For a month now, reports of dead cattle have occupied the centre stage in the Warangal, Khammam and Adilabad Districts of the Telengana area of Andhra Pradesh in India (Deccan Herald, February 7, 2007, The Hindu, March 2, 2007, GM Watch, March 4, 2007). None of the reports showed that Bt protein in the Bt cotton plants was the real culprit, but the purveyors of these reports would like the world to believe that there is something wrong with Bt cotton plants that cause these alleged animal deaths and so Bt transgenics should be banned.

The government has suspended until the end of December a rule that required imports of genetically modified soyoil to be cleared by an official panel, the government said in a statement on Tuesday. The moratorium was originally imposed in May and was due to end this month. Trade critics said last year that getting the panel’s approval would delay shipments and push up prices.

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) which met on Wednesday withheld any fresh approval of bt cotton for commercial cultivation in the ensuing summer season. About 11 BT cotton hybrids with CRY 1 AC gene expression, 5 BT cotton hybrids expressing stacked genes and one bt cotton hybrid expressing CRY1 AC event 1 was on the agenda for approval for commercial cultivation. All these hybrids have gone through the requisite processes of field trials. ”We did not approve any new BT cotton hybrids for commercial cultivation as the matter is subjudiced in the Supreme Court,” said a senior GEAC official.

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) which met on Wednesday withheld any fresh approval of bt cotton for commercial cultivation in the ensuing summer season. About 11 BT cotton hybrids with CRY 1 AC gene expression, 5 BT cotton hybrids expressing stacked genes and one bt cotton hybrid expressing CRY1 AC event 1 was on the agenda for approval for commercial cultivation. All these hybrids have gone through the requisite processes of field trials. ”We did not approve any new BT cotton hybrids for commercial cultivation as the matter is subjudiced in the Supreme Court,” said a senior GEAC official.

The arrival of genetically modified crops has added another level of complexity to farming in the developing world. [...] ”The bottom line is that the spread of Bt cotton doesn’t so much reflect that it works for the farmers or that the farmers have tested it and found it to be a good technology,” Stone said. ”The spread more reflects the complete breakdown in the cotton cultivation system.”

The European Union"s rice imports from Asian countries such as India may increase after consignments from the U.S. were found to have traces of unauthorized genetic modification last year, European Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said Tuesday.

"We have asked the U.S. to provide us with evidence that rice consignments to E.U. doesn"t contain the unapproved genetic modification," Boel told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview. "(Such U.S. consignments) become more expensive and therefore the E.U. is also looking eastwards at other markets (to buy rice)."

To promote genetically modified (GM) crops in the country, the government has announced a special subsidy package. The National Horticulture Board in its recent document has announced backed-ended capital investment subsidy for projects developing genetic modified organisms (GMOs) and bio-technology.

The health ministry is set to amend the Prevention of Food Adulteration Rules, 1955 to introduce the provision of mandatory labelling of genetically modified (GM) foods, likely to be imported or produced in the country. An expert committee set up by the ministry under the chairmanship of the additional director-general of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, Shiv Lal has recommended mandatory labelling of GM food and food ingredients, without any threshold limit. The committee has defined GM food as those composed of or containing genetically organisms obtained through modern biotechnology. Even the GM processed food would be labelled. The expert panel included representatives from the industry, Indian Council for Medical Research and farmer leader Yudhvir Singh.

Grazing on residual Bt cotton crop seems to have resulted in the death of over 200 animals in various mandals of the district in the last two months. The Animal Husbandry Department has sounded an alarm as the number of sick animals with somewhat classic poisoning symptoms has kept increasing.

Rice genetically modified to have high flavonoid content has a 22 per cent higher antioxidant activity than untransformed rice, says a joint German-Indian study.

”The transgenic rice and its derived foods may serve as potential source of antioxidant compounds and this helpful in promoting human health,” wrote lead author Ambavaram Reddy in the Elsevier journal Metabolic Engineering.