Posted on 23-9-2002

G.M. Or Death

As African and international outrage grows over the use of food aid as a GM
marketing tool by the US-controlled World Food Programme, the New Scientist
reveals an incredible seven years history of unauthorised GM dumping. The
now exposed Director of the World Food Programme, James Morris, is hitting
back with a ludicrous propaganda campaign for the biotech industry,
claiming that 'Biotech food can save millions of African lives'. Its easy
to make such claims when you have the power to deny people access to non-GM
food.

Why is is that such claims about feeding the world with GM crops are made
only by the world's main producers of GM crops and not by the recipients of
food aid? Why is it that the World Food Programme has had to hide the
dumping of GM crops from the recipients of 'aid' for so long ? Why is it
that the World Food Programme has consistently bought unwanted GM crops
from the USA in preference to non-GM surplusses from poor nations near
famine regions?

In 1998 the food and agriculture representatives for Africa jointly stated
that they "strongly object that the image of the poor and hungry from our
countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a
technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly, nor economically
beneficial to us". Four years later these corporations, through the World
Food Programme, are giving Africa their ultimatum: "GM or Death".

1. U.N. is slipping modified food into aid. (New Scientist, 19 Sept 02)

2. Biotech food can save millions of African lives. (James Morris,
International Herald Tribune, 19 Sept 02)

For the full story of America's international campaign to force GM food and
crops on the world see:
Force-Feeding the World www.ukabc.org/forcefeeding.htm Africa Resists US
Biotech Onslaught at Earth Summit
www.ukabc.org/wssd_5.htm#b16


UN is slipping modified food into aid
by Fred Pearce, New Scientist, 19 Sept 2002

THE UN has been delivering genetically modified food as emergency aid for
the past seven years, New Scientist has learned. And it has done so without
telling the countries concerned. Its admission makes a mockery of African
governments' recent efforts to reject GM food aid. Countries getting GM
food aid in the past two years - often in breach of national regulations -
include the Philippines, India, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua and
Ecuador, as well as many African countries.

The UN World Food Programme told New Scientist this week that its staff are
under no obligation to alert authorities and have made no attempt to
distinguish between GM and conventional cereals since 1996, when GM crops
first became part of US grain stocks destined for aid. Half of world food
aid comes from the US, and a quarter of the nation's maize is genetically
modified. "We do business with 83 countries in the world," WFP director
James Morris said last week. The news comes amid allegations that the US is
exploiting southern Africa's drought to drum up markets for its large
unsold stocks of GM maize and soya. Saliem Fakir, director of the South
African branch of the IUCN (World Conservation Union), calls the offer of
GM food aid to the region a moral trap. "Africa is just a pawn in the US's
attempt to break the European Union's position on GM foods," he says.

The UN estimates that 14 million people in southern Africa will need food
aid in the coming months. Zambian president levy Mwanawasa angrily rejected
GM food aid as "poison" earlier this month, but has been forced to admit
that his citizens have been eating GM aid on and off since the mid-1990s.
Zambia's neighbours Zimbabwe and Malawi have now accepted GM maize on
condition that it is milled to prevent farmers planting it in their fields.

The WFP, the world's largest supplier. of food aid, uses mostly North
American grain. "We think the starving would rather eat GM grain than
dirt," said spokesman Trevor Rowe this week. But African governments argue
there is plenty of GM-free maize available on world markets that could be
supplied as aid.

Independent aid groups are being caught up in the row. Most turn A blind
eye to GM cereals in their food aid, says anti-GM campaigner Patrick
Mulvany of the Intermediate Technology Development Group in Britain. A
recent study found that none has formal policies banning GM cereals. The
WFP says it sees no need to warn about GM material in food aid. It says,
"We are just the middle man. If the food meets the national standards of
the donors, we accept it." But Mulvany says that since 1996, most poor
countries have made clear in negotiations on international rules for GM
trade that they want to be told in advance about GM imports, and many have
announced outright bans. "The WFP would have been aware of this. If it was
not informing recipient countries after that, it should be severely
criticised."

Though health scares grab local headlines, southern African countries have
a real fear that once GM grain is planted it will contaminate domestic
grain fed to livestock destined for European markets. "African livestock
commands a high price because it is organically raised," says Andrew Clegg
of the ELI-funded Namibia Human Resources Development Programme. "This
market strength will vanish if there is even the slightest suspicion that
products can no longer be guaranteed GM-free."

