An increasing number of Indian NGOs, farmers’ organizations and common citizens are becoming vocal in their criticism of Genetically Engineered (GE) crops and foods. Farmers have set ablaze fields where trials of genetically engineered crops were being conducted and questions have been asked in Parliament about the status of such crops and foods in India.

Public distrust of GE Foods originated in Europe and it remains strongest there. So far, opposition has not been particularly visible in the US, although consumer concerns have been voiced. Surveys in the US show that most American respondents are willing to eat GE foods and do not feel threatened by it. In India, the ground is fuzzy, the level of awareness is poor except for select groups, but a nascent opposition is building up.

The greater public acceptance of GE foods in the US is anchored in the fact that the scientific community made an attempt to engage with the public on the applications of this technology. When recombinant DNA technology was discovered and its potential for applications in agriculture and pharmaceuticals began to unfold, American scientists organized the Asilomar Conference in the early seventies. These discussions included a risk benefit analysis of this new technology by which genes could be shifted around across the species barrier. The public was, at least to some extent, included in the debate and the scientists decided on a moratorium for a few years on application, to understand the technology better. This engendered confidence in the scientific community.

Unlike the US, European nations did not engage in such an exercise. Discussions with the public were not held. Scientists remained in ivory towers doing science and the public was not aware of what was happening in the laboratories. They feared the worst - perhaps monsters were being hatched in test tubes. The shameful eugenics program of the Nazi regime when "genetically inferior" races like Jews and gypsies were gassed to death, tarred the science of genetics. Understandably, genetics was seen as a tainted science, its manipulation for any purpose, undesirable.

Burdened with this past, people in European countries had to suffer the abominations of the food scandals stemming from the Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy ) when infected beef was defended by the British government as perfectly safe for human consumption. Then the link was shown to a human disorder called Jacob- Creuzfeldt syndrome and all hell broke lose. The British government was shown to be lying to its people and engaged in a cover-up exercise to protect beef revenues at the cost of risking the health and lives of its people.

As if this was not enough, close on the heels of the beef scandal came the revelations, long denied, that dioxin laced animal feed was fed to cattle in Belgium. What made everything insupportable was the denial by the government and regulatory authorities that there was no wrongdoing, there was no dioxin. The trust between government and people, if any was left after the Mad Cow terror, vanished. In the eyes of the people, specially the radicals, the government lied routinely to the people and could not be trusted.