GMO rules: Activists oppose Centre's draft proposals

New Delhi: Over four hundred green activists and farmers on Tuesday opposed the Union government’s proposed rules to remove "conflict of interests" issues on policy matters related to genetically modified organisms and GM food as they argued that new rules are "grossly" inadequate and would further "narrow down" the scope of such conflicts.

The critics have responded to the Union Environment Ministry’s December 31 notification that seeks to amend an existing rule to lay down the framework on how the conflict of interests of expert members of various GM regulatory bodies are to be addressed.

The rule change was necessitated following a Supreme Court judgement in which the top court asked the government to take care of such issues.

“Nothing has been said (in the draft amendment) to ensure that those members who are GM crop developers themselves and hold a direct conflict of interest with the regulatory regime with or without any particular agenda item being related to them are not included to begin with, in decision-making spaces within the regulatory regime,” the activists wrote in a letter to the ministry.

The only GM crop allowed for commercial cultivation so far in India is Bt cotton, approved by the Union government more than two decades ago.

Subsequently, two other crops – genetically modified brinjal and mustard – had cleared all the regulatory hurdles, but failed to make it to the farmers’ field because of legal, political and procedural reasons.

Disposing off a petition in July 2024, the Supreme Court said, “The Union of India must ensure that all credentials and past records of any expert who participates in the decision-making process should be scrupulously verified and conflict of interest, if any, should be declared and suitably mitigated by ensuring representation to wide range of interests.”

As a consequence, the ministry introduced an amendment to the Manufacture, Use, Import, Export and Storage of Hazardous Micro-Organisms/Genetically Engineered Organisms or Cells Rules, 1989 creating provisions to accommodate the conflict of interest issues while picking up the experts in regulatory bodies.

But according to the activists, the ministry defied the spirit of the SC order by narrowing down conflict of interest to "agenda items" in a particular meeting.

“This is narrow because any expert having a direct or indirect conflict of interest in terms of environmental release of a GMO, without the GMO in question being an agenda item in a particular meeting, may influence the decision-making around other applications also in terms of compromising the rigorous and comprehensive testing protocols,” said Kavitha Kuruganthi, co-convenor, Coalition for a GM-free India.

Other key points of objections include not having a cooling off period for experts to join the regulatory bodies, no provision to keep out public-private consortia in the decision-making process and not addressing the issues of institutional conflict of interest.

The Supreme Court in July also asked the Union government to come out with a national policy on GM crops within four months.