CONFLICTING PARADIGMS OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS AND THEIR REGULATION IN INDIA

Abstract

Genetic engineering, the technology used to alter the genetic material of plants, animals and microorganisms, carries both promise and uncertainty in roughly equal measure. Genetically modified crops and foods remain the subject of sustained controversy touching food security, poverty alleviation, intellectual property, consumer choice, and human and environmental safety, a controversy that persists more than two decades after the first genetically modified products entered the market because neither their benefits nor their risks have been conclusively established. This paper examines the conflicting scientific and regulatory paradigms surrounding genetically modified organisms with particular reference to India, situating India's regulatory architecture against the international legal framework supplied by the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, and against the contrasting regulatory models of the European Union and the United States. It traces the sustained judicial supervision genetically modified organisms have received in India through Aruna Rodrigues v. Union of India and the Supreme Court's 2024 split verdict in Gene Campaign v. Union of India concerning genetically modified mustard, and examines the statutory framework governing genetically modified food under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 and the draft 2022 labelling regulations. The paper argues that India's approach, having produced only a single commercially approved genetically modified crop in over two decades despite sustained scientific and commercial pressure, reflects not regulatory failure but a considered, judicially reinforced precautionary posture that the country's food security imperatives make difficult, but not necessarily wrong, to sustain.