Saturday, January 4, 2014

Bt.Eggplant, or BT-Brinjal, as it is called in the Indian subcontinent – is a Monsanto product that is banned in India for multiple reasons, the primary one being huge ground swell of resistance from the public. This was the first ever GM food being introduced into India on a commercial scale (the other product already introduced was Bt-Cotton).

The product was approved by the Agriculture Ministry. IN that sense – the ministry of Agriculture in India is very similar to that in Canada, and appear to be sharing its bed with the devil himself.

However, the product was banned through the Ministry of Environment, raising the issue that Genetically Modified crops are not only an subject of agriculture, but also an Environmental concern.

 There are two related court cases on this subject that is not so well known outside of India. These are :

Aruna Rodrigues versus India : An ordinary citizen of India, Ms Aruna Rodrigues, had taken the Government of India to the Supreme Court in a Public Interest Litigation, for releasing potentially harmful GMO products on the population without proper independent health and safety analysis. She has an even chance of winning her case. That case has brought lots of information to light, including how Monsanto may have been falsifying its own test records on the safety of its products. These issues strengthen the argument that asking the promoter of GM products to carry out honest safety tests produces a conflict of interest and should not be encouraged. I have spoken with Aruna myself, and created an awareness Podcast on it. You can find it here.

 The UN Convension on preservation of biological diversity is another watershed event in the sense that it encouraged individual nations to safeguard their biological diversity and prevent its contamination or theft by biotech corporations or unfair trade deals etc. The specific meeting that resulted in creating the frame work that nations could follow, happened in the town of Cartagena, and hence it is also often referred to as the Cartagena Protocol. Hundreds of countries signed into it. Canada signed it, but did not follow through. USA did not even sign it.

But, nations like India not only signed it, but created a special law following the guidelines of this UN convention. The law is called “Preservation of Biological Diversity” – an act brought into force in 2002. It stated that all organisms, be it plants, animals or micro organisms, that either lived in the land, waters of airs of the nation, whether naturally evolved or through generations of selective breeding by the people of India – are the collective intellectual property of the nation. No corporation may study, analyze, sequence, modify, tamper with, produce, patent, or aim to sell a product made from these organisms, without express agreement with the Government. Failing to do so places the offending body liable to be sued.

India versus Monsanto on Biopiracy: And then, another activist and member of an Indian NGO named Environment Support Group (ESG), Mr. Leo Saldana, found out that Monsanto had broken this law when it developed the Bt_Eggplant by “stealing” the genome of three kinds of Indian eggplant (eggplants originated in the Indian subcontinent, and India boasts 6,000 varieties of it today). So, Leo, on behalf of ESG sued the Govt of India in a provincial high-court, providing evidence that Monsanto and its partner had broken the Indian law, and therefore it was the duty of the Govt of India to sue Monsanto for “biopiracy”.

The court saw the evidence, was convinced of the misdeed, and has instructed the Govt to sue Monsanto. The Govt, wishing more to be in bed rather than estranged with Monsanto, has been dragged willy nilly by the court order and has now filed a case against Monsanto for stealing the Eggplant genome and breaking the indian .

I spoke with Leo Saldana about it and have covered it on another podcast.

I find both these court cases to be very relevant not just for India – but even for Canada. There is much to learn from these. To start with, there should be a push for Canada to enact a law like the one India has, so that Canadian biodiversity is not stolen from under Canada’s feet.

Canola is a good example. It was a Canadian invention. But now, it is owned by Monsanto. More thefts are on the way – Alfalfa, Salmon, apple, etc.

To stop all these and further thefts, Canadians should, I feel, push its Government to protect Canada’s biodiversity, instead of confusing and obfuscating the issue to promote biotech corporate interests in the name of “Development”.

Meanwhile, having failed in India, Monsanto is busy trying to introduce it in neighbouring Bangladesh. Resistance groups in Bangladesh meanwhile seem to have coined a new phrase : BT = Biological Terrorism !