Greenpeace decries BRAI Bill

The Biotechnology and Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill 2011 came under the scanner when Greenpeace along with Russell Market traders launched the report, ‘BRAI Bill: A threat to our food and farming,’ on Friday.

The report, authored by Ritwick Dutta, Supreme Court lawyer and coordinator of Legal Initiative For Forest And Environment (LIFE), suggested that the BRAI bill fails to meet India’s international obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity 1992 and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety 2000.

The bill does not confirm with several principles that form the core of Indian environmental jurisprudence on absolute liability for hazardous activities, effective public participation in environmental decision-making and biosafety information.

“The current BRAI Bill reduces the role of the state governments to a recommendatory capacity and takes away their decision-making powers to reject the release of any Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in the environment through field trials, though agriculture is a state subject,” said Neha Saigal, Sustainable Agriculture Campaigner,

Greenpeace India. She said that Greenpeace wants the government to withdraw the bill entirely.

She pointed out that Chief Minister DV Sadananda Gowda is also critical of the bill. “He wrote to the prime minister last year saying the bill should be revised,” she added.