Supporting the State Government’s demand for withdrawal of Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill, 2013 to regulate organisms and products of modern biotechnology, an organisation living Farms opposed the Bill which will be placed before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forest this week.
The organisation which works on safe food and environment said the country needs a Biosafety Protection Authority not a BRAI. The Bill makes promotion of modern biotechnology as its objective, but for promoting modern biotechnology, there are already policies and schemes in place and this does not need a regulatory statute, it added. “We request the Science and Technology standing committee to recommend that the BRAI Bill be withdrawn, to be replaced by a bio-safety protection Bill and to be brought in by the Ministry of Environment and Forests,” said living Farms member Debjeet Sarangi. Earlier, Agriculture Minister Debi Prasad Mishra had written a letter to Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee T Subbarami Reddy opposing the Bill. After a thorough examination, the Minister said that BRAI is designed to be an unconstitutional, centralised, non-transparent, non-participatory, unscientific and biased regulatory body. “Needless to say such a mechanism does not give confidence to the public on the intention of the Government when it comes to the matter of regulation of risky technologies like GM crops,” said Mishra. He urged the standing committee to withdraw the Bill.