Hundreds of farmers in long, faded cotton sarongs swarmed outside an auditorium at Bangalore University on February 6th. They were waiting for India’s Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh. This was the last of his public consultations on the commercial release of Bt Brinjal, a genetically modified (GM) aubergine, created by Mahyco, an Indian hybrid-seed company, and Monsanto, an American biotech giant. Waving placards and appetising images of aubergines, known in India as brinjal, they shouted themselves hoarse praising the transgenic vegetable.
But most of these men, registered at the consultation as farmers, were in fact landless labourers with no aubergine experience. Mr Ramesh was the first to call their bluff. The companies, he said, without naming any, had bussed farmers from rural districts, to play the pro-GM crowd at the hearing that day.
The tactic failed miserably. On February 10th Mr Ramesh announced that he would not allow Bt Brinjal to be grown or consumed in India until independent studies could show that it would have no adverse impact on human health, the environment or biodiversity. This overruled the recommendation last October by India’s Genetically Engineered Approvals Committee (GEAC) that Bt Brinjal was safe, in spite of being modified with a gene from the soil bacterium, bacillus thuringiensis.
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