Genetically Modified (GM) BT Brinjal has been in centre stage of controversy these days. The Government on Tuesday said it would not allow the cultivation of Bt Brinjal, a genetically modified version of the common vegetable, till an “independent scientific study” satisfactorily establishes its safety. The Environment Minister said the opposition to the genetically modified vegetable from 11 state governments, green activists and farmers during his public hearings over the issue at a number of cities around the country.

To understand the definition of BT Brinjal, first you have to understand kinds of brinjal in India and its production. India is the Centre of Origin for Brinjal or Eggplant. Brinjal has been cultivated in India for the last 4000 years or so and has many historical references in various languages. It is grown all over the country, year-round and is one of the most popular vegetables of India. The area under cultivation is estimated to be around 5 lakh hectares. The total production stands at around 82 lakh metric tonnes. It is mainly grown in small plots as a cash crop by farmers. The average yields of Brinjal in India are reported to be around 200 to 350 quintals per hectare. The main growing areas are in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. But most of the crops are destroyed due to insect, resulting in huge loss for farmers. To save the Brinjal yields from bugs, scientists have introduced Bacillus Thuringiensis Brinjal, which is capable to fight with bugs. Bacillus Thuringiensis or Bt is a soil-dwelling bacterium, which acts as a pesticide and increases brinjal yields.

Scientists from India’s number one seeds company Mahyco, which is now a subsidiary of American multinational Monsanto, have developed genetically modified brinjal by injecting BT.
Bacillus thuringiensis, commonly used as a pesticide was discovered by Japanese biologist Shigetane Ishiwata in 1901.

Promises and Claims:

• It is reported that the average shoot damage in Bt Brinjal hybrids ranged from 0.04% to 0.3% as compared to 0.12% to 2.5% in non-Bt Brinjal hybrids.

• The percentage of damaged fruits reportedly ranged from 2.5% to 20% in Bt Brinjal to 24% to 58% in non-Bt counterparts

• No significant difference was noted between Bt Brinjal and Non-Bt Brinjal, as per the company which did bio safety tests like acute oral toxicity, sub-chronic oral toxicity in rats, and allergenecity of protein to rats, germination, weediness and aggressiveness tests, soil micro-biota studies etc.

• This will help small and marginal farmers from having to use 25-80 sprays of pesticides which are ineffective, says the company.

• The company claims that human health concerns due to pesticide use can be addressed with this transgenic Brinjal with its in-built tolerance

• Company promises that through this in-built tolerance, there would be substantial increase in marketable yields and higher yields would result in higher incomes for farmers.

• The pricing of the seeds will be based on a cost-recovery model, making it affordable for all farmers, whether the seed comes from the private sector or the public sector.

• Farmers will be able to continue to save and re-use their seed for the hybrids and varieties because of this arrangement.

The key argument used by supporters of BT Brinjal is that it will boost yields while reducing dependence on pesticides. On average, a brinjal crop undergoes between 50-80 rounds of pesticide spraying. This is said to give the Brinjal plant resistance against lepidopteron insects like the Brinjal Fruit and Shoot Borer and Fruit Borer. It is reported that upon ingestion of the Bt toxin by the insect, there would be disruption of digestive processes, ultimately resulting in the death of the insect.

Adverse Impact:

Release of Bt brinjal into the environment for food, feed and cultivation may present a serious risk for human and animal health; the GM aubergine is unfit for consumption. That’s the verdict of French scientist Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini of the Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN), who carried out the first ever independent assessment of Monsanto-Mahyco’s dossier on toxicity tests submitted to the Indian regulatory authorities.

Professor Seralini, commissioned by Greenpeace India to undertake the assessment, said his key findings were statistically significant differences between groups of animals fed with GM and non-GM brinjal in the raw data, which were discounted rather than used to raise food safety concerns and to call for further investigation. Although the differences were not reported in the dossier summaries, they remained visible in the raw experimental data. These differences, seen by Monsanto-Mahyco, were deemed biologically irrelevant, and disregarded on the grounds that they were within a wide ‘reference’ group of brinjal types.

