Rachel Thomas, LLM, Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
ABSTRACT
The human population is increasing each year and researchers and experts believes that there will a chance of populations to reach its extreme capacity after three decades. The increase in population causes an increase in the demand for food and other essentials, hence we should give prime importance to the food production and the crop cultivation. Now all over the world most of the cultivators are relaying of traditional method of farming and the present food production rate is not enough to meet the demand of present population. Here the main question arise is how we will tackle the food crisis that is going to happen in future due to high food demand? With the traditional mode of cultivation, it will be an impossible task to achieve. In the recent years people are discussing about the genetically modified plants or crops as the solution to achieve food security. In many of the developing countries like India there are non-acceptance towards the new plant varieties and people fear that this is not environmentally sustainable, and which can cause harm to human and animal health.
This article mainly discusses about the meaning of transgenic crops, its efficacy and the biosafety concerns related to it. The article gives an elaborate note on the international and national conventions, treaties and guidelines which are established to deal with the biosafety concerns of cultivating genetically modified crops. Its still a debatable topic in many countries and hence there is a need to have discussions and consensus on the cultivations of GM crops. This article concludes by giving remarks and suggestions which could be possible solution for balancing the interest of farmers, breeders and seed manufacturing companies.
Keywords: Transgenic crops, Biosafety, Agriculture
