Issue 68 Vol III, July 31, 2008

F E A T U R E S

Say no to National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority

A group of fifty farmer leaders and NGO representatives from fifteen states of India met on July 24th 2008 have demanded that the proposed National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority [NBRA] should be dropped. In a letter to the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, they urged that the new legislation proposed called the National Biotechnology Regulation Bill should not be made into a law.

They demanded that the NBRA proposals be dropped since the draft legislation has serious shortcomings and objectionable clauses. “Although we are aware that you always follow what the US government tells you, we still would like to bring our objections and concerns keeping the national interest in mind.”

Their main objections are:

1. While the Swaminathan Task Force report which first mooted the idea of an NBRA stated: “the bottom-line for any biotechnology regulatory policy should be the safety of the environment, the well being of farming families, the ecological and economic sustainability of farming systems, the health and nutrition security of consumers, safeguarding of home and external trade and the bio-security of the nation”, these very cornerstone recommendations do not find a place in the draft proposals. The Preamble to the draft Bill is a give-away of the blatant pro-biotech leanings of the new proposals.

2. As you know, a recent United Nations report pointed out the lack of bio-safety capabilities in India (like in many other countries) especially with regard to bio-terrorism with the use of biotechnology. In this context, it would be disastrous to go in for a single-window, fast-track clearance system in the form of NBRA, just to appease the biotech industry at the expense of the security, health and environment of the nation.

3. While one of the ostensible reasons for bringing in a separate legislation and for setting up the NBRA is to remove the existing conflict of interests in the current regulatory regime, the very fact that the NBRA would be set up under the Department of Biotechnology (which has the mandate of promoting modern biotechnology) would reinforce such a conflict of interest. This is unacceptable and totally inconsistent with the spirit of such legislation as spelled out by Dr M S Swaminathan in his task force report. Sadly, even Dr Swaminathan has turned a blind eye to what he had said in the task force report.

4. A single-window, fast-track clearance system proposed in the NBRA draft is not at all necessary and actually leaves much space for unscientific, undemocratic and corrupt functioning with very little checks and balances. In that sense, this is a Bill that has been created by the wrong people for the wrong reasons, with wrong perspectives with potential disastrous consequences.

5. The institutional mechanism of decision-making in the NBRA, with a 4-member committee consisting of scientists taking all decisions is undemocratic and authoritarian (Section 11(1)). It has been found time and again that even a broad-based and inter-ministerial body like the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) is unable to address all stakes and concerns during decision-making. Even though the NBRA proposals talk about various committees and offices to be set up, all of them have been given only an advisory role and the narrow 4-member ‘Products Ruling Committee’ clearly is not bound by the advice and recommendations of all these various units and committees.

6. The NBRA denies and violates the constitutional right of state governments over their agriculture. There is not only no role allowed for state governments in decision-making under the NBRA, there is a denial of their state level mechanisms and regulations over their agriculture pertaining to biotechnology. This is completely unconstitutional (Section 25, 33(2)).

7. As per the provisions of Section 31 the NBRA is allowed to amend the first schedule, and this defeats the very purpose of a separate legislation for regulation and takes away the power of the elected parliamentarians over this law

8. The over-riding effect of the NBRA on other existing regulations is a matter of serious concern. It tramples upon the Biological Diversity Act, for instance. (Section 29)

9. Similarly, Section 33 (4) specifies time frame of three years for appeals on the repealed act is unacceptable as problems can arise with earlier decisions, given the imprecise and unpredictable nature of transgenic technology.

10. It is very obvious that within the NBRA, risk assessment will be on narrow technical parameters and it is not clear how all the other cornerstones of regulation laid down by the Swaminathan Task Force report will be met.

11. The NBRA proposals do not contain any clauses related to conditional approvals, for a limited period, subject to review and revoking of approvals. It appears that an approval would be valid for all time to come, irrespective of other considerations!

12. There are no provisions in the NBRA for liability, redress and remediation. As we know from past experience from across the world, even confined trials could involve losses and damages related to contamination and recalls which will cost a lot in terms of redress and remediation. NBRA makes no mention of making the GM developer liable for redress and remediation.

