The Hindu Editorial Vocabulary– Oct 21, 2021; Day 164

Plugging the leak: On the GM rice controversy

India must assuage (gain the goodwill of) importers that its produce is compliant with trade demands on GM foods

Since June, the export of about 500 tonnes of rice from India has triggered an uproar (an angry discussion about something) in several European countries on the grounds that it was genetically modified (GM) ((used about food, plants, etc.) that has been grown from cells whose genes have been changed artificially) rice. This emerged during a check by the European Commission’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed that was testing rice flour by the French company Westhove. In June, France had issued a notification for unauthorised GM rice flour, identifying India as the point of origin, and alerting Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. as the possible destination of products made with the flour. So in August, the American food products company Mars, fearing GM contamination (the act of making something impure or unsuitable by contact with something unclean, bad, etc.), announced that it was recalling (A request by the manufacturer of a defective product to return the product (as for replacement or repair)) four of its product lines of ‘Crispy M&M’. GM-free rice that is tagged as ‘organic rice’ is among India’s high-value exports worth ₹63,000 crore annually. India does not permit the commercial cultivation of GM rice, but research groups are testing varieties of such rice in trial plots. So the suspicion is that rice from some of these test-plots may have “leaked” into the exported product. The Indian government has denied this possibility with a Commerce Ministry spokesperson alleging (Make an accusation or assertion without any proof) that the contamination may have happened in Europe “to cut costs”. However, India has indicated that it will commission (Place an order for) an investigation involving its scientific bodies.

India’s history of crop modification using GM is one of test-plants finding their way to commercial cultivars (A variety of a plant developed from a natural species and maintained under cultivation) before they were formally cleared. Thus, Bt-cotton was widely prevalent in farmer fields before being cleared. Though they have not been cleared, Bt-brinjal and herbicide-tolerant cotton varieties too have been detected in farmer fields. Though the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee is the apex regulator of GM crops, it is mandated that trials of GM crops obtain permission from States. Because of the close connections between farmers and State agriculture universities, which are continuously testing new varieties of crops employing all kinds of scientific experiments ranging from introducing transgenes to other non-transgenic modification methods, and the challenges of ensuring that trial plots are strictly segregated from farms, there is a possibility that seeds may transfer within plots. Because many Indian farmers are dependent on European imports, the Centre must rush to assuage importers that India’s produce is compliant with trade demands. The fractious (likely to be troublesome) history of GM crops in India means that passions often rule over reason on questions of the safety of GM crops, and so India must also move to ensure that research into all approaches — GM or non GM — should not become a casualty (something that suffers as a result of something else) in this matter of export-quality compliance.