The GM Mustard Misadventure: Precipitating an Environmental and Health Catastrophe

GM (genetically modified) seeds for edibles are not legal in India. Around 10 years ago, there was a move to allow GM brinjal, but the government declined permission following consultations. Genetically modified cotton seeds (Bt Cotton) are legal, however—the non-food crop is under cultivation in the country and cotton oil is extracted in parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra.

At the prodding of a section of scientists, agriculture economists and the government, which is backing GM mustard, there is now a determined push to introduce GM mustard seeds.

The GM mustard lobby argues that its introduction will increase yields and enable farmers to increase their incomes. A stated reason for the rethink is India’s ballooning bill for edible oil imports. India imported oilseeds worth Rs 1.57 lakh crore in the year ending October 2022, up from Rs 1.31 lakh crore the previous year.

In the early 1990s, India was almost self-sufficient in oilseeds, importing barely 3 per cent of its needs. This was achieved via a special drive under one of the technology missions of the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1986-87.

High import duty on edible oil and enabling provisions that made it attractive to farmers to grow oilseeds yielded results in a few years. The import duty on edible oil is currently negligible and the country is forced to import the bulk of its edible oil requirement.

The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) recently allowed the environmental release of GM mustard for seed production and testing. In an affidavit to the Supreme Court on 10 November, the Union government states that India is currently importing 55-60 per cent of its edible oil requirement and that GM mustard will go a long way making it self-sufficient.

However, others have warned against the move. In Bihar, a former agriculture minister Sudhakar Singh has called for a total ban in the state on testing and marketing of GM mustard. In Punjab, members of a group that calls itself ‘Sarson Satyagraha—Civil Disobedience against GM Mustard’ have written to the state government and warned against sowing these seeds in the state.

The Supreme Court of India had asked the government to respond, by November 10, to a petition challenging the permission given for environmental trials. A hearing is due soon.

Environmentalists have described the move as a ‘high risk’ option that can potentially destroy India’s rich heritage of oilseeds, quite a few of which are known to have medicinal benefits as well. The claims of higher yields from GM mustard, they argue, are exaggerated.

They also point out that safer, higher yielding seeds are already being cultivated in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. These seeds do not carry the risk of chemical herbicides, which are an essential component of GM/HT mustard seeds.

What farmers need, according to this lot, are better prices, procurement support and enabling conditions, not hazardous seeds. Besides the exaggerated claims of higher yield, GM seeds are known to carry serious health and environmental consequences.

If the pro-GM seeds lobby prevails and GM mustard is allowed entry, it will be the first genetically modified food crop in the country. Previous efforts to do this were headed off by scientists, parliamentary committees and the then environment minister Jairam Ramesh.

A technical committee constituted by the Supreme Court had also advised against the introduction.

While multinational companies have been at the forefront of campaigns to promote patented GM seeds to control farming across the world, several eminent scientists have stoutly opposed it.

The Independent Science Panel (ISP), composed of scientists from several countries, stated: ‘GM crops have failed to deliver the promised benefits and are posing escalating problems. Transgenic contamination is now widely acknowledged to be unavoidable, and hence there can be no co-existence of GM and non-GM agriculture’.

Farmers who do not opt for GM crops will also be exposed to the adverse impacts of GM crops, they warned.

Late Prof. Pushpa M. Bhargava, founder of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and former vice-chairperson of the National Knowledge Commission, had prepared a review of scientific literature on the issue. ‘There are over 500 research publications of indisputable integrity, with no conflict of interest, that establish the harmful effects of GM crops on human, animal and plant health and on the environment and biodiversity,’ the review states.

It adds: ‘On the other hand, [nearly] every paper supporting GM crops is by scientists who have a declared conflict of interest or whose credibility and integrity can be doubted.’

Prof. Bhargava had warned that the ultimate goal of the GM lobby was to gain control of Indian agriculture and food production. With direct efforts by foreign multinational companies attracting more attention and suspicion, Bhargava and others have warned, they now use the services of front-men to lobby governments to introduce GM crops.

