As the prospect of the repeal of the infamous three farm laws was getting closer to reality (the laws were finally repealed on the 19th November 2021), on the 15th November 2021 the Union Government of India announced the Food Safety and Standards (Genetically Modified or Engineered Foods) Regulations, 2021. The purported aim of the initiative is to regulate the market of food or processed food containing or produced from GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms), GEO (Genetically Engineered Organisms) or LMO (Living Modified Organisms). In reality this is a sly attempt to circumvent the debate which is going over the need for GM (Genetically Modified) crops in India for both production and consumption. This is consistent with the Draft Seeds Bill, 2019 brought by the Union Government which by including GM seeds under the bill tries to do the same. This is despite the fact that the issue of GM crops is still quite contested in the country with only brinjal and Bt cotton having got the approval till date. The debate is still very much alive.
GMO is any organism whose genetic material has been modified using genetic engineering techniques. It is the result of a laboratory process where genes from the DNA of one species (may come from bacteria, viruses, insects, animals or even humans) are extracted and artificially forced into the genes of an unrelated plant or animal. Some of the benefits that have been cited of introducing GMO in agriculture are increased crop yields, reduced costs for food or drug production, increased resistance towards pests and insects, reduced need for pesticides, enhanced nutrient composition and food quality, resistance to pests and disease, greater food security to the world’s growing population. Genetically modified crops also grow faster than food that are grown traditionally and are a boon in places which experience frequent droughts, or where the soil is incompetent for agriculture. They are also reported to be high in nutrients and contain more minerals and vitamins than those found in traditionally grown foods. However there are some major concerns as well.
One of the most important arguments against GMO is the lack of data concerning 100% safety. Consumption of genetically engineered foods can cause development of disease immune to antibiotics. There are also unknown future effects with cross-pollination with the wild species having the potential to cause damage to other organisms that thrive in the natural environment. Culturally many people are not comfortable with the idea of transferring animal genes into plants and vice-versa. Kavitha Kuruganti, a well known social activist known for her work related to sustainable farm livelihoods and farmers’ rights, has prepared a compilation of scientific references with abstracts on the adverse impacts of transgenic crops/foods. The list contains abstracts of 339 scientific papers and 39 reports/magazine articles/webpage on different themes, for e.g., imprecision & unpredictability of science & technology of Genetic engineering, health impacts, environmental impacts, horizontal gene transfer, gene flow, contamination and field trial risk, yield myths with GM crops and other related issues. But maybe the most negative implication for a country like India is the fact that it would start depending more on industrial countries because it is likely that the food production would be controlled by them in the time to come which would benefit industries and not small scale non-GMO farmers. Over half of the world’s seed market is controlled by only four companies, viz., Mosanto (US), DuPont (US), Syngenta (Switzerland) and Group Limagrain (France) with the India figure being more than 60% in India. These will the same companies who will control the GMO trade threatening India’s seed sovereignty and the small and marginal farmers. The technology therefore also has its drawbacks.
In a situation when there is a lot uncertainty over the possible implications of accepting GMO into the food system an important principle which can help in coming to a decision as to the adoption of GMO is the recourse to the Precautionary Principle. In the 2004 book ‘Ecological Medicine: Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves’ Carolyn Raffensperger has discussed about this principle in great detail in the chapter ‘The Precautionary Principle: Golden Rule for the New Millennium’.
According to Carolyn Raffensperger the words “precautionary principle” has been translated from the German Vorsorgeprinzip whose literal translation is of “forecaring” – to care into the future. The principle is found in the preamble of the 1992 environmental treaty known as the Rio Declaration: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” In 1998, the Wingspread Conference on Precautionary Principle was held in Wisconsin (USA) which was attended by scientists, lawyers, policy makers and environmentalists from the United States, Canada and Europe. A definition of the Precautionary Principle was agreed upon which goes on as follows: When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. Put crudely the definition means that we should not wait until the dead bodies of trees, children and salmon are piled in the streets (concrete evidence) before we take action, i.e., prevention is better than cure.
Carolyn Raffensperger specifically mentions agriculture as an important sector where the precautionary principle has a crucial role to play. According to her “if we can’t apply the precautionary principle to agriculture and find a way to feed ourselves without destroying the planet, then the principle is worthless. It also means we are probably not educable as a species.” Rather than fitting agriculture into nature the principle encourages the opposite. Agroecology is one such alternative to industrial farming (which includes GMO). However, there are those who contest this claim arguing a turn to such systems can spell danger to global food security.
A 2019 report titled ‘Agroecological and other innovative approaches: A report by The High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems that enhance Food Security and Nutrition’ reviews the argument as to whether agroecology can feed the world. The document agrees that global population is on the rise and there will be a need to feed it. There are those who argue that agricultural production needs to increase by 50% but not all agree to it. However, according to some estimates already enough food is produced for an extra 2 billion population. There is also a concurrent trend which shows that despite high levels of production, various forms of food insecurity and malnutrition still persist. Around 820 million people are still going hungry and an estimated 2 billion people are obese with another 2 billion suffering from malnutrition deficiencies or hidden hunger.
According to the report increasing production alone might not suffice for achieving the four dimensions of Food Security, i.e., availability, access, utilization and stability. Since agroecology does not focus on productivity alone but also issues of social inequalities and power asymmetries, including gender and ethnic minority it is better placed that conventional food system to tackle the problem of food insecurity. Furthermore, meeting calorie requirements does not automatically translate to nutritional security. The industrial agricultural model, of which GMO is also a part of, has resulted in increased productivity but at the cost of biodiversity loss, land degradation, loss of soil fertility and chemical pollution putting the entire planetary health at risk. At the same time, several studies have challenged that notion that agroecological systems are less productive than the industrial models. Some of those are referred in the report.
In light of the uncertainty surrounding adoption of GMO and the need to adhere to the precautionary principle, Participatory Guarantee Systems Organic Council (PGSOC), which is a network of 21 civil society organisations, farmers and consumer groups promoting organic farming and practicing participatory development of agroecological transformations for more than 15 years, has demanded that the Food Safety and Standards (Genetically Modified or Engineered Foods) Regulations, 2021 should be withdrawn. It has submitted its concerns to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) with NESFAS being one of the contributing members. For the sake of the farming community and the public at large of India, it is hoped that the Union Government of India will listen to the concerns.
This article was originally published in The Shillong Times
