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Gene Campaign calls Monsanto's work perverse, demands licence withdrawal

Gene Campaign, an organisation fighting for the protection of rights of Indian agriculturists, has urged the government to cancel the licence granted to the United States-based multinational Monsanto to conduct field trials as it ''lacked transparency in its operations''.

Gene Campaign convenor Dr Suman Sahai in a statement in New Delhi said the interests and goals of Indian agriculture and Monsanto company were diametrically opposite and the latter was in the process of terminator technology for self-destructing seeds.

''What is good for Monsanto is not good for us. Our goals are food and nutritional security for our people and maintaining genetic diversity and easy availability of seeds in all agro-climatic zones,'' she added.

Dr Sahai, a noted bio-technologist, who has served in the experts committee which drafted the bill for Parliament questioned the motives of the Monsanto conducting field trials on cotton crop in 40 places in India when it could not conduct similar tests in the United States which had five times more agricultural land. Probably to escape the critical scrutiny and expensive field trials, Monsanto had selected India, she said.

Dr Sahai said the terminator technology was against nature and was one of the ''most dangerous developments'' in agriculture. '' There can be nothing more perverse in the field of agriculture than to create seeds that were sterile,'' she said.

She said if the terminator technology went out of control, and the gene gets transferred to other crops in the field the country could be on the brink of the agricultural collapse in the region and it was not in the interest of the global food security to allow terminator technology to be practised.

By throwing out the US-based multinational, India must send a message to others that the country was not a dumping ground for toxic wastes, untested vaccines or undesirable seeds, she added.

UNI

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