Ramesh Says Bt Brinjal Moratorium Will Stay
Ahead of his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Environmental Minister Jairam Ramesh has said that the moratorium on commercial farming of the genetically modified crop will stay, reported IANS.
Singh is scheduled to chair a meeting of Ramesh, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and Science and Technology Minister Prithviraj Chavan on the issue a short while from now.
It may be mentioned that both Pawar and Chavan have expressed strong opposition to Ramesh’s stand on not approving commercial cultivation of Bt brinjal on grounds that not enough studies have been carried out on its safety to satisfy everybody.
“Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has written a six-page letter to the Prime Minister on the future of GM crops. I presume that the meeting today evening is to discuss that…I don’t know what the meeting’s outcome will be…(but) the moratorium on Bt Brinjal stands,” Ramesh was quoted as saying while talking to reporters in New Delhi during an interaction at the Indian Women’s Press Corps.
The minister insisted that his position at the meeting would be that the indefinite moratorium period ‘has to be used to put in place an institutional mechanism of regulation; a durable political consensus on the issue including in some of the so—called progressive states in the western part of the country as well as a proper scientific consensus’, report said.
Ramesh made it clear that the moratorium imposed by him on February 9 meant neither a conditional acceptance nor a ban, said report.
“Let’s cool down,” Ramesh was quoted as saying, “none of the applications (for commercial Bt crop approvals) would see the light of day for at least three years”.
He refuted reports that the Prime Minister favoured Bt brinjal, saying that his decision was in tune with Manmohan Singh’s stand.
