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Doctors caution against genetically modified food Express News Service
Amritsar (PTI): The Genetically Modified (GM) crops have failed to penetrate the agricultural industry, despite nearly two decades of continuous, intensive and expensive promotion by multi-national biotech companies, a US educator said.

Prof John Fagan, associate director, Institute of Science Technology and Public Policy, Ottawa, USA, was here to deliver a lecture on 'Food Safety and Food Security in the era of Climate Change and Biotechnology' at the Guru Nanak Dev University.

He said although the biotech industry has developed GM varieties of many major crops and governments have approved these crops for commercialisation, farmers have refused them as some negative effects were seen on maize, soy, cotton and rapeseed.

Prof Fagan said, when farmers were given the opportunity to make an 'informed' choice regarding whether or not to adopt GM crops, they rejected them. As a result, only four major GM crops of maize, soy, cotton, and rapeseed, have been commercialised, he added.

He said scientists have now developed much more effective and safer approaches such as Marker Assisted Breeding that use cutting edge discoveries in modern genetic science to develop new and valuable crop varieties more rapidly, economically and safely.

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