The RSS-affiliated Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) on Friday accused the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) of functioning in an "irresponsible fashion" and opposed its recommendation for the environmental release of Genetically Modified (GM) mustard, calling it "dangerous". It urged the Centre to ensure that the crop's seed is not allowed to be planted "now or ever".
In a letter to Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, the SJM said the claims made in support of GM mustard were "completely untrue, unsubstantiated and wrongly projected". "Swadeshi Jagran Manch has all along been opposing this dangerous and unneeded GM mustard being brought in through the backdoor as a public sector genetically modified organism (GMO)," organisation co-convenor Ashwani Mahajan said in the letter.
The Ministry had earlier kept the regulatory clearance for the operationalisation of the recommendation made in favour of GM mustard in abeyance to seek a review after the SJM raised "key issues" of concern.
However, the GEAC "predictably" did not take up any review "worth the name", he added. "The regulators are joining hands with GM crop developers and are time and again compromising the regulatory regime quite seriously, and they have done so with this GM mustard also," Mahajan charged.
"We are confident that as a person who has carefully studied the adverse impacts of the GM crops and also published opinion pieces on the same in the past, you will intervene immediately in this matter, and ensure that no GM mustard seed is allowed to be planted, now or ever," Mahajan added in his letter to Yadav. He also termed as "completely untrue" the claim that GM mustard was 'swadeshi' and had been developed in India.
"We would like to bring it to your kind notice that in 2002, Proagro Seed Company, which is Bayer's subsidiary, applied for commercial approval for a similar construct that Prof Pental and his team are now promoting as HT Mustard DMH 11," he said.
Mahajan was referring to scientist Deepak Pental, whose GM mustard technology has been approved by the GEAC. Bayer's application at that point was turned down because the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) said their field trials did not offer evidence of superior yield, he underlined.
It is "well known" that hybridisation of GM mustard is achieved by means of two genes barnase and barstar, derived from a soil bacterium called Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, Mahajan said adding the bar-barstar-barnase gene is a patented technology of Bayer Crop Science, he said."Bayer is not a Swadeshi company. How can a product patented in their name be termed as Swadeshi. The fact that Bayer owns the patent of the genes used in Prof Pental's mustard has been deliberately concealed from the people of India," he added.