LONDON - Environment pressure group Greenpeace said on Monday it welcomed news that leading crop technology company Bayer had pulled out of genetic modification trials in India to focus on conventional plant breeding.
But Bayer -- which earlier this year ended development trials of GM maize and oilseed rape in Britain and Australia -- countered that it had ended the Indian trials of GM cabbage, cauliflower, aubergine, tomato and mustard seed some time ago.
"These projects were discontinued a couple of years ago due to changes in our global research strategy," Bayer said on a letter to Greenpeace which the environment group released to the media on Monday.
"Overall, Bayer Cropscience India will continue to focus in the coming years on its conventional plant breeding research program," said the letter, signed by the company's head of corporate communications in India.
At its headquarters in Germany, a company spokesman said the GM business came to Bayer from its acquisition of Aventis CropScience in 2002, and it had never had any GM products on the market in India.
But Greenpeace noted the pullout decision had not been publicized and said the news would be a major blow to the pro-GM lobby.
"The significance of Bayer's decision cannot be overestimated," it said in a statement. "Bayer's retreat from GM research is part of a larger pattern of retreat in the global GM industry." (Additional reporting by Sitaraman Shankar in Frankfurt)
Story by Sitaraman Shankar
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
