Categorically denouncing the recent decision of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee of the Union Environment Ministry to allow the production of genetically modified (GM) mustard seeds, the Mahila Kisan Union — an affiliate of Sanyukt Kisan Morcha — on Sunday termed it “hazardous and unsafe to humans, environment, biodiversity and agriculture”.
Castigating the Central Government for extending rewards to its privileged corporate companies and creating hindrance for cultivators, the farmer outfit anticipated that this approval would establish monopoly of seed companies being run by multi-national companies (MNCs) and open flood gates for introduction of more GMs crops in future.
Mahila Kisan Union president Biba Rajwinder Kaur Raju said that earlier decisions pertaining to allowing GM seeds were widely criticized and opposed as the GM crops and the food were found to be unsafe, toxic, and life threatening, for which the Government had withdrew its decision.
Strongly condemning the approval of organically-modified seeds, she bemoaned that the experience of sowing BT Cotton has also proved to be very fatal for the farmers of the country due to the emergence of new diseases every year on the BT cotton. Subsequently, the growers have been using pesticides indiscriminately to save their crops and were committing suicides due to high indebtedness for expensive farming.
MKU chief demanded Central Government’s immediate intervention to withdraw this “unscientific” decision as GM mustard cultivation would result in poisonous hybrid crop. She said that the transgenic hybrid mustard was herbicide tolerant that would lead to increase in spraying of toxic chemicals on the crop, thereby Glyphosate and cancer-causing carcinogenic substances would assimilate into human food and soil, and affect the health of humans and animals.
Raju alleged that the BJP Government at the Center is taking autocratic decisions regarding agriculture that would certainly devastate farming community. The women leader warned that farmers' unions had earlier opposed strongly to allow GM seeds and would resist this time also for bestowing monopoly to corporate firms in production of seeds.
