Supreme Court’s Split Verdict On GM Mustard Will Impact Release Of Other Such Crops

The Supreme Court has delivered a split judgement on the commercial release of genetically modified mustard for seed production preparatory to cultivation by farmers, with Justice BV Nagaratna striking down the government’s approval of December 2022 and Justice Sanjay Karol upholding it. The judgement was reserved in January and read in court on Tuesday. The matter will now go to a larger bench, in view of the divergence in opinion.

According to reports, Justice Nagaratna faulted the haste in approvals, the inadequacy of consultations, the reliance on foreign research data and the lack of assessment of the impact on health. She found the approval given by the regulator—the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee—and the subsequent endorsement by the government to be in violation of public trust. The failure to adequately assess the impact on health has implications not only for this generation but for subsequent ones as well, she felt.

Justice Karol, according to reports, did not find arbitrariness in the approval. In his view, the conditional approval was not vitiated. 

Both agreed that the government should evolve a policy on GM crops, for which they wanted wide consultations to be initiated within four months.

The immediate fallout is a delay in the commercial cultivation of GM mustard, which the government was keen on to reduce India’s dependence on imported cooking oil. It will also impact the release of bollworm-resistant cotton that is herbicide-tolerant as well. The release of two other cotton hybrids that are resistant to pink bollworms will also be affected. It might affect the ethanol programme as GM maize is necessary for higher yields and cheaper alcohol for blending with petrol. If conventional maize is used, the supply of maize for animal feed will be constrained. Overall, it is a setback for agricultural biotechnology.

The approval of the GM mustard hybrid, DMH-11, developed by a team of Delhi University scientists led by Professor Deepak Pental, was not hasty at all. The GEAC had advised the government to release it in May 2017, after satisfying itself that it posed little risk to humans, animals or the environment. But then, Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan had not accepted the recommendation. Instead, he wanted impact studies on honeybees and pollinators to be done before release. Pental said the impact on honeybees was best conducted in open fields where their foraging behaviour could be captured.

The approval was based on a 3,250-page dossier, which contained data on field trials conducted by institutes of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. The tests for toxicity and allergens were conducted by the National Institute of Nutrition, Pental said. So, the SC observation that foreign research data was relied upon is surprising.

For more than five years after GEAC’s first approval in 2017, the issue lay dormant as the ruling party itself was ideologically opposed to the cultivation of GM crops, with the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, leading the resistance. But there was a change of thinking in the government later. GM mustard was seen as a solution to reduce dependence on imported cooking oil. That led to the 2022 decisions of the GEAC and the government.

But anti-GM activists Suman Sahai of the Gene Campaign and Aruna Rodrigues knocked on the Supreme Court to stall the release. They said that the Technical Expert Committee, which the SC had set up in response to their writ petitions of 2004 and 2005, had not favoured the release of herbicide-tolerant GM crops. GM mustard, they said, had a herbicide-tolerant gene in it, which would allow farmers to use herbicides indiscriminately. They also questioned the safety of the mustard hybrid.

The government, in its reply to the SC, said the issues raised by the petitioners were within the domain of the executive. The research, development and use of genetic engineering technologies, it said, were highly technical matters. It wanted the court to limit its inquiry to whether there were adequate regulations governing GM crops in place and whether those regulations and procedures had been complied with.

The government said the recommendation for environmental release made by the GEAC in October 2022 had come after “a long and exhaustive regulatory review process,” which commenced in 2010. The approval was for the purpose of seed production and developing new parental lines and hybrids under the supervision of ICAR. It was subject to regulatory and technical evaluation.

The government added that it wants to raise farm productivity and incomes with low-input, high-output agriculture. The objective was also to make the country self-sufficient in edible oil. Several countries, it said, had safely employed genetic engineering technologies for this purpose.

DMH-11 is a cross between Varuna, a high-yielding Indian mustard variety, and Early Hira-2, an East European variety. To create the hybrid, the pollen of Varuna was degraded with barnase, a gene derived from a soil bacterium, to make it unviable so it could be fertilised with the pollen of Early Hira 2. This line had a barstar gene derived from the same soil bacterium to reverse the action of the barnase gene and make the resultant seed fully fertile. In trials, the hybrid was found to be 28% higher yielding than Varuna. Mustard is largely self-pollinating. Its flowers have both male and female sexual organs. Male sterility has to be induced in them to enable cross-fertilisation.

Those opposing GM crops have questioned the yield claims made for DMH-11. The point is that the barnase-barstar technology allows mustard hybrids to be developed efficiently, unlike conventional cytoplasmic male sterility technology. Better yields than DMH-11 can be obtained with better parents.

The split SC verdict reflects attitudes towards risk and hazards. There are those who believe in the "precautionary principle." For them, no hazard is acceptable. There are others who are willing to take risks within acceptable limits so long as food is safe and affordable. They are willing to accept GM crops that are “substantially equivalent” to non-GM crops, which are similar in all respects except for the presence of traits conferred by foreign genes.

Vivian Fernandes is a journalist with more than three decades of practice.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of NDTV Profit or its editorial team.