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Policies Toward GM Crops In India cont.,
IV. Trade Policy
Since GM crops are politically controversial in India, the government
is under pressure from NGOs to impose a GM-free trade policy requirement
on the nation's commodity imports and exports. So long as no GM crops
are being planted within India on biosafety grounds, such an official
GM-free trade policy can be relatively easy for the government to embrace
and implement. A policy of standing aloof from international GM commodity
trade is also relatively easy to embrace in India because the nation has,
for decades, tended to stand somewhat aloof from all international food
commodity trade in its official pursuit of "national food self-sufficiency."
Ever since India's bad experience with excessive dependence on international
food aid in the 1960s, political leaders have sought to avoid not only
renewed concessional dependence on world markets, but commercial dependence
as well.
India’s policy aversion to international food trade of all kinds
is reflected in the fact that the nation has recently accounted for roughly
10 percent of total world agricultural production, but less than 1 percent
of world commodity trade (Sharma 2000). With continued income growth in
India, demand for imported grains is likely to grow, yet actual imports
will continue to be slowed by significant trade barriers at the border.
As one example, India recently imposed an 80 percent duty on rice to curb
the influx of what it called "cheap grain." India occasionally imports
small quantities of corn, but it strictly controls these imports with
a tariff rate quota imposing a 60 percent duty on imports larger than
the quota. In the case of wheat, India allows imports only in rare cases
to offset specific internal transport cost problems, for example to allow
some less expensive imported wheat to reach some coastal flour mills in
the southern part of the country. India also exports very little wheat,
despite its occasionally large internal surplus stocks. In 2000, when
India's excess wheat stocks reached 27 million tons, efforts were finally
made to clear the stocks through export, yet these were frustrated in
part by the known presence of a wheat crop disease - "Karnal Bunt" fungus
- in some parts of India, which has put wheat from India on the import
ban list of some thirty other countries (APBN 2000a).
Given these larger aversions in India to free international food commodity
trade, and given the absence so far of any GM crop production within India
itself, imposing an effective ban on the import and export of GM commodities
has been easy enough for the Indian government to manage. Under India's
official GM Guidelines it is GEAC which must approve any large scale import
of GM commodities, and so long as GEAC has not approved the commercial
planting of GM crops at home it may naturally wish to go slow on approval
of commercial imports from abroad. Politicians in India will resist GM
crop imports as well. Ever since the 1998 controversy over field trials
for Monsanto’s Bt cotton, government ministers have routinely defended
themselves with statements that GM foods are not being grown or imported
into India, and will not be imported without proper safeguards.
India's official GM crop import ban was tested under unusual circumstances
in the summer of 1998, when the nation experienced a highly publicized
food safety emergency unrelated to GM crops. More than 50 people in Delhi
died after eating a contaminated locally grown (and non-GM) mustard oil,
the most popular cooking oil in northern India. The government acted by
banning sales of mustard oil pending safer packaging. To make up the shortage,
it had to authorize temporary imports of soybeans and lower its import
duties on soybean oil (Wall Street Journal, December 8, 1998, p. A10).
Anti-trade and anti-GM NGO leaders responded to this action with a
letter to the Prime Minister, alerting him to the fact that some of the
soybeans about to be imported could be GM. The government sought to finesse
the issue on this occasion by arranging to import soybeans that were already
split and hence suited only for oil production, and not planting. Because
the soybeans were not intended for environmental release and since they
were not explicitly labeled GM, the Government on this occasion managed
to avoid seeking formal import approval from GEAC. In the future it may
be more difficult for the Government of India to avoid engaging GEAC in
approval of bulk commodity imports. The January 2000 Biosafety Protocol
obliges exporters (under Article 18) when shipping LMOs internationally
to label those shipments as "may contain LMOs" and "not
intended for intentional introduction into the environment." Identifications
of this kind are more likely to trigger a mandatory review in India by
GEAC, or at least more vigorous complaints by NGOs if GEAC is again avoided.
NGOs in India opposed to GM crops and foods can take extreme positions
on the import question. In June 2000, RFSTE reacted with outrage when
it learned that some of the corn-soya blend food aid that was being imported
via CARE and CRS to provide relief to Indian victims of a super cyclone
in the Eastern coastal state of Orissa, had come from the United States
and was thus likely to be "genetically contaminated." RFSTE castigated
the United States for "using the Orissa victims as guinea pigs for GE
products" and called on the government of India to explore alternative
sources of food aid (RFSTE 2000).
India’s policy regarding imports of GM germplasm for research purposes
has so far been permissive rather than preventive. Some extra steps are
required when importing GM materials for research, and some bureaucratic
delays are encountered, but the imports themselves have never been held
back. This partly reflects the fact that RCGM, rather than GEAC, has final
authority to clear transgenic imports for research purposes (DBT 1998,
p. 8). Technically, any importer of GM germplasm must also get phyto-sanitary
clearance from India’s relevant quarantine authority, the National
Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), yet NBPGR typically acts on
the recommendation of RCGM and conducts a phyto-sanitary evaluation, as
a routine precaution against import of diseased or infested materials.5
RCGM is a committee dominated by representatives from the government institutes
doing some of the research, so its permissive stance on imports is not
surprising, yet private companies as well have had little trouble bringing
GM materials into the country if the purpose is research only.
The import decision process in India is prone to a jurisdictional dispute
between RCGM and GEAC, similar to that discussed earlier in the case of
field trials. RCGM is authorized to approve small scale imports only,
and GEAC alone can approve large scale imports, but there is not yet a
clear definition of the dividing line between the two. Tiny quantities
of 10 kg or less have until now fallen clearly under RCGM's jurisdiction,
but a potential for conflict over larger shipments remains. India's Guidelines
document empowers GEAC to give approval or disapproval (from an environmental
vantage point) of all large scale "import, export, transport, manufacture,
process, [or] selling of any microorganisms or genetically engineered
substances or cells including food stuffs..." (DBT 1990 p. 17) The
encompassing language of this provision again suggests how little the
Government of India has been willing to entrust this new technology to
private sector market forces alone, let alone international market forces.
In export markets, India has on occasion faced a temptation to use its
GM-free status to seek price premiums. India is a small exporter of soybean
meal (1.5-2.2 million tons per year, in recent years), and it has recently
promoted these meal exports (also sunflower meal and rapeseed meal) as
"GM free" for sale to overseas markets, such as Japan, Indonesia, Thailand,
the Philippines, the Gulf countries, and the Middle East (APBN 2000b).
Yet most of these sales are for animal feed purposes, so price premiums
have been difficult to secure. Indian meal exporters have nonetheless
begun hoping that Asian countries such as Thailand, because they export
chickens to the GM-conscious European market, will soon see the advantage
of taking feed imports from a GM-free supplier such as India, rather than
from nations that plant GM crops such as the United States.
India can thus be classified as embracing a trade policy toward GM crops
which is fully "preventive" by the definition in use here: a de facto
blockage on GM commodity imports, coupled with occasional efforts to use
the nation's GM free status to seek premiums in export markets. The strength
of this policy will be tested if and when GM crops are finally given biosafety
approval for planting by Indian farmers, particularly food crops (not
just cotton). At this point the nation's overall GM free status will disappear,
so costly internal market segregation and labeling procedures will be
required in order to offer GM free guarantees to foreign customers. Avoiding
these costly trade-linked procedures could become an additional reason
for India's GEAC to go slow on the final approval of internationally traded
GM food crops for planting by India's farmers.
5. NBPGR has been responsible for developing
testing procedures to detect the presence or absence of GM materials in
imports, and India's Ministry of Commerce is now partially responsible
as well for monitoring imports for GM content.
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