Trade with Commodities: Baigan bharta in a petridish, anyone?

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Baigan bharta in a petridish, anyone?

A new documentary scoops out the secrets of BT brinjal and other modified food

The protagonist of Mahesh Bhatt's latest horror film is not Emraan Hashmi but a brinjal with initials. Poison on the Platter, a 30-minute movie about the repercussions of genetically modified foods like BT brinjal, is a film that Bhatt finds more horrifying than his other thriller Raaz. His reasons are many.
    Soon to be screened in Mumbai, the starkly titled documentary does its best to communicate the shock that Bhatt and director Ajay Kanchan felt when they heard about what can happen to us if we chomp on BT brinjal, which will soon be in our markets, kitchens and dinner plates. The GEAC (Genetic Engineering Approval Committee) is considering granting approval to this variety of brinjal which has been injected with a foreign gene from the soil so that it can generate its own toxin to kill insects that attack the plant. But this weapon of mass insect destruction, like many other GM foods, has been shown by independent analysis to impact health adversely. "When tested on rats, GM was linked to stunted growth, impaired immune systems, and even inter-generational effects. Studies have even confirmed that GM foods affect fertility as well,'' says Sreedevi Kutty of I-am-no-lab-rat, a coalition for a GM-free India. "Ask PM to Stop GM,'' goes the catchy slogan of this coalition.
    If it goes through, India will be the first country to approve BT brinjal for cultivation. It is also field-testing 56 other crops for modification including rice. While the United States allows cultivation of GM crops, Europe has banned both cultivation and import because of unresolved health concerns. The film's director Ajay Kanchan, who worked at the British High Commission, was used to jokes like 'Why do you need a president in England when there is a prime minister in America?'. So he was pleasantly surprised to see Europe thumb its nose at America on this issue. During his research, Kanchan stumbled upon what probably was Europe's chief justification. "Till 1996, smoking was the biggest killer in America. But after 1996, when genetic food was launched, that became the number one killer,'' he claims.
    Studies by independent scientists have shown that GM crops fed to live stock causes immune reaction, organ damage, death and sterility, reproductive failures and infant mortality. Other GM vegetables have also shown similar results, says Kutty. FlavrSavr tomato, for instance, which is inserted with a fish gene, caused stomach lesions in rats and many of them died midway. Also, BT cotton has been observed to induce skin, respiratory and eye allergies among cotton farmers in India.
    So far, there has only been one human clinical trial in the world on genetically modified food, where GM soyabean was injected in the gut. Here, the pesticide was found to continue living inside the body after digestion. "Why shouldn't we wake up now?'' says geneticist Devinder Sharma, adding that a ban is the only way out. "One can't leave the issue open to people for self-judgement. These are the same people who smoke despite the health warning in bold on cigarette packs, how do you expect them to know?'' he asks.
    One of the primary drawbacks of GM crops is that testing is done only by the companies producing them, and that too on a short-term basis. Also, the pro-GM arguments that say it increases productivity are not really proven, says Dilnawaz Variava, vicechairman of Bombay Natural History Society. "Organic farming was found to yield better results than GM agriculture. Besides, the input costs are also high,'' says Variava, adding that this process of unnatural intervention "totally goes against nature''.
    Director Ajay Kanchan recalls the appalled reaction of former naval chief Vishnu Bhagwat after watching the film in Mumbai. "He said we need another armed force to protect us from this external aggression.'' The first duty of this armed force would be awareness, according to Kanchan, who likes to describe the baddie of the film as "a villain called ignorance''. That human gene could do with some modification.