Hyderabad -- A scientist of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has alleged that "untested genetically modified food" was supplied to the survivors of the cyclone in Orissa last year. "Soyabean distributed by an aid agency was genetically modified," Dr Umesh Kapil told the 33rd annual meeting of the Nutrition Society of India in a symposium on the genetically modified food.

"What was more alarming was that the food was not tested even in the country of its origin," he claimed alleging "Indians are being used as guinea pigs to test such foods". Senior scientist and chairperson of the session, Dr C Varadarajan too agreed that genetically modified food did find its way to Orissa's cyclone victims. Dr RP Sharma of the Department of Biotechnology, who presented a paper on bio-safety of genetically modified foods, said that such an incident might have taken place "as we have no mechanism to check which is genetically modified food and which is not".

Scientists were divided over the issue of genetically modified foods. While a section feels that there are no studies on the long term effects of GM foods, another says scientists and public were being too `alarmistic' about it.

"Here is an opportunity to fight hunger and malnutrition using GM foods and we raise alarm. Let us look at the issue positively," a senior scientist said. Earlier, presenting a paper on `Bio-safety in GM foods', Dr Sharma said people are concerned over `genetic pollution' but many of the fears are due to lack of transparency. "We are putting too many issues in onebasket," he said, but admitted that there was no proper mechanism in place to tackle the issue. Steps are being taken in this direction by the Center, he said. There are also concerns on super weeds and super pests, he said adding it has now been proved that there has been a horizontal flow of genes between species adding this has raised new issues. In the Indian context, development of GM foods should be preferably confined to dietary components such as cereals, legumes, roots and tubers, consumed in large quantities by the poor.