Big GM seeds buccaneers Versus The People of India

[nosmokes]

The way the US has treated India re: rice (and a few other issues) is pretty shameful, if not downright criminal, but big time kudos to the Indian Supreme Court for standing up to the corporate bullies and enforcing the law. a lot more than our own Supreme Court would do i dare say.- no smokes
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original

Big GM seeds buccaneers Versus The People of India
Arun Shrivastava

The fight intensifies

The India Government is firmly under control of buccaneers of bio-technology and spurious Life Sciences multinational corporations. Despite rules to the contrary, GM experiments have been going on across India with the complicity of the Indian Government. Most importantly, the attack is now on rice.



India is a centre of origin for rice and the centre for diversity for rice genes, in the same way as Mexico is for corn. It is therefore much more than just a rice country. This makes the Government’s cavalier attitude to India’s Non-GM status for rice, one of irresponsible criminal negligence. In embarking on high-risk field trials of GM-rice, it exposes our rice farmers to contamination by GM including transgenic contamination of wild species and the rice seed stock. If we Indians lose control over local rice seeds we lose our right to food and nutrition. We lose our sovereignty.

Has the Government exercised due diligence?

In granting permission for field trials, the Government of India has failed to protect the people’s interest and health. The Supreme Court of India in its interim order <1st May 2006> in matter of a Public Interest Litigation number 260 of 2006 had directed that an inter-ministerial “Genetic Engineering Approvals Committee” be formed and all applications for field trails be routed via GEAC. This does not imply that the SC had given a carte blanche to GEAC to approve field trials; rather, the directive was to prevent one department from taking unilateral decisions and bring in some discipline.

However, in the ‘67th Meeting of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee’ held on 22.05.2006, the GEAC brushed aside all such concerns and in utter defiance of the spirit of the Order it has rubberstamped an astonishing 91 GM products for multi-location trials

91 approvals in one meeting.

Which forced the Supreme Court to pass another order on 20th September, 2006:

not inclined to direct stoppage of field trials. At the same time, deem it appropriate to direct the GEAC to withhold the approvals till further directions are issued by this Court on hearing all concerned.
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complete article here

[Lasthorseman]

1. Note how

the testing of the most dangerous of things is not done here in the good Ol US of A. The CEOs of these corporations live here after all.

[Swede]

2. Here is a link to case of Monsanto gmf contaminating crops in Canada.

The statement also accuses Monsanto of "callous disregard" for the environment by introducing Roundup Ready into the area without proper controls, and of contaminating crops grown by Schmeise


http://www.percyschmeiser.com/conflict.htm