A letter addressed to MEPs seen by EURACTIV suggests that the Commission hopes to appease critics of the revision of the EU’s pesticide framework by dangling a potential liberalisation of new genomic techniques (NGTs). EU food safety Commissioner Stella Kyriakides explicitly referred to the highly contentious gene editing in a reply – seen by EURACTIV – to a previous letter from the chair of the European Parliament’s agriculture committee (AGRI), Norbert Lins, who criticised the revamped Sustainable Use Regulation (SUR) proposal presented in June. To appease critics of its proposal – to halve the use and the risk of chemical pesticides by 2030 – Kyriakides highlighted that other parts of the EU’s food flagship policy, the Farm to Fork Strategy, could help boost food security. She mentioned the already adopted rules to speed up the approval of pesticides, innovation funding on crop protection included in the EU’s research programme Horizon and a proposal to deregulate new GM techniques that the Commission is set to table next year. Euractiv

 

 

The US filed a fresh complaint against India at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) last week. In its submission, the US sought withdrawal of India’s import restrictions on GM foods, including rice and apples. It said the demand for a non-GM certificate was disrupting American agricultural exports. This comes at a time when for no apparent reason the Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change has given an environmental permit for cultivation of a low-yielding GM mustard variety. Tribune India

 

 

Two decades ago when GM Bt cotton was introduced, farmers were enticed by the promise of high yield, high market prices and insulation from devastating pink bollworm. "But over the years, increasing input costs and crop failures have outnumbered the strokes of luck," says farmer Channabasappa Masuti. He stopped growing the GM cotton variety a decade ago and now grows local varieties. While some credit the GM variety of cotton for greater yields, farmers and researchers continue to decry this to be a myth. "What Bt has done to our land and our environment is unknown. What it has done to farmers is out in the open," says Masuti. Farmer Guddappa Hulmani splits a green cotton boll in his field to show the pink bollworm eating away the white clumps inside. “I have sprayed pesticides religiously. Even then, pests have destroyed entire squares (base of the boll). I will be lucky if 50% of the bolls survive to bloom this year,” he says. Deccan Herald

 

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