new delhi

Farmers protesting against genetically engineered crops last week destroyed a plot in the Raichur district of India where Btcotton produced by the US company Monsanto was undergoing field trial.

Some 60 members of Karnataka State Farmers' Association, led by its president, M. D. Nanjundaswamy, uprooted the plants and burnt them. They described their action as “a message to all those who have invested in Monsanto to take their money and get out”.

The plot is one of the 40 locations in India where the Btcotton, which is resistant to bollworm, is being tested by Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company, in which Monsanto has 26 per cent shares. Permission for the trials was given by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), and the trials were expected to be concluded by end of 1999.

A DBT official, P. K. Ghosh, says destruction of the crop was unwarranted as the trial plots were being monitored by his department to check for escape of pollen. “The trials posed no biosafety concern and toxicity tests in animals showed the Btcotton is perfectly safe and did not cause allergic reactions,” according to Ghosh, who says that DBT was going to clear the crop for commercial production (see Nature 388, 817; 1997).

Four more crops — potato, tomato, cauliflower and tobacco — carrying the Bt gene are also undergoing field trials, and a high-yielding transgenic mustard is being grown in 20 locations. According to Ghosh, all these crops will be ready for large-scale trials next year, subject to government clearance.

But critics such as Vandana Shiva, president of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, are calling for an immediate halt to Monsanto's trials and a five-year moratorium on the commercialization of genetically engineered crops while adequate ecological and regulatory frameworks are developed.