Mere touch of Bt cotton can cause impotency: Saini

Does Bt cotton cause impotency? This startling claim was made by Rajasthan’s minister for agriculture, Prabhu Lal Saini, to reporters on the sidelines of the Global agritechnology meeting at Udaipur.

The minister, while trashing GM mustard technology, said the mere touch of Bt cotton caused impotency. He said the Bt gene was extracted from a soil bacterium found in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after atomic bombs were dropped on the two cities during the World War 2.

He overlooked the fact that a Japanese scientist had discovered the insecticidal properties of the Bt soil bacterium in 1901 and Bt formulations had been used in bio-pesticides since 1938.

Bt cotton is genetically-engineered to be toxic to bollworms, a deadly pest. It has been extensively grown in India since 2002 and covers about 90 per cent of the cotton-growing area. Six institutes of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research had told a parliamentary committee earlier this year that fish, chicken, goats, sheep and cows fed with cottonseed or its derivates like oilcake had not come to any harm.

The minister, from the state which is the largest producer of mustard -- with nearly 47 per cent of the national output -- is also dead set against the genetically-modified mustard hybrid, DMH-11, which the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), the regulator, had recommended for cultivation, in May. However, environment minister Harsh Vardhan seems to have put a deep freeze on the decision which is now marked “Pending Further Review”.

Saini asserted that he would make a determined effort to ensure that no trials of GM crops took place in the state.

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