Tag Archives: Aruna Rodrigues

Updates on Glyphosate Petition

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Hello friends,

It has been an exhilarating time since I opened two separate channels for my Government, in Ottawa, Canada, to address the issue of rising use and presence of the weed killer RoundUp and in particular the chemical Glyphosate in our environment, and the fact that the people do not have either access to information on how much of the toxic chemical is in our food, water and soil, or access to the safety test that is supposed to prove that the chemical and the formulation is actually safe for people or for the environment.

This matter has now reached a turning point since Canada is now having a lot of labs accessible to the public that will test our food for Glyphosate, something that was not the case a few years ago, and something on which I had already butted head with the previous Government under Harper, and where my letter was carried by the then MP Mr. Atamanenko to the then Health Minister Ms Rona Ambrose, to respond to. This is a good sign that labs are now beginning to offer this service.

One of my current multi-channel dialogue with the Government included an application to Health Canada, which is Canada’s way of describing the Ministry of Health, to disclose to me if it actually has seen safety test data on Glyphosate, and if so, to disclose to me all such data and reports. This application was made through the official system known as “Access To Information” act of the Government of Canada. Similar acts are also known as “Freedom of Information” act or “Right to Information” act elsewhere, such as in Canadian provincial Governments or elsewhere in the world.

Another parallel effort was the creation of an online petition for Canadians to support a motion, for our Government to disclose all hitherto hidden safety documents on Glyphosate or RoundUp, to the Canadian people, so that people can independently verify if the product is safe and if the Canadian Government has been diligent in its study and analysis. Further, it is the right of the Canadian people to see such documents and it is in effect be illegal to deny public access to such data.

Why exhilarating? Well, first of all, the correspondence that generated from the “Access to information” act appeal, confirmed a few things,

  • that the Canadian Government has in fact seen a lot of safety test data and documents
  • that they are in possession of over 130,000 pages of such material
  • that I indeed have a right, as a citizen of Canada, to see such data

And in spite of that, the Government has unfortunately been dragging its feet, citing reasons why it needs more time to provide me with the information requested. One of the reason is that they need to cross check with the parties that conducted that safety test, if the details may be divulged to me and under what condition.

The very facts that the Canadian Government acknowledges it has the data, and that I have a right to it, are positive development. That I cannot see it yet unless third parties that provided the data agree to the arrangement – is in my view illegal. If such data cannot be shown to the people, then the product (Glyphosate) cannot be approved for use among the people either. That is how I read the law.

The second part – the petition, has 30 updates so far, has generated almost 23,000 support, over 98% of them being Canadian. This is far and away more support than I had anticipated. For a country with a very small population of 35 million, this is an unprecedented level of support on a subject not so easy to understand and one that has not been covered by the mainstream media at all. The sheer volume of support, I suspect, has influenced my MP Carla Qualtrough, who also happens to be a federal minister, to agree to see me on April 27th for 45 minutes, so I can hand over all the documentation on the petition, which runs to over 1,000 pages, to her in a CD or a flash drive, to be taken to Ottawa and handed over the Health minister.

I asked if I might bring a delegation of six other persons, to which the Minister Qualtrough’s office that I may. The petition itself can be visited by clicking on the image below.

It has many interesting updates. One of which is a comment by India’s noted supreme court advocate Mr. Prashant Bhushan, who is representing petitioner Ms Aruna Rodrigues in her public interest litigation against the Government of India on account of GMO, where legal precedence is already set, that obliges the Government to disclose biosafety data of transgenic products to the people before the product is to be approved for release. In other words, intellectual property rights, or agreement on Confidentiality or or non-disclosure clauses cannot be used to trump public safety. Click below for that video.

My request to the Honourable minister is going to be in three parts, of which one would be to personally carry the petition documents to Ottawa and hand over same to Health Canada and to ask them to respond. The second is to have a personal talk with Prime Minister Trudeau, requesting him to drop in at the secretarial office of the UN Convention on Biodiversity, located in the same home turf of the Prime Minister, in Montreal, and to ask the staff in that office about how Canada is doing in comparison with the rest of the world with regard to Cartagena Protocol. The third is to look into ways to kick start testing of local foods in Delta, her constituency, for presence of Glyphosate.

[youtube d5TQHzroqDs]

 I have added information on a few UN platforms for Canadians in the latest update. These are:

There is also an effort on my part to convert a condensed form of the petition material and references into an interactive e-book on Apples’s iTune store and/or Amazon’s Kindle for around $3 in the next few weeks.

