The biosafety mess

According to a report in this newspaper earlier this month, Pakistan is once again gearing up to revive its National Biotechnology Commission. The development was announced by the Federal Minister for Science & Technology at the National Dialogue on Agricultural Biotechnology, where he emphasized that “Pakistan must take advantage of the latest advancements in biotech.”

This sounds like good news. Afterall, if the country is to address the gaps in its low value adding agricultural GDP and serve the food security requirements of a growing population, it has little choice but to look towards biotech.

Yet, in 35 years since the country ratified the international protocols on Biodiversity Convention - and the supplementary Cartagena and Nagoya protocols – Pakistan has seen commercialization of only two biotech events, both for cotton.

Meanwhile, other countries in the region such as the erstwhile eastern arm Bangladesh are already planning beyond traditional cash crops on to fruits and vegetables. By 2014, its government had successfully commercialized bt. eggplant (brinjal) – part of staple national diet – while resolving the longstanding challenge of eggplant crop failure due to pest attacks.

What’s holding Pakistan back? According to the news report, the federal minister hinted that the government must provide a conducive legal environment for investment in biotech. While the change in attitude is welcome, the requisite regulatory framework is in fact not lacking in the country. As mentioned above, the country became signatory of UN-led initiatives on biodiversity protection way back in 1994. Back then, the world was still witnessing the roll out of very first biotech events – that too in USA.

Since then, national framework for biotechnology has only seen expansion. The country came up with Biosafety Rules in 2005 that govern all aspects of research, testing, trade, and commercial release of gene-based technology involving living modified organisms. Later that year, these rules were followed up with Biosafety Guidelines notified under the Environmental Protection Act of 1997; and made possible the retrospective commercialization of country’s only two biotech events for cotton in 2010.

While the Biosafety Rules established the procedure for technology commercialization, intellectual property rights over biotech skipped its purview. The protracted battles that followed marketing and subsequent failure of bt. cotton due to lack of technology ownership created space for seed IP laws. To this end, 2015 became the seminal year that saw amendment in the Seed Act, followed with successful legislation of the Plant Breeders Rights Act the next year (For more, read “Seed IP laws: setting the context”, published in this space on December 20, 2019).

If anything, Pakistan has a highly developed legal structure governing biotechnology. In fact, it is rich that a country which has seen only two biotech events has at least three federal ministries passively battling over jurisdictional niceties – MNFS&R being the third and most potent force. Never mind the legal voices raising concern that federal ambit over agricultural technology is trespassing into a provincial subject in the aftermath of Eighteenth amendment and devolution.

Is there then a more mundane explanation available for Pakistan lagging behind in biotech? Say, for example, the underfunded and under-resourced R&D and lack of policy-level interest in technological research? Not so, according to a USDA-FAS report from 2018. Pakistan has at least 41 biotech traits at various stages of experimentation and field trials at various public-sector research institutes, in addition to R&D by both domestic and multinational seed companies.

Crops under field trials include both traditional cash crops such as cotton and sugarcane, to grains such as wheat, rice, maize, and chickpeas; vegetables such as potato, – and wait for it – tobacco (among many others)! Technologies under consideration include insect-resistant to herbicide-, viral-, fungal- and bacterial-resistant varieties, to salt-, drought- and rust-tolerant traits.

Back to the original question then: where exactly is the hold up? Despite best intentions to seek a complicated response to a complex issue, the answer takes us back to Occam’s razor: that is, the simplest explanation is [unfortunately] the right one in this case.

The delay – or less charitably, the failure – to successfully commercialize biotechnology in the country lays squarely at the altar of the bureaucratic labyrinth that is federal government. Take the case study of bt. corn, which after several years of successful field trials and green-light by what should be the go-to federal technical body on crop science – National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC) – was finally blocked in a stroke of wisdom by babus who felt it posed a danger to national interests.

Meanwhile, the country is happily raking in a bloating soybean seed import bill, while everyone and their aunt has turned a blind eye to its obvious GMO origins. This is not to raise questions on the safety of imported soybean – after all, it’s possibly the most-suited input for poultry meal – but to point out that compared to varieties researched domestically, the imported ones undergo through no safety trials at Port & Customs (beyond a dainty chemical spray by Plant Protection Department – as if to kill its GM-efficacy!).

Given this context, if the federal Science & Tech minister wishes to add another commission to a plethora of already existing protocols that oversee biotechnology, so be it. But if the Science Ministry truly means to bring the biotech revolution to country’s farms, it may be better off by lobbying the federal cabinet to simplify the rules and procedures governing technology approval.