https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/gm-food-should-never-be-approved/
Recently the Coalition for GM-Free Agriculture in India expressed serious concern regarding the new regulations being framed and discussed for regulating GM food as these are leaving wide gaps regarding food safety as well as feed safety. There is concern particularly regarding import of processed GM food. Then this coalition released another statement in which it warned against the attempts for gaining backdoor door entry for more GM crops (other than Bt Cotton) by getting approval for the technology of gene editing, attempts which appear to be succeeding.
Dr. Ashwani Mahajan, Co-ordinator of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, recently circulated a petition stating that the Food Standards and Safety Authority of India appears to be considering paving the way for approval to genetically modified foods and this should be widely resisted. This petition pointed to the worldwide resistance against GM foods and argued that in view of the many scientific facts now known regarding the serious health hazards of GM foods these should never get approval.
A few years back when the strong evidence regarding the serious harms associated with the proposed introduction of GM brinjal or Bt.brinjal was being considered by the government, seventeen distinguished scientists from Europe, USA, Canada and New Zealand wrote in a letter to the then Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh, “GM transformation can produce novel biochemical processes that are unpredictable and for which there is no natural history to assume are safe.
Clearly GM foods pose one of the greatest health hazards and unacceptably high environmental hazard and should be resisted and stopped by a very strong nationwide campaign. Before concluding, it would be useful to state what the topmost scientist in this field in India stated just a little before he died, based on his very long experience and intensive study and careful research. The reference here of course is to Prof. Pushpa M. Bhargava, Founder of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, who was also appointed by the Supreme Court as an observer in the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee. He stated, “There are over 500 research publications by scientists of indisputable integrity who have no conflict of interest, that establish harmful effects of GM crops on human, animal and plant health and on environment and biodiversity…On the other hand, virtually every paper supporting GM crops is by scientists who have a declared conflict of interest or whose credibility and integrity can be doubted.”
by Bharat Dogra
07/06/2022
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