There are perhaps a few more updates that will go into the petition before it is closed. These might include:

  • A talk with the president of the Canadian Farmers Union
  • How to engage citizens into coaxing our Municipalities to start testing local food, water and soil, for presence of Glyphosate and to make the data public.
  • An update on the coming meeting with Minister Carla Qualtrough about this petition.

Stay tunes and feel free to add your comments below.

Thank you.

Tony

Aruna Rodrigues, the Supreme Court of India, The Government, and GMO

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Ms. Aruna Rodrigues describes herself as an ordinary citizen of India. And yet, she has taken on an extraordinary endeavour. She has, through a writ petition in the supreme court of India, challenged the Government of India, no less, in its reckless promotion of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). She hopes to have the court to put a stop to bringing in all GMO, and set up completely independent regulatory body that can be influenced neither by the politicians nor by the biotech industry, to conduct safety tests on these GMO against possible risk to humans as well as natural biodiversity of the nation.

Aruna Rodrigues

Aruna Rodrigues

She started on that case about ten years ago, and it took her two years to gather sufficient data to file the case, in 2005. The famous case is now drawing to a close, and many feel that she has an even chance, and some claim it is better than an even chance, that she might succeed.

At stake here might be the very future of India’s food security and food sovereignty. There has been many in recent years that claim that India’s science and commercial institutions are being used to solve American problems, often at the disadvantage of India’s own interests. Some claim that this agenda comes high up from the Govt, and that it may be a sell-off of national interest for the purpose of assisting foreign commercial goals.

Of relevance here ia a special clause in the Indian constitution, in article 32, which might be unique to India and absent in other democracies, which gives the power to an ordinary citizen of India, to challenge the Government in the Supreme Court, if the citizen’s basic and fundamental rights, as guaranteed in the constitution, are infringed upon by the Government.

Also of relevance is the Cartagena Convention on Biological Diversity, often called the Cartagena Protocol, which came into force in 2003 and to which India is a signatory. This protocol seeks to protect the biological diversity of individual nations, against possible threat by introduced Living Modified Organisms (LMO) created by the Biotech industry, and which might be imported through trade negotiations. This protocol in fact became the binding international agreement on Biosafety. The Protocol stipulates, among other things, that parties shall consult the public in decision-making processes and place important decisions in this regard in the public domain. India, in spite of having signed it, may not have followed the protocol in the manner in which it promoted GMO.

And so, I had requested Aruna for a telephone talk on record, for the purpose of creating a public awareness podcast on this important issue, which affects not just India, but literally half the world. The famous court case is drawing to a close. There are many that hope, myself included, that she might actually win the case, and force the Government of India in doing what is right for the people of India, and stop this reckless introduction of untested and possibly unsafe GMO products to promote interests of foreign biotech corporations.

The under 19 minute podcast can be listened to by clicking the play button at the bottom of this page. Alternately, folks can also subscribe to my podcast from iTunes, and have it downloaded for listening at leisure through their iPhone or iPod etc.

My thanks go to Ms Aruna Rodrigues for allowing me to speak to her on a short notice.
I shall be happy to receive your feedback – at tony.mitra@gmail.com

Relevant Reference:
  1. Order of the Supreme Court in 2012, about formation of expert committee : http://indiankanoon.org/doc/126946252/
  2. PDF copy of the original interim report from the Expert Committee, as submitted to the Supreme Court of India in 2012, essentially recommending that field trials of GMO be stopped till instruments are put in place and independent safety assessment study can be done effectively : http://indiagminfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/SC-TEC-interim-report-oct17th-2012-GMO-PIL.pdf
  3. A report from Hindu, in 2012, about the first (interim) report of the expert committee to the Supreme court, essentially recommending a 10 year ban on all field trials of GMO : http://indiankanoon.org/doc/126946252/
  4. A report from David Andow (one of the scientist whose report was presented to the Indian supreme court) on Bt.Brinjal : https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/science_acj/Xu3sTURqQk
  5. Article from Raw Earth Living on Bt. Brinjal : http://rawearthliving.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/legal-cases-laid-ground-for-gmo-bt-brinjal-ban-india/
  6. Cartagena Protocol : http://bch.cbd.int/protocol/text/
  7. List of Signatories to the Cartagena Protocol (note USA and Canada are almost the only countries missing) : http://bch.cbd.int/protocol/parties/