James Meikle writes: The British research that did most to raise public alarm over potential health hazards from GM foods is finally to be published, vindicating work that the scientific establishment and the Government tried to discredit. This week's issue of the Lancet, the influential international medical research journal, will contain a paper showing changes in the guts of rats fed GM potatoes, raising questions as to why these may have occurred. Publication comes 14 months after Dr Arpad Pusztai first suggested that the food may stunt the rats' growth.

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Aid plan sparks row over use of GM crops in India

Luke Harding in New Delhi and John Vidal
The Guardian Weekly 12-7-2001, page 5

Britain's overseas aid programme in India was under attack last weekend by MPs, development groups, academics and local organisations after it emerged that millions of dollars are being spent backing a plan that would force 20m of the world's poorest people off the land to make way for industrial agriculture and GM crops.

Under the Vision 2020 scheme developed by the United States consultancy firm McKinsey, the semi-arid southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh would introduce GM crops and giant US prairie-style farms to produce food for export. The state wants more than 20m farmers to leave agriculture in the next 20 years as it reduces the number of people employed in the sector from 70% to 40%. Many of those expected to be made unemployed or landless are lower-class Dalits, or "untouchables".

The state is to encourage farmers to plant GM crops, including Bt cotton and vitamin A rice. It is setting up a 600sq km Genome Valley, where biotechnology companies such as Monsanto will be invited to carry out trials. Britain's Secretary for International Development, Clare Short, came under fire last week for her department's backing of the scheme. The Department for International Development (DfID) has agreed to give Andhra Pradesh more than half of Britain's $150m aid allocation to India this year. It has already received $52m. Much of the money has been spent on overhauling the region's crumbling infrastructure to implement the project.

Campaigners fear that if the scheme goes ahead millions of farmers and labourers will be forced to migrate to the cities in search of work. Large corporations will be invited to take over farming. Jobs such as weeding - done by poor migrant labourers - will disappear with the introduction of hi-tech machinery and chemicals. Meanwhile state legislation protecting indebted small farmers has been abolished. Incentives will be offered to persuade farmers to abandon traditional crops, such as millet, and replace them with crops grown for export.

Last week a "citizens' jury" of small farmers from across Andhra Pradesh rejected the scheme. They unanimously rejected contract farming and GM crops, saying they wanted to control their own land and forests. They also called for the preservation of "healthy soils", "diverse crops" and "indigenous knowledge". The DfID acknowledges that severe environmental problems in India are caused by land degradation, increasing energy use and declining water quality, all associated with the kind of industrial-scale agriculture proposed in the Andhra Pradesh plan.

Opposition to GM crops and industrial-scale farming in India is high. In the past few years thousands of farmers have committed suicide because of escalating debts.

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Indian farmers target Monsanto

Habib Beary
BBC correspondent in Bangalore
Thursday, 11 September, 2003

Angry farmers in southern India have stormed a building that formerly housed the global biotech giant, Monsanto.

Monsanto has left the building - but nobody told the farmers, say police More than 40 farmers ransacked the corporation's former Bangalore facility on Thursday, after staging noisy demonstrations. They were protesting after more than 70 farmers committed suicide in the region in the last three months. Their deaths are being blamed on debt and drought - and on the introduction of Monsanto's genetically modified crops. According to eyewitnesses, the farmers went on the rampage in a former Monsanto research centre, located in India's top science facility, the Indian Institute of Science. They damaged furniture and windows, and shouted slogans demanding Monsanto close down its operations in India.

Monsanto is active in several southern Indian states, where it has angered environmentalists and farmers by spearheading the cultivation of genetically modified cotton.

" We have served them [Monsanto] a notice to leave India... We are not afraid of the police."
Professor Nanjundaswamy

The police arrested 15 farmers after Thursday's incident. They said Monsanto had shifted its research facility recently, but the protesters were probably not aware of this. A leader of the Karnataka State Farmers' Association, Professor MD Nanjundaswamy, told the BBC the attack was a warning to Monsanto to leave India.

Karnataka farmers raid building

The attack on the building followed protests over farmers' suicides. The farmer's association had also torched several farms in the state where Monsanto's new cotton crop was being trialled. The environmental group, Greenpeace, has joined protests against Monsanto by calling on the company to withdraw its seeds from the market. Monsanto says its critics have been misinformed, and its experiments in genetically modified farming have been successful in the US, China and other countries. A spokeswoman for Monsanto India told the BBC the farmers' assocation had targeted other multinationals as well in the past.

