By Vandana Shiva Citizens have a right to health and environmental safety. Hence the existing biosafety law needs to be upheld. While the country has been preoccupied with the Indo-US nuclear deal, there is indifference to the US-India agricultural deal, under which India is being pressurised to dismantle her biosafety regulations to put genetically engineered organisms (GMOs) on a fast track. GMOs are transgenic organisms made by introducing genes across species boundaries. Thus Bt cotton, Bt rice or Bt brinjal have genes for a toxin taken from soil bacteria and put into the food crop. In addition, GMOs use anti-biotic resistance markets, viral promoters and cancer genes as vectors. These new genes can have risks for public health and the environment. Ensuring safety in the context of genetically engineered organisms is referred to as biosafety. India has one of the most sophisticated laws of biosafety in the world. The rules for the manufacture, use/import/export and storage of hazardous micro-organisms/GMOs or cells, 1989, is notified under the Environmental Protection Act, 1986 (EPA). This is a science-based, public interest oriented legislation, created long before the commercialisation of GMOs and crops and long before the International Biosafety Protocol of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, came into force. The genetic engineering industry, in particular Monsanto, which controls 95 per cent of all GM seeds sold worldwide, first tried to bypass India's biosafety law when it started field trials without the approval of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the statutory body for biosafety regulation. That is why, when Monsanto- Mahyco started field trials of Bt cotton in 1997-98 without approval of the GEAC, we initiated a case in the Supreme Court. As a result, commercialisation of Bt cotton was delayed up to 2002. The latest attempt at biosafety deregulation by the biotechnology department is to float the proposal for a National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority (NBRA) and the National Biotechnology Regulatory Bill, 2008. The false argument being used is that biotechnology regulation is currently spread over multiple Acts. This is not true. There is only one Act, the rules for GMOs under the EPA, regulating GMOs in all fields. It is also being argued that the NBRA will promote public confidence. The public will not and cannot have confidence in an industry driven, centralised, undemocratic, unaccountable law and institution floated by the agency which is a biotechnology promoting agency and has done everything in the last decade to undermine citizens rights and public interest. This is a direct attempt to replace India's excellent biosafety law with industry-friendly legislation, and to replace the GEAC as a biosafety regulation authority with the NBRA to promote biotechnology, not biosafety. The proposed authority undermines the regulatory role of diverse ministries and the rights of states and districts. The GEAC consists of members from different ministries, agencies and departments, as well as experts