Health impacts

On health effects, Seralini found that:

• Bt brinjal produces a protein in the vegetable cells that induce antibiotic resistance. This is recognised as a major health problem and is inappropriate for commercialised use.
• Bt brinjal appears to have 15 percent less calories and different alkaloid content compared to non-GM brinjal. When fed to animals, effects were observed on blood chemistry with significant differences according to the sex of the animal or period of measurement.
• Other effects were on blood clotting time (prothrombin), total bilirubin (liver health), and alkaline phosphate in goats and rabbits.
• Changes in lactating cows were observed in increased weight gain, intake of more dry roughage matter and milk production up by 10-14 percent as if they were treated by a hormone.
• Rats fed Bt brinjal had diarrhoea, increased water consumption; decrease in liver weight, and liver to body weight. Feed intake was modified in broiler chickens.

This makes for a very coherent picture of Bt brinjal that is potentially unsafe for human consumption. The GM brinjal cannot be considered as safe as its non GM counterpart.” In addition, he says that the longest toxicity test were only for 90 days, which does not assess long-term effects such as the development of cancers or tumours. Furthermore, it is potentially unsafe to eat animals with the health problems that had been fed Bt brinjal.

Bt a step closer to disaster?

Bt toxins have never been authorised for mammalian consumption and are known to be harmful to health.  It is surprising that the regulatory bodies did not consider it appropriate to consult the Health Minister, as well as doctors’ groups and vetinary associations before pushing this highly toxic food down the gullets of an uninformed public. If regulators such as the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) had been doing long term research to assess the claims of GM crop companies and taken up the analysis of the company’s data itself then the two year large scale trials of Bt brinjal approved in 2007 would not have been allowed to go ahead. In fact, the results only came to light when a Supreme Court battle forced GEAC to put the Monsanto-Mahyco test dossier on Bt brinjal into the public domain.

The issue over Bt brinjal got worse with central government ministers contradicting each other. Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar reportedly said the committee’s decision was final. Meanwhile, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said that “the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee may well be a statutory body but when crucial issues of human safety are concerned, the government has every right. . . to take the final decision.”Science and Technology Minister Prithviraj Chavan, said he stood by the committee’s findings.

In October 2009, the Indian biotechnology regulator, Genetic Engineering Approval Committee which is an ad hoc 30-member committee comprising mainly bureaucrats and scientists, gave its approval for introduction of Bt brinjal, the first genetically modified food crop to be allowed in India.

In a GM product, the genetic material is altered to benefit the consumer and producer, as it is pest-resistant and promises to offer a higher yield. Environmental activists have over the years questioned the bio-safety of these products and pointed out that this is a form ‘bio-terror’ that should be curbed at all costs. If the GEAC decision if approved by the government, it would also lead to other GM food crops, like rice, maize, soyabean, etc in the country. Professor P M Bhargava, GEAC’s only independent expert, appointed by the Supreme Court said that a majority of the necessary bio safety tests were skipped before the clearance was given. Meanwhile, the European Union has followed strict norms and countries in the European Union have banned the genetically modified food crops. Meanwhile, Mahyco said this will help millions of brinjal farmers who have been suffering from the havoc caused by the Brinjal Fruit and Shoot Borer (BFSB). Bt brinjal will help them tackle this pest in an environment-friendly manner and increase yields and farm income.

Collective no to GMO

Then Health Minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss spoke against them, and the first government minister to do so .  “When there are so many indigenous varieties of brinjal in each region of India , where is there a need to borrow this Bt brinjal from other countries?” He called for collective opposition to GM crops and has the support of farmers, consumers, environmental organisations, and women’s and organic farming groups from all over India .

India is the home of brinjal, where it has been cultivated for four thousand years without the help of fertilizers or pesticides. So far, over 70 000 Indians have signed the “I am No Lab Rat” anti-GM protest in India that is also battling large scale cultivation of Bt cotton . GM Free India says that alternative strategies for pest management exist and pests only became a problem after the introduction of the Green Revolution. Agriculture is a culture that should receive holistic treatment and not the piecemeal introduction of highly toxic inputs that poison a regions daily food.

