Given the health impacts of Bt brinjal on animals, one needs to keep in mind that the GM crop surely cannot be declared as safe.
Bt brinjal has been found to be released illegally and predictably it has sparked furious reactions on all sides. Some have unsurprisingly already started to ask for Bt brinjal moratorium to be lifted in the light of illegal Bt brinjal cultivation. In the light of these, it might be helpful to revisit the facts on why Bt brinjal was rejected and de-clutter facts from opinions.
With this Bt brinjal becomes the 4th crop to have been found to be cultivated illegally in India. These are interestingly the only four GM crops known to be cultivated in India. GM soybean and Bt brinjal illegal cultivations have been brought to public light by an active civil society, though it brings light to a question on whether the regulatory authorities and government cannot have a stronger and proactive monitoring system of their own.
The first amongst these was Bt cotton which was approved after its large scale illegal cultivation. The next is Herbicide tolerant cotton which was reported to regulators some 8 years ago before they got to taking note of it by the time its cultivation had also gone truly large-scale. The third being herbicide tolerant soybean which was found to have been cultivated in Gujarat in 2017, in the last 2 years no action has been taken on seed suppliers by regulators.
Which brings us to Bt brinjal, nine years after the then environment ministry decided to put a moratorium on Bt brinjal it has finally made its way out to farm (atleast 1 known farm so far) and plates. Different state governments across political spectrum in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh all in different degrees rejected Bt brinjal as well.
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