India has enjoyed successes with genetic engineering in agriculture, but its relationship with this environmentally friendly, wealth-enhancing technology may be coming to an end. At the very least, it is in disarray, the victim of activists’ scaremongering and government pandering.
The recommendations of a technical expert committee (TEC) forwarded recently to the Supreme Court are absurd. The TEC has called for an indefinite moratorium on field trials of genetically engineered (“genetically modified” or “GM”) crops until alleged deficiencies in the government’s regulatory and safety systems have been addressed.
The truth is that the cultivation of these plants in 2012 on a record 170.3 million hectares worldwide (by more than 17 million farmers) caused not a single mishap — not an ecosystem disrupted or a person given a tummy ache.
Read the full, original story here: Embracing GM crops