Campaigns have also been organised by Greenpeace activists who have demanded long-term tests before Bt brinjal is released into the market. The Bt toxins produced in Bt brinjal are also present in the other Monsanto products such as Bt cotton and Bt corn, they point out. The governments of West Bengal, Orissa, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Bihar have all indicated their opposition to the Union government’s plan to approve Bt Brinjal. Bt cotton has already proved to be a failure. The costly Bt cotton is said to be ineffective against bollworms.

What happened with Bt cotton?

On March 26, 2002, in spite of inadequate tests of bio safety and viability, Monsanto managed to get clearance for commercial planting of three varieties of genetically engineered Bt cotton from the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee under the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF).

Ironically, this permission was granted in spite of an ongoing Supreme Court case, filed by Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), challenging the 1998 field trials and stating that there were numerous irregularities and violations of bio safety laws and guidelines in previous year field trials. Even then the GEAC have cleared Bt cotton for commercial release by Monsanto-Mahyco. The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, farmers unions and public interests groups in India had warned the government that this irresponsible, rushed clearance would have high cost for farmers in terms of the economic sovereignty and seed sovereignty.

In three major states Bt cotton has been wiped out completely leaving farmers in great economic and livelihood crisis. Not only have new pests and diseases emerged, Bt cotton has failed in preventing even bollworm attacks for which it has been designed. While Bt cotton is sold as pest resistant seed in India, it has proved to be more vulnerable to pest and diseases than the traditional and conventional varieties. Madhya Pradesh, the heart of the cotton-growing belt in India, witnessed total failure of genetically engineered Bt cotton. The farmers of Khargoan district where Bt is a 100 per cent failure are up in arms against Monsanto-Mahyco that supplied these GM seeds and are demanding compensation from the company for the failure of their crop. The failure of the Bt cotton has devastated the farmers since they have spent five to six times to buy seeds of Bt than the normal seed. The Tamil Nadu government has banned the sale of Bt cotton seeds after it received complaints of crop failure in Dharmapuri district. Amid the storm over BT brinjal, Mahyco claims that Bt brinjal is resistant to pests and therefore will need less use of pesticides and insecticides, reducing the cost of production. A Mahyco statement said, ‘Insect-resistant Bt brinjal has been in development for nine years. It has been tested in full compliance with the guidelines and directives of the regulatory authorities to ensure its safety. It is the most rigorously tested vegetable with 25 environmental bio safety studies supervised by independent and government agencies. It has the same nutritional value and is compositionally identical to non Bt brinjal, except for the additional Bt protein which is specific in its action against the Brinjal Fruit and Shoot Borer (BFSB).’

The question that emerges is whether the studies are good enough to understand the long – term impact of Bt Brinjal? Furthermore there is still the issue of how the toxin breaks down in food and in our bodies. The company says it has data to show that the protein breaks down in cooked food and in our digestive system, but admits it remains active in an alkaline medium. The other view is that brinjal is often eaten raw and that even our digestive system is mildly alkaline.

Then there is this issue of credibility of research done which is used to assess and clear whether the food is safe to eat.  In this case Monsanto-Mahyco which carries out the research and presents the data to the regulator and given the huge credibility gap of food, drug and agri-business companies it is difficult to find researchers without conflict of interest as agricultural universities these days are getting involved in private partnerships for research.

Lastly the issue which will bother us all is whether as consumers we will be offered a choice to eat Bt Brinjal or not? We do not have a labelling system to differentiate and inform about the GM content in the processes. We don’t have the necessary infrastructural capabilities needed to check whether our food is contaminated or not. Also it is quite expensive to test for Bt in food so once introduced we have no choice but to eat Bt Brinjal like it or not.

While questions about the ethics of genetic engineering and the future of our food security and sovereignty hang in the balance, it is important not to be complacent about the future of Bt-brinjal, or GM crops for that matter. In the larger context of the debate on GM crops, one needs to wait and see how this issue will eventually develop. Without being cynical, one must recognise the possibility of political manipulation that is the norm of the day. As India’s past demonstrates, private interests pushed in the name of development, like dams and power plants, seldom ever go away. Rather, they tend to reappear in different garbs. Does this moratorium give us hope that Bt-brinjal will not become an incubus, waiting to reappear?

-          Gitanjali Singh