Aam Aadmi Party against Genetically modified crops in India

Delhi, India: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) trained guns on environment minister M Veerappa Moily seeking an investigation into his decision for permitting open field trials of GM crop varieties despite a Parliamentary Standing committee stance against it.

“It is unacceptable that Mr Moily went ahead to give permissions for these field trials even when a parliamentary standing committee on Agriculture comprising of MPs from various political parties including Congress party and other UPA allies had reccomended against such field trials,” AAP said in a statement today.

The party demanded that all field trials be stopped and an enquiry initiated on the undue hurry of the minister’s action. It added that the Supreme Court appointed Technical Expert Committee (TEC) comprising of eminent scientists also had highlighted the scientific evidence on adverse impacts of GM crops and the failure of the existing regulatory system in their final report submitted to the court in July last year and strongly reccomended against any open releases including for experimental trials.

The Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has approved field trials of genetically modified (GM) food crops on a conditional basis. These include consent from the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) and from respective state governments. The ministry’s decision was based on the approval by GEAC in March 2013 to allow about 200 successful gene modification trials. Moily has called the next meeting of the statutory committee on March 21.

Source: Business Standard