March 24, 2011
 

India accuses Monsanto of conducting illegal GM corn trials

Recent reports from India showed that multinational biotechnology giant, Monsanto, has once again ignored the law by planting its GM corn secretly without receiving the permission to do so.

Nitish Kumar, chief minister of the Indian state of Bihar, recently wrote a letter to India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, to explain the situation. A few days earlier, Ramesh had refused Monsanto permission to plant the crops.
 

When he found out that Monsanto had planned with India's Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) and the Indian Council for Agriculture Research (ICAR) to plant genetically-modified (GM) corn without official authorisation, Kumar was outraged. Kumar had earlier written a letter to Ramesh restating his opposition to the GM corn, and shortly after, Ramesh asked GEAC to stop Monsanto's corn plantings that it had first authorised back in December.

However, it was revealed that Monsanto continued to plant its GM corn at some locations in Bihar, as well as in some other Indian states, even though the final approval was still pending. Also, GEAC and ICAR seem to have been onboard with Monsanto's agenda since they allowed the company to carry on with its experimental plantings.

"This is absolutely shocking, coming as it does under the shadow of the review of Bt brinjal, the first (GM) food crop to be introduced in India. It is deceitful," said Suman Sahai of Gene Campaign, a grassroots organisation working to protect local control over genetic resources and food sovereignty. "Permission has been given surreptitiously. This is not right. We strongly oppose it. The permission should be withdrawn from all states and not just Bihar."

Monsanto also dishonoured the isolation distance requirements that disallow GM plantings within a certain distance from non-GM plantings. Previous happenings have showed that GMOs can very easily contaminate non-GMOs and destroy the integrity of whole crop fields.