Allowing GM crops, Bhargava held, was to deny farmers access to both domestic and export markets of health-conscious consumers who want safe, organic, wholesome food. The risks are even higher in the case of oilseeds, as edible oils extracted from these seeds are used both as a cooking medium and also in an array of processed foods and medicines.

As the ISP report titled ‘The Case for a GMO Free and Sustainable World’ pointed out: ‘The most insidious dangers of genetic engineering are inherent to the process itself, which greatly enhances the scope and probability of horizontal gene-transfer and recombination, the main route to creating viruses and bacteria that cause epidemics.’

Shouldn’t this worry us even more in these times?

The report goes on to add: ‘Most important of all, GM crops have not been proven to be safe. On the contrary, sufficient evidence has emerged to raise serious safety concerns which, if ignored, could result in irreversible damage to health and environment. GM crops should be firmly rejected now.’

In his book Genetic Roulette, Jeffrey M. Smith indicated several possible health risks emanating from the consumption of GM crops. This was based on laboratory research on animals and the long list of possible hazards includes: stunted growth, impaired immune systems, bleeding stomach, abnormal and potentially pre-cancerous cell growth in the intestines, impaired blood cell development, misshapen cell structures in the liver, pancreas and testicles, altered gene expression and cell metabolism, liver and kidney lesions, inflamed kidneys, less developed brains and testicles, enlarged livers, pancreas and intestines, reduced digestive enzymes, higher blood sugar, inflamed lung tissue, increased death rates and higher offspring mortality.

Michael Antoniou, a molecular geneticist at King’s College, London, is also on record stating: “If the kind of detrimental effects seen in animals fed GM food were observed in a clinical setting, the use of the product would have been halted and further research initiated to determine the cause and find possible solutions.”

Antoniou’s adds: “However what we find repeatedly in the context of GM food is that both government and industry plough on ahead with the development, endorsement and marketing of GM foods despite the warnings of potential ill health from animal feeding studies… to the point where governments and industry seem to ignore results of their own research!”

The available body of evidence indicating serious health risks and irreversible environmental risks is in the public domain despite victimisation of scientists, suppression of research results, prematurely ending ongoing research and even outright fraud to suppress evidence.

Giant multinational corporations have repeatedly been forced by law courts to pay millions of dollars for the health hazards they have caused and the dangerous chemicals they have promoted, include herbicides sold with GM crops. Some of them have tried to change and hide their identity by merging with other companies.

It bears emphasis that the supposed high yields from GM crops, their USP, has itself turned out to be a bogus claim. A report titled ‘Failure to Yield’, published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, USA, confirms that ‘after 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialisation, GM crops have failed to increase yields’ and that ‘traditional breeding outperforms genetic engineering hands down’.

In a joint letter addressed to Manmohan Singh when he was prime minister, 17 distinguished scientists from several countries had also debunked claims of higher yields from GM crops. They had said: the technology is ‘conceptually flawed, crude, imprecise and poorly controlled’.

The push to introduce GM mustard is ominous, not simply by itself but for its cascading effects. If it is cleared, in the face of all the evidence of its dire consequences, the floodgates will open for more genetically modified food crops.

The government has also sought to increase edible oil supply by introducing palm oil plantations, which has adverse environmental consequences. It will disrupt the rich biodiversity of ecologically sensitive geographies like the Northeast and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The process of obtaining oil from palm fruit can be highly polluting, and once cheap palm oil starts dominating the edible oil sector, traditional oilseeds will be hit.

What India really needs is to better utilise its rich biodiversity. It needs mixed cropping systems of traditional oilseeds—among other edible crops—including groundnut, mustard, sesame, coconut and it needs to rotate their cultivation. Depending on highrisk GM mustard and palm oil plantations is a suicidal path for the oilseed sector, particularly from the perspective of the rich heritage of our traditional oilseeds.