Politicians… in India have been pretty receptive to GM technologies for control of dengue and chikungunya…
Such political support for GM mosquitoes is not surprising for a country that reported nearly one lakh cases of dengue and chikungunya with 200 deaths in 2015…
Such openness to GM … is, however, in marked contrast to the outright hostility when it comes to application of GM technology in crops … We are seeing this currently in GM mustard, a technology developed indigenously by … scientists at Delhi University…
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Today, India has roughly six million mustard farmers with commercial yields averaging… one-third that of Canada and Australia… A doubling of yields will not only benefit our mustard growers, but also help cut …edible oil imports costing… $10.5 billion a year.
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It is strange, then, to find the same politicians, so gung ho about introducing GM mosquitoes in cities, being totally opposed to planting of GM mustard…
…Here, we have ‘swadeshis’ opposing a GM mustard technology indigenously developed… unmindful… that doing so will only increase India’s dependence on imported edible oils (a significant part of which is GM anyway!). Surprisingly, the same politicians have no issues with GM mosquitoes even if the technology is borrowed from Oxford University or China.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Janus-Faced: Politicians oppose GM mustard, but gung-ho about GM mosquitoes!
