Monsanto made illegal push for cotton seeds

The US-based agri major Monsanto has been accused of adopting an illegal route to push for its genetically engineered Roundup Ready cotton seeds in five states to create an artificial demand for its proprietary pesticide and eventually for its gen-next GM cotton seeds.

The allegations were made by the RSS-backed Swadeshi Jagran Manch, which claims to have found evidence after suspected samples were tested positive in the Central Institute of Control Research, Nagpur — an institution under the Indian Council of Agriculture Research.

The saffron camp claimed that Monsanto released the Roundup Ready Flex (RRF) cotton seeds into lakhs of acres in Gujarat, Odisha, Maharashtra, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh after transferring the RRF trait into several local varieties. The cotton plants which have the RRF traits would not be killed by Roundup herbicide — which would kill all the other weeds in the field.