ensure accountability in cases of crop
losses due to the failure of seeds.
While using transgenic
varieties and hybrids, appropriate measures should be taken to establish and
maintain comprehensive seed banks to conserve genetic resources.
The use of new
technology must not lead to global multinational companies controlling Indian
agriculture. The cases of Bt cotton and now Bt brinjal
pose a further threat: that of all future seeds coming under the control of
global multinational companies and, consequently, of farmers being charged
extortionate prices for seeds. Multinational companies use biotechnology not
for the long-term benefit of agriculture or the peasantry, but in order to make
short-term profits. As the profit motive is the driving force of the private
sector, companies may ignore safety measures, and fail to harness the pro-poor
features of biotechnology in order to find solutions to the problems of food
insecurity, malnutrition, poverty, unemployment, and backwardness.
Although it is
necessary, for the above reasons, for the public sector to play the leading
role in the development of biotechnology, the Government of India is not giving
adequate importance to the development of biotechnology in the public sector.
Unfortunately, now that the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the
Indian Agricultural Research Institute are functioning like junior partners of
Monsanto, and given the current cooperation agreements between India and the
United States, the research agenda of Indian agriculture is becoming more and
more the agenda of multinational corporations. The policy direction and
attitude of the Central Government in this regard need radically to be changed.
The proposed National
Biotechnology Regulatory System is inadequate and suffers from many
infirmities. It should be made broad-based and democratic by involving
scientists, social scientists, and representatives of peasant organizations.
Since agriculture is a State subject in India, the States should also be
represented adequately.
With regard to Bt brinjal, approval should not be given without public
scrutiny of the data considered by the GEAC. Public access to information on
trials of genetically modified crops must be ensured to ensure adherence to
safety requirements. Transparency in decision-making is also necessary to avoid
malpractices in the process of granting approvals.
I believe strongly
that studies should be carried out on the long-term effects of consuming Bt brinjal throughout one’s life. This is also necessary in
the case of all crops used for consumption by animals.
S. Ramachandran Pillai is President of the All-India Kisan Sabha, the all-India peasant union that has more than 210 lakh members.
Response to the Symposium
M. S. Swaminathan
This topic has aroused great interest and several valuable comments.
Dr David A. Andow has rightly pointed
out that Mendelian technologies are improving every
year. As a result, the number of problems that cannot be addressed by Mendelian technologies is shrinking. This is particularly
true if we include molecular markers-based breeding. What is important is to
ensure that research priorities are tailored to the needs of small farmers and
nature conservation. An important issue in relation to traditional methods of
agriculture and biotechnology is the possibility of the coexistence of biotech
and organic farming. The United States Secretary of Agriculture, Mr Tom Vilsack, has been
advocating such coexistence. This will require very detailed knowledge about
the extent of gene flow in nature (see Science,
Vol. 332, 8 April 2011, pp. 166–69).
Ronald Herring has concluded that there is so far no evidence of
GM technologies being more risky than conventional plant-breeding methods. He
has therefore stressed the need for a more rational approach to assess the
risks and benefits associated with transgenic crops and varieties. Many of the
public concerns can be met satisfactorily only by establishing a regulatory
mechanism that inspires public, political, professional, and media confidence.
I hope the proposed National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Bill, to be
considered by the Parliament of India, will ensure that the regulatory systems
have adequate facilities for independent verification of the data presented by
breeding companies or breeders.
Mr S. Ramachandran
Pillai has rightly emphasized the need to take the
benefits of modern science to small and marginal farmers. In order to insulate
small and marginal farmers from the risks associated with higher input costs,
particularly seed, it will be useful to establish either an insurance system or
a liability fund. A Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology that I chaired in
2003–04 had recommended that small farmers who buy costly seeds of GM crops
should be given insurance policies by the concerned companies. A liability fund
could also be designed, particularly to deal with cases of gene flow from GM to
organically grown crops. This will help compensate organic farmers who are not
able to get the needed certification because of genetic contamination.
Dr K. R. Kranthi has rightly
emphasized the need for independent testing facilities, both with reference to biosafety and field performance. It will be useful for the
ICAR to establish a designated All-India Coordinated Research Project on GM
varieties. Dr Kranthi has also stressed the need to
avoid genetic erosion as a result of the spread of one or two cotton hybrids
over large areas. For example, the species Gossypium arboreum and Gossypium herbaceum, which have their evolutionary
origins in India and which formerly occupied 25 per cent of total cotton
acreage, are now facing the threat of extinction. It is therefore necessary
that biotechnology, biodiversity, and business become mutually reinforcing and
not antagonistic.
This series of interventions has helped to highlight the many
dimensions of the problems relating to transgenic varieties. Indian agriculture
needs the best available technologies in order to improve the productivity and
profitability of small holdings in an environmentally
sustainable and socially equitable manner. We therefore need better
methods of assessment of risks and benefits.