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GM crops also cause suicides / Unapproved produce entering food chain (10/1/2006)

EXCERPT: A film prepared by the MEC showed farmers from many states admitting to the violations and alleging that the company officials rarely visited the fields [where GM crop trials are held]. ...All the farmers shown on video said they were selling the [unapproved GM] produce in open market.
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GM crops also cause suicides, say activists
New Delhi, 10 January 2006
http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=215397&n_date=20060110&cat=India

A number of farmers who planted genetically modified cotton have committed suicide on failing to repay debts with the produce, a group lobbying for a ban on GM crops said today.

Agriculture scientist Palash Ranjan Ghoshal of the Maharashtra-based NGO YUVA and Pallapadu Damodar of Andhra Pradesh's Sarvodaya Youth Organisation claimed a number of farmers' suicides in the cotton growing belts of the two states were linked to GM crops.

The two were speaking to reporters on the occasion of the release of a report by the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC) set up by nearly two dozen non-governmental organisations to monitor field trials of genetically modified Bt cotton seeds across the country.

"Seed companies lure farmers with false claims into trying out the crops. Not only is the actual yield lower than as claimed, the farmers often also have to make big investment on pesticides. In the end, the yield and the price he gets for the produce do not cover up the input cost," Ghoshal said, speaking about Vidarbha in Maharashtra.

In Warrangal district of Andhra Pradesh, the Bt cotton yield was a low 50 kg to two quintals an acre. "Many farmers are putting all their landholding for Bt cotton, but get back almost the same amount after harvest," Damodar said.

"Usually the suicides happen after January, but now we have farmers committing suicide from September itself," he said.

The MEC report says fields trials of GM crops are being conducted in an "unscientific" and "unmonitored" manner in gross violation of bio-safety regulations and the Environment Protection Act, 1986.

"They are being conducted in great secrecy. Even the agriculture department officials do not know about the trials...Biosafety and scientificity of trials are being violated on every front -- whether it be sowing time, of isolation distances, distance between plots, careful monitoring and recording of result...."

"From 1600 trial fields, the GM food entered the supply chain and thus the food chain this year. We are consuming such food without knowing their properties or side effects," Ms Kavitha Kuruganti of the Secunderabad-based Centre for Sustainable Agriculture said, adding that field trials of some vegetable varieties too had started.

A film prepared by the MEC showed farmers from many states admitting to the violations and alleging that the company officials rarely visited the fields. While the law mandates that the residue be burnt in the field only, one farmer said he was using the crop residue as cooking fuel. All the farmers shown on video said they were selling the produce in open market.

The report says seed companies are indulging in "publicity and propaganda over unapproved hybrids and technologies also. Kisan melas are being organised at the trial plots as though these were demonstration plots." The committee demanded that the government's Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, scheduled to meet tomorrow, should ban all field trials of GM food and that a thorough probe be ordered into the violations. The government should ensure that standing GM crops are destroyed and farmers compensated by the companies, it said.

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