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Mahyco’s attempt to develop Bt rice received a serious blow when the Bharatiya
Kisan Union (BKU)- the leading farmers’ organisation led local farmers in
destroying it’s Bt rice under contained field trials in Ramapura village in
Karnal, Haryana, on October 28, 2006. According to the BKU, the trials were
conducted under secrecy on the farm land of Paramjit Singh, who leased his
two-acre land to Mahyco for Rs 15,000, but was not informed by Mahyco about what
seeds were sown and for what purpose. Even the panchayat head was not informed.
The BKU claims that the plot was actually sown on July 1, but
the official clearance from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) was dated July
11.It was also found that there was blatant violation of biosafety norms in the
field trial, which might lead to genetic contamination of other rice fields.
When this truth was uncovered, Singh joined the protest along with 500 farmers
in destroying the crop.
Similar incident happened in Rudrapur village,
Gorakhpur district, UP where BKU and the head of the Panchayat of the village
lodged a police complaint against M/s Mahyco, Department of Biotechnology and
Genetic Engineering Approval Committee for various violations found in a Bt Rice
plot in the village.
Acting on the complaint, police seized material lying in a
house from the trial plot for the violations of the Environment Protection Act
and the conditional clearance given to Mahyco for the trial.
Arguing that the manner in which the trial was conducted
adversely affected the interests of farmers and consumers, the BKU demanded that
the state government should intervene in the matter immediately and initiate
action against the company.
The Bt Rice trials in Rudrapur as well as
Rampur villages show that Mahyco’s violation of GE trial conditions continues
while regulatory authorities fail to monitor or fix liability on such
violations.
On November 4th, the BKU activists investigated the Bt Rice
trial of M/s Mahyco in the Rudrapur village in the land of a farmer called Alok
Pandey, who was an absentee landlord living in
Hyderabad
and had leased out his land to the company for their trial.
The following findings emerged from this investigation:
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The
Panchayat had not been informed about the trial in the village, as per the
head of the Panchayat.
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The district authorities [Joint Director-Agriculture,
Gorakhpur] had no information regarding the trial, as per the JDA.
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When
the team visited the plot, harvesting was completed. However, grain was
allowed to lie around with the plot unattended and with volunteer plants
emerging on the plot. Anyone could have picked up the grain and re-sown it,
knowingly or unknowingly. It was only hours after the team’s visit that the
plot was ploughed up by someone.
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No
official team visited the plot for monitoring as per the Field Assistant
employed by Mahyco.
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While
the Temporary Field Assistant employed by Mahyco informed the members of the
team that all grain harvested from the trial plot had been taken to the
company headquarters,it was learnt from other villagers including the landlord
of a room rented in the village by the company that the grain from the trial
plot had been stored there.
In the
Gorakhpur plot too, the Joint Director Agriculture and the Panchayat head were
not informed about the trial. The Centre for Sustainable Agriculture
investigated a Bt Bhindi plot in
Gulbarga
in Karnataka on an earlier occasion and revealed a similar thing. However, what
is more objectionable is the stand taken by regulators like the DBT who question
the farmers’ need to be informed on the grounds that they will not understand.
DBT’s stand of
declaring the farmers as ignorant people is not acceptable to the Indian farming
community. And, Indian farmers are also distressed by the fact that the US and
Chinese exports of rice have taken a heavy beating as their rice is contaminated
with GE grains.
Since India
exports a good quantity of long grain basmati and non-basmati rice to Europe,
West Asia and Japan at premium prices and consumers in these regions do not
accept GE rice, the farmers fear that they might be the next victims of GE
contamination adversely affecting their livelihood interests.
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