Prashant Bhushan, counsel for activist Aruna Rodrigues, submitted that there are 5,477 varieties of mustard in India, which would be at risk. file | Photo Credit: Vijay Soneji
The Supreme Court on Wednesday expressed concern about the plight of thousands of women farm laborers traditionally engaged in de-weeding in rural areas, which will be part of the human cost if the government allows commercial cultivation of GM-like herbicide-tolerant crops. . Mustard in India.
“In rural areas, women are experts in removing weeds. They are a part of the labor force in agriculture in India. This gives them employment… You know women started agriculture that mankind stopped being nomadic.” And we have seen the sprouting of civilisations, Justice BV Nagaratna made the remarks orally while hearing challenges against the government’s environmental clearance to genetically modified mustard.
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Chief Justice of the bench Justice Dinesh Maheshwari agreed that from paddy fields to tea gardens across the country, women were an integral part of the Indian agricultural landscape.
Justice Nagaratna said, “They work in fields knee-deep in water, bending over all day.”
Senior advocate Sanjay Parikh, appearing for one of the petitioners, said that the widespread use of herbicide-tolerant crops would encourage farmers to spray chemical weed-killers, leaving large amounts of toxic chemical residues on the crops.
‘Not for India’
“Supreme Court’s own technical expert committee [TEC] had said that in the Indian context these GM crops are not for agriculture. They may be suitable in the western context where there are large farms, but not here,” Mr Parikh argued.
Prashant Bhushan, counsel for activist Aruna Rodrigues, submitted that there are 5,477 varieties of mustard in India, which would be at risk.
They argued that the regulatory system under the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), which approved the environmental release of Section Mustard Hybrid-11 (DMH-11), a genetically engineered type of mustard, was “catastrophic” and against the interests of was full of conflicts. ,
Mr Bhushan said the Department of Biotechnology funded DMH 11 and was then part of the regulatory mechanism. The environmental release of the hybrid mustard variety was approved despite warnings from a parliamentary committee and a Supreme Court technical expert committee report seeking a ban. Furthermore, the government did not place the biosafety dossier on the GM crop in the public domain.
He said Pushpa M Bhargava, a Supreme Court-appointed member of the GEAC, had said that commercial cultivation of GM mustard would open doors for multinational corporations.
He added that if GM mustard is approved for commercial cultivation, it would be the first genetically modified food crop available to Indian farmers. He recalled how Bt brinjal was withdrawn by the government years ago, as anomalies were found in the regulatory system.
He added, “Hybrid crops should not be left in the open field and allowed to contaminate other crops… This will trigger a chain reaction that will be irreversible.”
‘Test Erroneous’
Mr Bhushan said the testing of the GM crop was “wholly flawed” and that there was no laboratory capable of conducting bio-safety tests.
“The TEC suggested a moratorium period of 10 years before releasing any GM crops and to use the interval to strengthen our regulatory and testing systems … Most European countries have banned genetically modified organisms. (GMOs) have been banned. Their release now would present a serious. bio-security threat situation,” he submitted.
The government, on the other hand, had said in an affidavit that the Center for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants (CGMCP) got the GEAC approval after a comprehensive review that began in 2010.
The government said that India is already importing oil sources from GM crops.
The Attorney General is to counter on behalf of the government on Thursday.