F O C U S

Canada: Conservatives’ New Agenda
Gobind Thukral

Canadian Prime Minister Stephan Harper was not wrong when during his last low key visit he offered a simple advice to George. W. Bush, “If the U.S. becomes more closed to its friends, the terrorists win." The American President just smiled at the suggestion as what he had been doing to the American society through stiff laws that curb liberty so much cherished by the public and to the world through a series of wars, could not stop at the Canadian borders.

In any case, Harper who prepares to move fast to win the hearts and minds of the Canadians for  impending elections , thinks that without American help that may not be possible. He had been trying to connect the multi-layered relationship that binds security, economy and a border that must remain a channel and not a barricade. Remember his visit to   Afghanistan soon after his election as prime minister and support he lent to the American efforts at keeping a puppet regime in place. Everyone knows, if one cares to remember a bit of history that during the past several centuries Afghans have rebuffed every foreign attempt to subjugate them and also it is a society much beyond the concepts of democracy and orderliness. Right now there is only chaos with war lords, drug mafia and the daily bombing and far away from the avowed purpose of democracy. Yet, Harper eager to connect with Bush’s America is lending full support. At the political plane unlike his predecessor, the Liberal Paul Martin, he would lend more vigorous support on other issues like war on Iraq and containing Iran and North Korea.

Same way Harper in his meeting later with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London before the G -8 summit supported the Israeli attack over Gaza Strip and Lebanon. He is clearly moving on to a new trajectory for Canada.

Harper also plans to add $15 billion to give the military “bucks for its bangs and the economy bang for the bucks.” As one commentator puts it, “This is sweeping and risky for a minority government, the spending spree will fill cracks between the defence minister and Canada's top military commander with aircraft, ships and trucks.” It would also make America’s war industry happy.  A country that has not been at war with any country except the only war it fought to free itself two centuries back, could play better diplomatic cards and should show a discrepancy of spending huge tax payer’s money on military equipment.  Geographically it is so located that there is no threat from any other country to its existence unless it has big power ambitions like America.  Of this $3 billion is for four heavy-lift Boeing C-17 Globemaster aircraft and since there is hardly any competition, it is bound to rake up controversy. From the rest $2 billion is for three supply and troop carrier ships, up to 17 new-generation Hercules transport planes, about a dozen heavy lift Chinook helicopters and 1,000 replacements for 24-year-old trucks.

Harper’s major worry now is that the closed borders would mean big loss to tourism and business. What is bad for economy is bad for politics. Tougher border controls already legislated for 2008 by the American Congress would poison trade and tourism.  It would be bad politics. Harper's prescription is to align Canada with the U.S. internationally while making every effort at least slow down new border controls and ensure acceptable documents to keep people, goods and services flowing. Canadians would as they have done in the past like to keep their society more open, tits multi cultureless intact and growing and social security system one up over America. America under the Republicans has moved away from that.  There is a kind of paranoia after September Eleven attacks and its war hysteria and effort to over lord the world has meant cut on social security, student welfare and more controls and corruption.  Can Conservatives draw any big gains particularly when   that country is facing a kind of isolation world wide and the poor rating of an outgoing President who has added a record deficit of $480 billion to the country’s deficit? He had a surplus of over $280 billion when he took over in 2000. America has so far spent over 280 billion on war in Iraq alone and the annual cost of replacing, repairing and upgrading Army equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan is expected to more than triple next year to $17 billion. This could have easily meant clean water for every human being on the globe and some kind of education too.

Harper can help the war industry in the U.S., but can he morph his minority into majority is a big question.  He should remember the sound his advice he offered to Bush. His promises include: Cleaning up government by enacting and enforcing the Federal Accountability Act; Lowering taxes for working Canadians, starting with a reduction to the Goods and Services Tax; Protecting Canadian families and communities by strengthening the justice system; Supporting the child care choices of parents; and Delivering health care Canadians need, when they need it, by establishing a patient wait times guarantee with the provinces. What is happening there?

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Brinjal: Why kill old Varieties
Umendra Dutt

Recently a large number of farmers protested in the national capital, New Delhi to urge the government stop the new Bt variety of this most popular variety of vegetables, the brinjal grown across the country. Concerned citizens, scientists and other groups have written and met the environment minister and other agriculture experts to stop the introduction of this new variety which had not completed its field trials and poses not only dangers to the old varieties, but could be a potential health hazard. The Bt companies, however, assert that this new variety would revolutionise the vegetable production and market but make farmers rich.

