BT BRINJAL

May 13, 2019

Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan has sent a legal notice to Union Environment Minister asking for a freeze on all genetically modified organisms (including Bt Brinjal), including field trials.

About:

Developed by: Mahyco (Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company) in collaboration with the Dharward University of Agricultural sciences and the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.
Technology: Bt brinjal was the first food crop made to contain an insecticidal protein, called cry1 ac, sourced from the genes of the soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringienesis.
Timeline: Though this was cleared for commercial cultivation it was put on hold by former Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh in 2010 on the grounds that there was scientific and public disagreement on its safety.

Recent development:

Bhushan’s letter comes in the aftermath of activist groups recently proffering evidence of Bt Brinjal, a GM crop, being grown in a farmer’s field in Haryana.
He has demanded that the Environment Ministry uproot and destroy planted Bt brinjal in farms and seedlings in nurseries, undertake a scaled-up exercise of testing of seeds and plantings and, ascertain the supply chain - from seed developers to intermediaries.

Source : The Hindu