1.GM science is caught between extremes of faith and denial
2."How can he ignore GM crops' increased chemical usage in America?"
EXTRACT: When Lynas finally announced his "conversion" two weeks ago, PR agencies of the biotech industry went into an overdrive sending 'interaction opportunity' requests to journalists. (item 1)
NOTE: Lynas has also been saying that India's hunger problem is shameful and that raising productivity via GM crops would be the quickest route to attack poverty, but there is no convincing evidence for GM crops increasing yield.
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/failure-to-yield.html
India could and should eliminate hunger. As a BBC report notes, "For years now, India has been producing more food than it needs. Yet every year large quantities simply rot in... warehouses."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-19190437
There is absolutely no need for GM, which is a distraction from the simple practical solutions that already exist, and if Lynas knew anything at all, or cared at all, he would be talking about these issues, not preparing to fly to India to promote GM.
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1.GM science is caught between extremes of faith and denial
Dinesh C Sharma
Daily Mail (India), 23 January 2013
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2267166/GM-science-caught-extremes-faith-denial.html
The debate surrounding genetically modified or GM foods never seems to end.
What we are witnessing in India is a highly polarised and no-holds-barred public discourse.
The ball was set rolling by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself with his famous comment about anti-GM protests being funded by foreign NGOs.
The same sentiment had earlier been voiced by his deputy in the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, as revealed in cables leaked by Wikileaks. In its continuing war on anti-GM groups, the government has now discovered a new weapon - a supposedly anti-GM activist who has made a complete U-turn.
It doesn't matter if he is a foreigner. It seems a foreign hand, if it is pro-GM, is fine with the government. The person in question is Mark Lynas - a British science journalist and a former critic of GM crops.
Lynas also claims to be an environmentalist who played a role in founding the anti-GM movement in India, though one had not heard of his existence here till a fortnight ago.
It seems that one fine day he discovered that his opposition to GM crops was misplaced and he turned a great admirer of GM crops. For GM lobbies in India, Lynas is a godsend.
They thought the best way to mark his "conversion" could be to organise an "international" conference on the high sounding topic of "food security" and make him a lead speaker.
And to get much needed credibility, the conference is being held under the banner of the ministry of agriculture.
With the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture slamming the government on the GM issue and the Supreme Court appointed Technical Experts Committee recommending a ten-year moratorium on GM crops, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar needed a fig leaf for his continued support of GM crops.
So, his ministry promptly extended an invitation not only to Lynas but other such neoconverts and industry lobbyists from far off destinations such as Brazil.
It is shocking how brazenly taxpayers' money is being spent on organising a meeting of lobbyists and selfproclaimed experts like Lynas.
Here it is pertinent to mention how this ex-journo has become a hot property in India.
He was reportedly enlisted by EuropaBio - European biotechnology industry lobby - to pose as an "independent" ambassador of GM crops, as revealed in confidential PR emails published by The Guardian in October 2011.
When Lynas finally announced his "conversion" two weeks ago, PR agencies of the biotech industry went into an overdrive sending "interaction opportunity" requests to journalists. Some gullible ones including opinion writers fell in the trap and have written about the greatness of Lynas's conversion.
All this comes as a prelude to the ministry's conference to be held on February 1.
Meanwhile, scientific evidence on biosafety and health aspects of GM crops keeps mounting - like the recent report from the European Food Safety Authority on how regulators have overlooked a viral gene in crops approved so far.
Instead of taking note of such findings, the government is busy organising conferences.
Let the debate focus on new scientific evidence and not faith or denial.
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2."How can he ignore GM crops' increased chemical usage in America?"
Prasanna Mohanty
Governance Now, January 24 2013
http://governancenow.com/views/interview/how-can-he-ignore-gm-crops-increased-chemical-usage-america
In conversation, Kavitha Kuruganti, an important anti-GM voice and one of the convenors of Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), an advocacy platform of more than 400 organisations drawn from 20 states of India
On Lynas’s turnaround
There is nothing new, content wise. It is a huge PR exercise emerging from the (GM) industry as though Lynas's change of heart is a game changer. That is not true at all. He was never an active GM crusader or made substantive contribution to the anti-GM debate or activism. He was mostly working in the field of climate change. He doesn’t deserve the space or attention he is getting.
If he is truly scientific and speaks based on facts, how can he call himself an environmentalist and ignore that GM crops increased chemical usage in American agriculture by 183 million kilos since the beginning of GM crop adoption there? While insect-resistant Bt crops actually allow for an insecticide to be produced inside the GM plant as long as the plant is alive (leading to more pesticide being used than before), herbicide-tolerant crops actually allow for more chemicals to be used, tolerated by the modified plant. Both ways, these are crops which are increasing pesticide usage.
How can he ignore the fact that farmers are resorting to deadlier herbicides due to the emergence of super-weeds in the USA and elsewhere? How can anyone advocate a one-size-fits-all solution in agriculture, that too in contexts like India, and still claim to be scientific?
On promoting GM crops in India
The transgenic technology in the field of food and farming involves environmental release of a yet-to-be-proven safe and imprecise technology. Further concern comes from the fact that this is a living technology – something that has the ability to propagate itself. Whatever the proponents may say about the established science of transgenic technology world over, there will not be so much rejection and controversy if the opponents didn’t have science on their side. And I myself have compiled more than 300 published papers showing adverse impacts of transgenic crops.
Additionally, there are issues relating to intellectual property rights with GM technology. In India we witnessed the scam about the public sector Bt cotton getting contaminated with Monsanto’s "event" and it was subsequently withdrawn. There is also an issue of trade security with export consignments having gm getting rejected in a majority of countries.