The great escape

Indian farmers will soon be allowed to sell genetically engineered cotton.
Huge field trials of the cotton, which makes a toxin lethal to pest larvae, took
place last year at 40 sites across India. The government, which funded many of
the trials, had planned to destroy the produce, but it emerged in October that
some had already been sold and was impossible to recall. Manju Sharma, who heads
the Indian government’s Department of Biotechnology, has now told the BBC that
he will soon authorise the sale of the rest of the cotton, but gave no date.