Here is what the Coalition for GM Free India wrote to the India Environment Minister A. Raja.

1.  There is no justifiable reason whatsoever for experimenting on and introducing Bt Brinjal [and GM crops in general]: The GEAC or the DBT [Department of Biotechnology] has no good reason and justification to promote a GM Brinjal in this country. Pest management on Brinjal is being successfully practiced by numerous IPM, NPM and organic farmers with non-chemical, non-GE approaches with very satisfactory results all over the country. Within the ICAR establishment, numerous research projects, including on farmers’ fields, show that there are very good, inexpensive and absolutely safe results following non-chemical IPM methods in particular and IPM methods in general. Given such vast experience, why is there no political will to put the control over the technology in farmers’ hands? We are once again reiterating that for the pest management paradigm to shift in this country, what is needed is political will and not GE-like solutions. We all know that pesticide use in fact has very little to do with pest/disease incidence any more and it has suited the pesticide industry and the regulators/agriculture scientists very well to encourage such a situation so far. To get out of this, we don’t need a technology-fix but an alternative paradigm of pest management which empowers the farmers to understand their farm ecology and depend on local resources and sustainable practices for pest management.

More importantly, there is no crisis with Brinjal production. In fact, due to overproduction, farmers do not get adequate market price.

2.  The science is imprecise and the technology unpredictable – Impact Assessment to be broad in scope: It is well known that GE is based on imprecise science and is an unpredictable technology as there is little control on where the new genetic construct will lodge within one or more of the target cell chromosomes. It is also well known that tests are not conducted to assess the results from the variety of genes that are inserted along with the desired gene. Scientists do not understand the mechanisms of GE-induced changes in gene expression in sufficient detail. They do not know what to look for and these things are termed ‘unintended effects’. It is for this reason that on a whole range of issues, a great deal of research is required before any outcomes can be predicted in a reasonably assured manner.

3.  India is a Center of Origin and diversity for Brinjal: Our pool of genetic reserves would inevitably be contaminated and this is extremely dangerous given that we are a Centre of Origin and diversity for Brinjal. We have grown Brinjal for the past 4000 years in this country and it is an extremely popular and widely consumed vegetable. Needless to say, horizontal gene transfer from Bt Brinjal into wild, related species of brinjal has serious implications for the very future of Brinjal research and cultivation in the country. The genetic diversity is important because some of the strains will be naturally resistant to lethal pathogens and pests that may destroy the crops in the future. Once lost, this lack of diversity can lead to the complete loss of the crop.

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, the only international law to specifically regulate genetic engineering and GMOs (largely focused on transboundary movement, but whose scope also applies to the use of all GMOs), recognises the importance of centres of origin and diversity, and requires this to be taken into account during the risk assessment. How has this principle been applied in the case of Bt Brinjal in India?

4.  Potential environmental hazards with Bt Brinjal: Existing evidence on environmental hazards with GM crops is enough for a precautionary principle to be invoked regarding their regulation. For instance, it was found in studies that GM crops grown in the UK were not only harmful to beneficial insects like ladybirds but could also indirectly harm other and higher life forms, including mammals, domesticated or wild animals/birds and ultimately man, both in the short- and long-term. The three-year UK farm-scale trials were the largest study ever to evaluate some of the ecological effects of GM crops.

• The assessments about frequency and importance of Horizontal Gene Transfer are premature at present. It is accepted that it [HGT] could have an environmental impact even at a frequency that was approximately trillion times lower than what the current risk assessment literature assumes it to be. The current methods of environmental sampling to capture genes or traits in a recombinant manner are too insensitive for monitoring evolution by HGT. This has serious implications for our bio-diversity, especially given that we are the Centre of Origin for brinjal. With the inevitable contamination of the seed stock, which is certain to take place with GM crops, recovering the original genetic stock will be impossible.

• In the case of pollen flow, it is well known that there is ample opportunity for cross pollination in the case of Brinjal. The rates of natural cross pollination may vary depending on genotype, location, insect activity etc. However, it has been reported that the extent of natural out crossing is from 2 to 48% in the case of India. Further, it is not clear whether there is enough data on the wild and weedy plants that are either close relatives or have some degree of cross-compatibility with these brinjal varieties. No tests have been done to check for cross-pollination with such relatives. The pollen flow studies on Bt Brinjal in India have been done only in one year in two locations, with reported out crossing put at 1.46% and 2.7% in these two locations.

