The second Indian Biodiversity Congress (IBC 2012) held at Bangalore earlier this month has called for a ban on field trials of Genetically Modified crops in India and a 10-year moratorium on Bt food crops.

The three-day event, which witnessed a large turnout of scientists, conservationists, environmentalists, civil society groups and local communities from across the country, stressed the need to bring the regulation of biotechnological processes and products under the purview of the Biodiversity Act. For the purpose, the Department of Biotechnology should be brought within the Ministry of Environment and Forests, it suggested. The recommendations, issued by the IBC secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram, urged the government to exclude GM crops from India’s food security programmes and farming systems. It opposed the move to set up the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India to clear the cultivation of GM crops and instead proposed the adoption of the National Biosafety Protection Regime.