13.  Even the penalty clauses have been left to be evolved in the Rules.  Section 16 related to penalties and offences, an offence are narrowly defined to include only offenders “who knowingly fail to comply” and leaves room for misuse.

14. Under Section (8), no wrongful decision of the NBRA can be invalidated and leaves room to justify almost anything.

15. The scope of the NBRA, for some inexplicable reason, does not cover storage, distribution and export of GMOs and products thereof. This leaves a vast area of regulation out of the scope.

16. The NBRA proposals don’t talk about any mandatory prior informed public consent in its decision-making; this is a violation of the principle enshrined in the Cartagena Protocol. The NBRA proposes to make only decisions of the body public, but not the bases on which decision-making took place; it also does not talk about how public will be involved in decision-making. All of this will only reinforce the current non-credible, opaque functioning of regulators.

17. The NBRA seems to negate and discount the existing systems of seed assessment and regulation by having over-arching and over-riding decision-making authority.

18. The NBRA seeks to make amendments to the Food Safety & Standards Act with regard to clauses that govern GM foods’ regulation. The proposal to alter the definition of GM foods under the FSSA is obviously a way to scuttle the labeling regime of GM foods and this is objectionable.

19. The Appellate Tribunal proposed to be set up under the NBRA is not acceptable in its constitution and is not broad based to include farmers’ and consumers’ representatives. Further, an appeal to be filed within 30 days is unreasonable – given that GM technology is unpredictable and any appeals mechanism cannot be time-bound with such technologies. Further, bar on judicial reviews on decisions taken by the Appellate Tribunal is objectionable (Section 20(2), (4), 26).

Given all the above unacceptable clauses and proposals in the NBRA, we demand that the NBRA proposals be dropped immediately. What we in fact need is utmost consideration to be given to protecting and conserving our biodiversity, environment and health, with due consideration also to ethical, social and cultural issues involved with the application of modern biotechnology. There is a dire need to go beyond narrow risk assessment. There is a need to uphold the rights of states and citizens to remain GM-Free.

“We believe that what India needs is not the NBRA but a statutory framework with the mandate of protecting and conserving the environment and health, food and nutrition security, farmers’ rights and livelihoods and ensuring social justice (from the application of modern biotechnology) and such a framework should be based on the Precautionary Principle.

“It is important for the Government of India to note and learn that across the world, intense scientific processes like the IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Science & Technology for Development) are concluding that Genetically Modified crops and foods are not the way forward and that ecological agriculture is the way forward. Any proposal like the NBRA would therefore be unwise and incongruous and we urge you to intervene and get the current proposals dropped immediately.”

Signatories include:

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India has the highest rate of open defecation

EVERY day, over 2.5 billion people suffer from a lack of access to improved sanitation and nearly 1.2 billion practice open defecation, the riskiest sanitary practice of all, according to a report by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Drinking-water Supply and Sanitation (JMP). Of these, about 665 million people in India still defecate in the open.

The report was meant to assess sanitation practices with experts highlighting trends in using improved, shared and unimproved sanitation facilities. The report underlined that the number of people who lack access to an improved drinking water source globally, has fallen below one billion for the first time.

The number of people worldwide practising open defecation dropped from 24 per cent in 1990 to 18 per cent in 2006. While there is some improvement seen in India, there is a lot to be done.

Around the world, 2.6 billion people do not have a clean and safe place to use for performing their bodily functions. They do not have the basic necessity, a toilet, taken for grated by the middle and upper middle classes. This hidden global scandal constitutes an affront to human dignity.

It is all well known that sanitation enhances dignity, privacy and safety, especially for women and girls. It improves convenience and social status. Sanitation in schools enables children, especially girls reaching puberty, to remain in the educational system. Restricted toilet opportunities increase the chance of chronic constipation and are making women vulnerable to violence when  they are forced to defecate during nightfall and in secluded areas. Providing improved sanitation facilities is a liberating development for women and girls and is providing substantial benefits for the whole community.

