BUOYED by the prime minister’s remark that NGOs were responsible for the moratorium on the release of GM or Bt brinjal, the biotech industry is stepping up its campaign to get it lifted along with “all constraints in the research and development work of biotech crops”. It is also asking the government to ensure that the regulator, Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), carries out its mandated functions without hindrance till such time as the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) becomes operational.
In what it calls the Bangalore Declaration, top industry lobby groups, the Association of Biotech Led Enterprises-Agriculture Group (ABLE-Ag) and the Foundation for Biotechnology Awareness and Education (FBAE), also urged the passage of the BRAI bill without further delay. The so-called declaration was made after a series of industry-sponsored conferences held across the country to plug biotechnology as the tool for guaranteeing India’s food security. While this has triggered a predictable counter-campaign by the anti-GM crops movement, an unexpected embarrassment for the government and industry is a fresh report that has exposed more flaws in the data supplied by Mahyco, the developer of the Bt brinjal event EE-1, and the unquestioning acceptance of its claims by GEAC and the two expert committees (EC-I and EC-II) that advised it.