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India's GM seed piracy

Pallab Ghosh
BBC correspondent Gujarat, India
Tuesday, 17 June, 2003

The farmers here like genetic modification (GM). In fact, they like it so much they are illegally cross-breeding Monsanto's insect-resistant cotton with local plants to create their own GM varieties.

Cotton, Monsanto

BT Bollgard produces its own insecticide in its tissues A BBC investigation has confirmed widespread use of pirate seeds. Our Delhi correspondent, Geeta Pandey, and I went to the town of Mansa, which is the centre of the trade, to see if we could track down some of the illegal material. The market town is in the agricultural heart of Gujarat; it is in the wild west of India with its own set of rules and its own set of values. Last year, Gujarat was one of first Indian states to grow Monsanto's novel cotton crop.

Local requirements

The plant contains genetic material taken from a bacterium. The modification makes the cotton plant's tissues lethal to insect pests, including the economically damaging bollworm. But farmers here claim to have been using their own illegal versions of this so-called BT Bollgard for several years. And it is thought that a half of all the GM seed now sold in the state is pirated. As we walked along the bustling high street, we came across a stall belting out the latest Hindi hits - no doubt the usual pirate copies. This is very much the chaotic Indian way: pirate tapes, pirate designer clothes and now pirate GM seeds. We continued on until we came to one of the many seed shops in Mansa. Geeta applied her charm and persuaded the manager to bring out some of the pirated seed, supposedly "bought from a nearby stall". The seed is made from cross-fertilising the Bollgard plant with local cotton varieties more suited to the unique Gujarat climate - or so it is claimed.

Old ways, new ways

The pirate seed was half the price of the Monsanto product - and as the shop owner became less coy, he explained how last year the illegal varieties had done better than the US agro-giant's original version. He said he had begun planting illegal seed himself and took us off to see his two-hectare (five acres) farm. As we walked along the fields, one of the manager's friends told us there were now several illegal varieties containing the bacterium gene. The fields around us had become an unregulated, open-air laboratory for genetic engineering. Eventually, we arrived at the manager's small plot. The seed had just begun to sprout and to be frank it looked less healthy than the official Monsanto crop planted in a neighbouring field. But as he emphasised to us, his seed was cheaper and he was a poor farmer. The leader of the Gujarat farmers, Lalshankar Upadhyay, is pressing the state government to legalise seed piracy. As far as he is concerned, farmers have been creating their own varieties to suit their needs for centuries. It is just that now they are doing it with GM. We asked him if he could take us to the man who is alleged to have started seed piracy in India - DB Desai. He has become known as the "Robin Hood of GM".

Unforeseen consequences

We followed Mr Upadhyay's car as it hurtled along at 100 kilometres per hour to an unknown location. We met Mr Desai, who said he was not able to give an interview for legal reasons - but he did serve us a very pleasant cup of tea. I asked him if he liked being called a Robin Hood. "I don't know," he said. "All these legal problems I have..." I interjected: "But you are popular." He replied: "No one can doubt that." And he laughed. The trade in illegal seed has become a major issue of concern for Monsanto. The company's director of communication here, Ranjana Smetcheck, said it feared unregulated GM planting could lead to crop failures. Monsanto's Indian partner has now lodged an official complaint with the Gujarat government, asking it to clamp down on seed piracy.

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India 'to approve GM potato'

Pallab Ghosh
BBC correspondent Delhi, India
Wednesday, 11 June, 2003/P>

The commercial growing of a genetically modified potato which contains nutrients lacking in the diets of many of the poorest is expected to be approved in India within six months.

Experts say malnutrition affects huge numbers of people in India

The influential head of the Indian Government's Department of Biotechnology, Dr Manju Sharma, said the potato would be given free to millions of poor children at government schools to try to reduce the problem of malnutrition in the country.