Improved sanitation has positive impacts on economic growth and poverty reduction. According to a recent WHO study, every dollar spent on improving sanitation generates an average economic benefit of $7. The economic cost of inaction is astronomical. Without improving sanitation, none of the other Millennium Development Goals, to which the United Nations d has committed itself, will be achieved.

Infectious diarrhoea is mainly responsible for the burden caused by water-borne and water-washed diseases. From the health perspective, improving access to safe water supply and sanitation services is a preventive intervention, whose main outcome is a reduction in the number of episodes of diarrhoea and accordingly a proportionate reduction in the number of deaths. Based on published reviews, large surveys and multi-country studies, this analysis estimated the health benefits of improving access to safe water and sanitation at the global level and for several regions. Health impacts of such improvements will vary from one region to another as they depend on the existing levels of water supply and sanitation access and the region-specific levels of morbidity and mortality due to diarrhoea diseases.

"We have today a full menu of low-cost technical options for the provision of sanitation in most settings" says Dr Margaret Chan, WHO's Director-General. "More and more governments are determined to improve health by bringing water and sanitation to their poorest populations. If we want to break the stranglehold of poverty, and reap the multiple benefits for health, we must address water and sanitation."

Real improvements in access to safe drinking water have occurred in many of the countries of southern Africa. According to the report, seven of the ten countries that have made the most rapid progress and are on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal drinking water targets are in sub-Saharan Africa  (Burkina Faso, Namibia, Ghana, Malawi, Uganda, Mali, Djibouti).  Of the countries not yet on track to meet the sanitation target, but making rapid progress, five are in sub-Saharan Africa (Benin, Cameroon, Comoros, Mali and Zambia).

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U.S. perpetuating mass killings in Iraq

THE United States is directly responsible for over one million Iraqi deaths since the invasion five and half years ago. In a January 2008 report, a British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) reports that,” survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003. According to Peter Phillips, a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored a media research group …. We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000. If one takes into account the margin of error associated with survey data of this nature then the estimated range is between 946,000 and 1,120,000".

The ORB report comes on the heels of two earlier studies conducted by Johns Hopkins University published in the Lancet medical journal that confirmed the continuing numbers of mass deaths in Iraq. A study done by Dr. Les Roberts from January 1, 2002 to March 18 2003 put the civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. A second study published in the Lancet in October 2006 documented over 650,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the start of the US invasion.. The 2006 study confirms that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths and that over half the deaths are directly attributable to US forces.

Peter Phillips writes that the now estimated 1.2 million dead, as of July 2008, includes children, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, cab drivers, clerics, schoolteachers, factory workers, policemen, poets, healthcare workers, day care providers, construction workers, babysitters, musicians, bakers, restaurant workers and many more. All manner of ordinary people in Iraq have died because the United States decided to invade their country. These are deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government.

The magnitude of these deaths is undeniable. The continuing occupation by US forces guarantees a mass death rate in excess of 10,000 people per month with half that number dying at the hands of US forces— a carnage so severe and so concentrated at to equate it with the most heinous mass killings in world history. This act has not gone unnoticed.

Recently, Dennis Kucinich introduced a single impeachment article against George W. Bush for lying to Congress and the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq. On July 15 The House forwarded the resolution to the Judiciary Committee with a 238 to 180 vote. That Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's threat to the US is now beyond doubt. Former US federal prosecutor Elizabeth De La Vega documents the lies most thoroughly in her book U.S. Vs Bush, and numerous other researchers have verified Bush's untrue statements.

The American people are faced with a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been conducted in our name. We have allowed the war/occupation to continue in Iraq and offered ourselves little choice within the top two presidential candidates for immediate cessation of the mass killings. McCain would undoubtedly accept the deaths of another million Iraqi civilians in order to save face for America, and Obama's 18-month timetable for withdrawal would likely result in another 250,000 civilian deaths or more.

Peter Phillipswrites, “We owe our children and ourselves a future without the shame of mass murder on our collective conscience. The only resolution of this dilemma is the immediate withdrawal of all US troops in Iraq and the prosecution and imprisonment of those responsible. Anything less creates a permanent original sin on the soul of the nation for that we will forever suffer.“

[Peter Phillips is the co-editor with Dennnis Loo of the book, Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney]

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