www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

So, there is a ?historic? order of the Supreme Court, which has permitted
the ongoing GM trials to continue in the country but under severe
restrictions imposed by Pv Satheesh .
The most important of them are: ensuring a minimum 200 meter isolation
distance (between GM crops and non GM crops); ensuring that a senior
scientist is in charge of monitoring; before a GM crop is permitted for
field trials, GEAC must put all facts before the citizens of this country
telling us how toxic is the crop and how much of allergy it can produce in
humans and animals; and put up a clear protocol and establish that the
contamination will not be more than 0.01%.

This is a tough order and probably must have put the fear of God in the
biotech industry. But knowing the way the industry has manipulated law and
court orders around the world, one is skeptic whether this order will be
followed to the truthful end by the regulators. It is astounding that even
before the ink had dried from the order, GEAC had claimed that SC had
vacated its earlier interim order banning GM trials. That this was a
mischievous interpretation of the court order is not the only crime of GEAC.
Highly distressing was the note of glee and triumph in the GEAC press
release. While its mandate is to protect environment and not the industry,
GEAC has acted as an agent of the biotech industry. One would not be
surprised if such a trumpet of triumph had been sounded by the department of
biotechnology whose very existence is linked to the spread of biotechnology
or the ministry of commerce for whom FDI is more important than food and
death in the country.

But that the regulator jumps the guns and spreads a misinformation campaign
speaks volumes about the dubious role GEAC is playing in regulating the
industry since a couple of years. This is a serious matter and therefore the
shadow of doubt falls on the regulator?s capacity to implement the current
SC order

It took the Union minister of health A Ramadoss to caution the nation that
unless studied in detail for its effects on health, GM trials should not be
permitted. But the Indian bureaucracy is sanguine in its corrupt backing of
GE crops while the CII salivates at the thought of the billions it can bring
in FDI. Damn the issues of ecology and environment, their effects on the
health of soil, livestock and humans.

The mounting evidence of the toxicity and new diseases being spread on
Indian farmlands by the Bt cotton is being suppressed and marginalised by
the captains of bureaucracy and the industry. Therefore, however radical the
judiciary?s actions are, the ground level implementation can be zilch.

It is now left to the civil society organisations and the media to play the
role of vigilantes. And therefore the strict conditions that SC has laid
down for GM trials should be taken up for close monitoring by these two
wings of our democracy. If they do not keep watch the profit hungry industry
and the acquiescent bureaucrats will have their way.

[www.financialexpress.com]