On April 26, a parliamentary committee called for an independent review, the results of which are expected by the end of August, of last year's decision by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC; New Dehli) to give MMB a three-year license to market three insect-resistant GM cotton hybrids (containing the gene for Bacillus thuringiensis toxin; Bt) in six central and southern states of India (Nat. Biotechnol. 20, 415, 2002). A day earlier, GEAC refused to grant permission to MMB to sell its Bt cotton to farmers in northern India, citing sensitivity to curl leaf virus spread by white flies that are rampant in that region. Also on April 25, GEAC called for more field trials and biosafety tests from ProAgro (Gurgaon) for its GM mustard, rejecting the firm's commercial application for a second time since 2001.
All of these setbacks have been influenced by conflicting reports over the performance of Bt cotton in the country in 2002, the first year of sowing. MMB claims that Bt cotton farmers obtained 30% higher yield using 65–70% less pesticide. These claims have been called into question not only by Greenpeace (Bangalore) and Gene Campaign (Delhi), a nongovernmental organization headed by a geneticist, but also by the parliamentary committee's report saying that “farmers who have grown Bt-cotton have been put to loss in most of the places.” MMB spokesperson Ranjana Smetacek disputes the disparity. Out of the 50,000 farmers that sowed Bt cotton hybrids in 2002, Smetacek says, “We collected data from 1,090 sites whereas Suman Sahai (of Gene Campaign) talked to just 100 farmers.”
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