• Further, farmers from various parts of the country are reporting a decline in their soil productivity after growing Bt Cotton. While the regulatory tests related to Bt toxin presence and persistence in the case of Bt Cotton showed that the half-life of Cry1Ac protein in plant tissue was calculated at 41 days [which could then persist in the soil as other studies from elsewhere show], it is not clear how in the case of Bt Brinjal it is non-detectable in soil samples tested. Worldwide, it is generally accepted that Bt toxin does alter the soil micro-biology and that more studies are needed to understand the impact of Bt toxin on soil ecology.

• Have the regulators studied the impact of Bt Brinjal on ecologically sensitive areas like the Eastern and Western Ghats and considered how they would prevent the entry of Bt Brinjal into such ecologically sensitive areas?

• We should also consider a scenario where our predominant pest management strategy relies more and more on one gene – the Bt toxin gene, across crops for a range of pests. Such a monoculture of the gene across crops and varieties is bound to spell doom sooner or later.

5.  The Bt gene is a known toxin that impacts human health and livestock health adversely:

Numerous studies worldwide have raised serious questions about potential health impacts of delta-endotoxins. Key assumptions used as the basis for safety claims have been overturned and several adverse findings suggest that GM foods are unsafe. GM-fed animals had problems with their growth, organ development and immune responsiveness, blood and liver cell formation as well as damaged organs sterility problems and increased death rates including among the offspring. Risks are increased by the fact that the genes inserted into GM food not only survive digestion, but transfer into body organs and circulation.

When Bt Cotton was introduced in India, the same set of tests that are now being applied for Bt Brinjal have apparently been run by the company involved and everything was proclaimed to be safe. However, the human health effects of Bt Cotton in India are being reported from all cotton-growing states. Most farmers and farm workers are experiencing allergies of different kinds. Further, a recent scientific investigation made a clear correlation between the exposure to Bt Cotton and these adverse health effects.

While this is the case with cotton, the consequences with a food crop, that too a vegetable crop which will be consumed quite directly, are unimaginable. Never before in the world has the Bt toxin been introduced into a vegetable crop, where the toxin would be consumed in large quantities and without much processing. The Bt gene being used in Bt Brinjal, has many established adverse health impacts. These published, peer reviewed papers by scientists demonstrate that recombinant Cry1Ac protoxin is a powerful immunogen, and when fed to mice, induced antibody responses similar to those obtained with the cholera toxin. Research shows that Cry1Ac actively binds to the inner surface of the mouse small intestine. This contests the often-heard argument that Cry proteins don’t affect mammals since they supposedly do not have receptors that bind the truncated toxin in the gut!

The entire infamous episode of Starlink contamination [where Cry9C toxin was used] raises the question of whether other Bt toxins that were supposedly screened might nevertheless be allergens. Scientists accept that without a better understanding of food allergenicity, this question cannot be adequately answered. There are serious limitations to current allergy testing procedures for GMO proteins. For example, recent results in Australia revealed that a protein previously consumed safely in beans had become immunogenic (similar to allergic reaction) when engineered into GMO peas.  We cannot afford to make the mistake committed by Australian regulators who discovered the GM peas case only after almost irreversible field trials.

There are some nutritional and toxicological studies carried out on ingested plant GM DNA which provide information on the potential nature of the hazards of GM foods/feeds. These include: wasteful growth of gut tissues and bacterial proliferation, development of intestinal tumours, depression of the body’s immune system, interference with the normal development of vital organs of the body (liver, kidneys, sexual organs, etc.) and reproduction. The seriousness of these effects cannot be overemphasized because the harm will be the most pronounced in the young, the old and in people with intestinal disorders.

6.  The other genes introduced are toxic too: Antibiotic resistance: In creating Bt Brinjal, NptII gene has been used as a selectable marker. NptII codes for kanamycin resistance and globally, there are serious concerns with antibiotic resistance marker genes for obvious reasons – when there is horizontal gene transfer to gut or soil bacteria, this could spread antibiotic resistance widely. Gene flow, especially to pathogenic organisms, related to antibiotic resistance has been established in past studies. This will imply that disease treatment would be more and more difficult.

Transcriptional activity in human cells with CaMV 35 S: Similarly, use of the CaMV 35 S [cauliflower mosaic virus] promoter, used in creating Bt Brinjal is a matter of concern. Published research shows that the 35S promoter can initiate transcriptional activity in human cells, despite the promoter being a plant-specific one.

The cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV), the viral promoter used in Bt Brinjal has similarities with the human hepatitis B virus. As all genomes of living species contain dormant viruses, there is a potential for the CaMV promoter to reactivate them raising concerns related to cancers.

One of the major omissions in present day GM risk analysis is that no attempt has so far been made to investigate the obvious link between GM food and intestinal tumour development.

The problems encountered in the study of ‘growth factor-like’ effects on young rats, was attributed most likely, to the CaMv (cauliflower mosaic virus) viral promoter, a promoter put into Bt Brinjal too. Evidence suggests that the CaMv 35S promoter might be especially unstable and prone to horizontal gene transfer and recombination with all the attendant hazards: gene mutation, cancer, re-activation of dormant viruses and generation of new viruses.

Hazards from GM crops released into the environment may spread more readily through Horizontal Gene Transfer because GM constructs are specifically designed to cross the interspecies barrier.

7.  Past history with corporate research shows suppression of important information: Monsanto, which is supplying the technology to Mahyco and others in the case of Bt Brinjal, is known from past experience to suppress facts that are unfavourable to the company and its potential markets. A secret study on Bt Maize showed significant harm caused to rats fed on the variety called MON 863. The study shows kidney abnormalities and unusually high levels of white blood cells. What is shocking was that the company then went ahead to conclude that these findings were irrelevant and should not be attributed to Bt Maize even though the rats fed on non-Bt Maize showed no such signs!  Given such dubious history, how are the regulators relying on data produced only by the company?

There is a serious and objectionable conflict of interest in the fact that majority of the tests were undertaken by the company promoting Bt Brinjal. Out of the various tests conducted, only four were conducted by public sector institutions. All the tests were funded by the company Where are independent studies to verify the claims of the company?

8.  The tests done here are not adequate – Are we even asking the right questions? A Public Interest Litigation [PIL] on the lack of rigorous biosafety testing for GMOs in India points out that the current biosafety regime is woefully inadequate in India. Often, we do not even have the right questions to ask when testing for safety of GMOs.

9.  The agronomic data unreliable and manipulated: Going through the Annual Report of the All India Coordinated Research Project – Vegetable Cultivation on ICAR-supervised Bt Brinjal multi-locational trials in 2005-06, it is clear that the data presented is manipulated and unreliable. It is not clear why at least 3 out of the 11 Centres for trials did not report back. The data was not statistically analysed and wrong conclusions were drawn based on skewed averages. It is not clear how some centres could obtain such unbelievably high yields while most of the centres were below average. Is this going to be the situation in real life too for farmers? There is no data at all on pesticide use obtained through the trials though Bt Brinjal is developed ostensibly to reduce the use of pesticides.

10.  Pending liability issues with regard to biosafety violations that need to be addressed first: Right from the first GM crop trials, there have been many reports from the civil society and the media which pointed out to serious GM regulatory failures in India.

11.  Economic implications: There are serious economic implications for farmers if India opts for Bt Brinjal. The assessment of such implications would be clear compared against other choices like staying non-GM as well as promoting organic farming. Even a country like Germany had experienced the enormous employment opportunities provided by the organic approach. In a country which should adopt labour-intensive technologies, organic and other sustainable farming options are a viable proposition. On the other hand, transgenic agriculture would sound a death knell for any attempts related to organic farming in India. Contamination is inevitable and co-existence impossible.

12.  Consumer choices and rights: Transgenic contamination (contamination of the natural environment by GMOs) by more than one method, including wind blown and by cross- pollination is an established fact, beyond dispute and there can be no co-existence between GM and non-GM crops. Segregation even at the physical level is impossible in India. What happens to consumer choices and rights in such a case? Where would be the consumer’s right to choose in the case of vegetables, even if we assume that segregation upto an extent is possible and labelling could be made mandatory? Indian vegetable purchases from supermarket shelves are minuscule and obviously, labelling is not going to be an answer here. How do we then provide non-GM brinjal to Indian consumers?

13.  Proprietary Rights of the company: Even as the ABSPII project was publicising through the media that the technology would be available to the Indian public sector and later to the farmers on a cost-to-cost basis, with Monsanto providing the technology and Cornell University/USAID facilitating the process, Mahyco has informed the GEAC in its presentation on May 22nd that it had applied to the Patent Authority for a patent for "this unique event". This of course will open the floodgates of Indian seed industry to patents, which needless to over emphasise will violate farmers' rights. It will also mean that this technology will not be for everyone, though it is being projected otherwise! The true colours of the corporations behind the development of Bt Brinjal have begun showing.

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