We see this as a technology for the future- Dr Balvinder Singh Khalsi

The potato contains a third more protein than normal, including essential high-quality nutrients, and has been created by adding a gene from the protein-rich amaranth plant. But critics describe the plan as risky, naive and a propaganda tool to promote the merits of GM food in India. The "protato", as it has become known, is in its final stages of regulatory approval which Dr Sharma said she was very confident of getting. She plans to incorporate it into the government's free midday meal programme in schools. "There has been a serious concern that malnutrition is one of the reasons for the blindness, the vitamin A deficiency, the protein deficiency," Dr Sharma told the BBC. "So it is really a very important global concern, particularly in the developing world," she added. One of India's leading industrialists in biotechnology, Dr Balvinder Singh Khalsi, chief executive of Dupont, said the project had enormous potential for the country. "We see this as a technology for the future, because the real need for India is to feed its growing population. This technology is really going to the benefit of improving the yields, better quality food, larger quantity," Dr Khalsi said. He pointed to last year's controversial introduction of GM cotton, known as Bt cotton, saying that "the Bt craze has caught up" with Indian farmers very quickly. "Once [GM technology] is introduced into other crops, and the people start seeing the values of it, we believe the technology will be accepted by the farmers and the growing population," Dr Khalsi said.

'No sense'

What this country needs...is pulses. The pulses contain 20-26% proteins... this potato has 2.5% protein. Please tell me which one is better -Dr Devinder Sharma

But critics such as Dr Devinder Sharma dismiss the potato project as a mere propaganda campaign to promote GM food in India. "What this country needs and which it has in abundance is pulses. Now the pulses contain 20-26% proteins. This potato they talk about has 2.5% protein. Please tell me which one is better," he says. Some environmental campaigners also say biotechnology companies may have overstated the case for GM crops. "The potential for the technology has to be assessed in terms of what is being offered and are there alternatives?" environmental campaigner Vandana Shiva says. "If it's the only way to get to a certain place, then sure. But if I can control weeds by doing mixed farming... it makes no sense to permanently introduce genes, to introduce toxins into my biodiversity, allow contamination of related crops," Mrs Shiva says. The team that created the "protato" says it now plans to use genetic engineering to develop cereals, fruits and other vegetables rich in protein. It hopes this new generation of crops will sell the benefits of GM to a wary public.

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Monsanto's chapati patent stirs Indian anger
Wheat was 'created by generations of dedicated farmers

Randeep Ramesh
in New Delhi, India
The Guardian Weekly 20-4-0205, page 5

Monsanto, the world's largest genetically modified seed company, has been awarded patents on the wheat used for making chapati - the flat bread staple of northern India.They give the US multinational exclusive ownership over Nap Hal, a strain of wheat whose gene sequence makes it suited for crisp breads. Another patent, filed in Europe, gives Monsanto rights over the use of Nap Hal wheat to make chapatis, which consist of flour, water and salt. Environmentalists claim Nap Hal's qualities are the result of generations of Indian farmers who spent years crossbreeding crops, and collective, not corporate, efforts should be recognised. Monsanto, activists say, is out to make "monopoly profits" from food on which millions depend. Monsanto inherited a patent application after buying the cereals division of the Anglo-Dutch food giant Unilever in 1998, and the patent has been granted to the new owner. Unilever acquired Nap Hal seeds from a publicly funded British plant gene bank. Its scientists identified the wheat's combination of genes and patented them as an "invention". Greenpeace is trying to block Monsanto's patent, accusing the company of "bio-piracy". Dr Christoph Then, Greenpeace's patent expert, said after a meeting with the European Commission in Delhi: "It is theft of the results of the work in cultivation made by Indian farmers. We want the European Patent Office to reverse its decision. Under European law patents cannot be issued on plants that are normally cultivated, but there are loopholes in the legislation." A spokesperson for Monsanto in India denied that it had any plan to exploit the patent, saying that it was pulling out of cereals in some markets. "This patent was Unilever's. We got it when we bought the company. Really this is all academic as we are exiting from the cereal business in the UK and Europe," said Ranjana Smetacek, Monsanto's public affairs director in India. Campaigners in India say there are concerns that people might end up paying royalties to Monsanto for making or selling chapatis. "The commercial interest is that Monsanto can charge people for using the wheat or take a cut from its sale," said Devinder Sharma, who runs the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security in Delhi. Andrew Osborn adds from Brussels : Green campaigners accused the European Commission of kowtowing to the US last week by approving a variety of modified maize in a bid to dismantle the EU ban on new GM food. The commission approved the sale of canned genetically modified maize produced by the Anglo-Swiss firm Syngenta. EU states have three months to consider the decision. Clare Oxborrow, of Friends of the Earth, said: "The commission has caved in to pressure from the US and big biotech firms. European consumers don't want GM food."

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