A petitioner campaigning against genetically modified (GM) crops in India iterated on Friday her call for a moratorium on GM crops, outlining concerns about their potential impacts on health and environment made in multiple submissions to the Supreme Court since 2005.

“It is hoped that our government will recognise the dangers of genetically modified organisms… and impose a moratorium on all (GM) crops,” said Aruna Rodrigues, the lead petitioner in the public interest litigation filed in 2005 seeking to prevent commercialisation of GM crops in India.

A series of Supreme Court hearings ended on January 18 with the Centre defending the field trials of GM mustard and arguing that GM crops would be critical to addressing emerging challenges in agriculture and ensuring food security, a viewpoint shared by sections of scientists.

Rodrigues and her co-petitioners have told the Supreme Court that a technical expert committee (TEC), appointed by the apex court in 2012, had opposed and suggested a ban on herbicide-tolerant (HT) GM crops such as the GM mustard currently under scientific assessment in India. The petitioners have argued that HT-GM crops are “unsustainable” and “unsuitable” for India and that non-GM alternatives are available in the country.

“The TEC (had) recommended a double bar on GM mustard — for being an HT crop and also in a centre of mustard diversification and origin,” Rodrigues said in her statement released to the media on Friday. “India is a hotspot of diversity, including a secondary centre of origin of rapeseed mustard with over 9,000 accessions in our gene bank. With a commercialised GM crop, contamination is certain.”

Rodrigues also claimed that GM crops are based on laboratory techniques not used in traditional breeding and selection and pose potential risks to human health and the environment. “GM contamination of the natural environment is an outstanding concern,” she said.

Sections of scientists have consistently challenged the petitioners’ claims. A plant biologist at the University of Delhi who was involved in research to develop the GM mustard believes much of the opposition to GM crops appears based on ideology rather than evidence.

A senior scientist with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research had two years ago pointed out that GM crops were being grown in over 30 countries and there was no evidence of adverse effects from the use of GM crops from anywhere.

A 2016 open letter signed by over 160 Nobel laureates — including 52 chemistry laureates and 58 medicine laureates — had said scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and food improved through biotechnology to be as safe as those derived from other methods of production.

Rodrigues, in her statement, claimed there is “serious and proven” conflict of interest among our regulators — the Union science and technology ministry, the agriculture ministry and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, all of which promote GM crops research.

She said the submissions to the court contained evidence of a “deeply flawed regulatory process, international obfuscation or facts, including yield data, and real environmental and health risks.