Please find below a representative sampling of submissions from January, 2003. Some submissions have been edited for length. Only those submissions which were not accompanied by a name, location, and valid e-mail address have been omitted.

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I strongly believe that Corporates and MNCs have a great role to play in educating farmers, consumers and end users about the benefits of biotechnology. They should try to increase awareness about advantages of the technology such as high yield, disease and pest resistance, high nutritional value and extended shelf life quality of GM foods. Any fears, doubts and potential risks about the technology should be genuinely addressed and cleared. On the farmer’s perspective advantages in cost reduction, productivity increase, reduced cost of pesticide usage and safer environment should be highlighted. Farmer’s seminars, workshops and discussions would help in this direction. Reasons for failures of biotech seeds (As reported in press) in some farmer’s fields should be honestly addressed. Real causes to be investigated. Corporates also should try to reduce the cost of biotech seed to encourage many farmers to adopt to this new technology. The technology component of the seed cost (In Bt cotton seeds technology fee is IRS 1200) should be reduced. This way millions of poor farmers would be able to afford and reap the benefits of new technology. With respect to consumers and end users fears about food safety, human health and possible side effects in the future should be cleared. Corporates should meet labelling requirements and provide enough information about GM foods so that consumers would be able to make better choice when they find GM foods in supermarket shelves. This way consumers would develop trust in what corporates claim as GM foods are safe to eat. Corporates need to convince and change the mind set of some policy makers, decision makers and environmental activists to understand and realise many benefits of biotechnology. The real problems of present day like, alleviation of hunger and poverty can be reduced through applications of biotechnology. Vertical increase in productivity can be obtained without bringing additional area under cultivation. By educating farmers, consumers policy makers and green activists about benefits of biotechnology, corporates would be better understood and they can also contribute to the socio-economic development of the market place they are operating in.

The action of Monsanto to give training from the school level is an important step for modernization of Indian agriculture. In many cases it has been observed, even though the farmers are supplied with high quality of seeds and technology, due to inadequacy of knowledge they fail to implement them properly. So the technical education from school level will help them a lot in overcoming the problem

In much of Africa where I am coming from there has been a sustained thinking on a part of the general population and especially the traditional farmers on really what clear motives of the large biotech corporates are there behind the banner of food technology. Since this anti-biotech slogan has been largely engineered or by far condoned by the state governments, and since most of the people in Africa are still relying upon their traditional agrarian system, it has been far more difficult on our part as science students to convince the people to balance up between the two extremes. And this I feel has largely been exarcebated by the fact that so many biotech corporates have been quite cynical or deliberately ignorant in understanding these somewhat genuine fears that are coming from these traditional farmers about the entire issue. What will be their fate as people and culture if they were to accept these revolutionary methods of food productivity? What will happen to their traditional ways of life that have been passed upon them for centuries? What about their land and its future sustenance for their own livelihoods? Who will provide them with the revolutionary biotech engineered seeds? On the other part we as students and academics in Africa are wondering why is it that still these biotech muli-corporate firms are not investing much and in genuine partnership with countries and regions rich in those biotech resources and why is it that the emphasis has always been largely made on appropriating intellectual property rights on biodiversity and actually hampering any indigenously oriented attempt that would have been done by those countries within which those biotech resources originate? A case of either biopiracy or bioimperialism? Multi-corporates have to come out clean on these issues. They should start transferring their full technical knowlgde equally and fairly with the poor countries and from where the rich natural resources of biodiversity originate. The time of "screw-driver" technology must come to an end and the benefits must be mutual without exploitation or deceits. I find hard to understand why is it that makes these US$66 Billion industry still ignores these genuine fears and complaints. Who is to blame if countries like Zambia or Malawi,in spite of the good intents of the GMC corporates, decide to reject such technology?

Wether Bt. Cotton plant is pesticide producing plant? If yes, why and how? How Bt cotton can increase yield.

I agreed with the topic given under consideration. Developing biotechnology has entered in almost every field i.e. human, agriculture, environment etc. huge genomic study and emegence of bioinformatics has correlated biotechnoly with computer. To speed-up the research in biotechnology, computer plays a major role and after all to share the research study,Biotechnology will definately play a mojor role in Information Technology .

As the corporates are responsible to a large extent for the development and well being of a particular area, I think that they are particularly responsible for the awareness and availability of the Biotech products. The reliability of the Biotech products is being continuously tested by the scientists and we know that no invention in the crop resistance to pests and diseases can have an unlimited life. After a few years the variety is bound to be susceptible to that particular pest or disease. This makes the work of corporates more difficult to make the awareness and availability program faster, so that the company can gain the maximum before the variety becomes susceptible. On the other hand, the corporates are making the presentations at important places where they are responsible for taking a stand on the ongoing debate on GM crops. They have to make it very clear in the minds of people that how the GM crops are going to help the developing countries.

The general public are suspicious of GM food. If fragrant, ripe and juicy apples are given to me (which I really love) and then told that these are GM, I would think twice before even touching it. The corporates therefore have a major role to play in educating the public. How to go about it? Obviously, there is no single method. But the best way would be for the corporates to keep themselves out of controversies becuase that has been doing the most damage.

A lot of farmers have apprehensions and most of these are whether biotechnology will have adverse effect on marketabilty of their produce. And this is because people feel it might be unsafe to consume foods prepared from such crops.So I feel more than companies as monsanto which have direct stake in biotechnology,the companies that are likely to benifit from such crops such as pepsi,lever,heinz and many more should start conducting trials regarding safety of such products and telling people about how safe or unsafe these foods are.I feel that will give credibility to the claims made by biotech firms such as yours