Recent research in Mexico found that GM maize imported from the US to make
tortillas has been planted and is now contaminating fields far and wide. So
far as New Scientist has been able to establish, no similar tests have been
done on maize growing in countries that have received food aid.


Comment on International Herald Tribune article 'Biotech food can save
millions of African lives' from Patrick Mulvany Food, Security Policy
Adviser ITDG, (Intermediate Technology Development Group):

"James Morris (WFP Director) admits that WFP has been shipping GM foods in
food aid for the past 7 years. This story surfaced as a result of tip-offs
from within WFP during the Johannesburg summit. After a period of denial,
pressed by a New Scientist journalist, the WFP has decided to come out. The
WFP now admits unashamedly that it has been shipping the stuff since it was
first commercialised in 1995/6. (See Int Herald Tribune article below).


Lift a tragic blockade on aid

JOHANNESBURG Who has not now seen images in the media of the bone-thin
children, the withered fields, and the empty store shelves in Southern
Africa? The lines of desperate people waiting for food aid stretch longer
each day. In rural villages there is a growing sense of panic. The regions'
food crisis, spawned by natural disasters, the impact of AIDS and failed
economic policies, is deepening with the approach of the long hot summer in
sub-Saharan Africa. The next harvest is at least four months away. We will
soon enter what humanitarian agencies call the "lean season," and without
decisive action millions of lives are threatened.

It is therefore all the more tragic that the World Food Program's campaign
to feed 12.8 million people in Southern Africa at risk of starvation has
been subverted by an emotional and often uninformed debate about
genetically modified food. At the very time that the suffering of the
people is rising to monumental proportions, the criticism of biotech food
products reached fever pitch. Genetically modified became virtually
overnight a touchstone for misinformation and rhetorical fury out of touch
with modern science.

Why has this happened? The World Food Program has been distributing food
with some biotech content in Africa and around the world for seven years.
In doing so, we observe the food safety guidelines of the Codex
Alimentarius, the principle UN body dealing with food safety. All our food
aid is certified as fit for human consumption in the donor country - so the
food our beneficiaries eat in Africa is the very same food eaten
daily in cities like New York and Toronto.

Amid the uproar over the past few weeks, the World Food Program has worked
with many governments to try to overcome their food shortages. External
food aid simply must be part of the solution because stocks in southern
Africa are very low and heavy buying would drive up food prices, bringing
added misery to the lives of the poor people throughout the region.
Three-quarters of the food aid already on hand in the region has come from
the United States and is likely to have some genetically modified content.
Biotech foods are readily accepted in a growing number of countries. They
are produced and eaten in the United States, Canada, China, Argentina,
Australia, the European Union and, increasingly, in South Africa itself.
Recently published estimates are that two-thirds of processed food products
in Canada have some genetically modified content. Yet some needy countries
are still reluctant to accept biotech food.

What are their concerns? Some center on the environment and trade.
Accidental cross-pollination of biotech maize with varieties now grown has
been raised as an issue. But if governments are concerned they can always
opt to mill the maize. The Food and Agriculture Organization believes there
is less of a biodiversity issue for southern Africa, as existing maize
varieties are not native but introduced. Another concern is possible
European Union restrictions on African exports of livestock fed with
genetically modified maize, but EU representatives say the real problem is
the prevalence of foot and mouth disease. In fact, genetically modified
commodities are routinely fed to livestock within the EU itself.

If the World Food Program cannot give biotech food to countries in southern
Africa, it will have substantially less to offer in the weeks ahead and we
are running out of time to appeal for more funds from donors. The added
demand for cash donations will mean the related emergency operations of our
colleagues at the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the FAO will all be
shortchanged as donors divert more cash for
urgent food needs.

The anti-biotech food advocates are free to argue that people should starve
while the scientific jury is out (as hundreds of millions of people in
other parts of the world are contentedly eating genetically modified
foods). But is the jury really still out when it comes to the safety of
biotech foods? Naturally, all genetically modified food products need to be
judged on a case-by-case basis. But all scientific risk assessments thus
far show that the biotech foods now on the market are every bit as safe to
eat as their conventional counterparts. In an effort to calm the
increasingly irrational debate, the EU Commission recently cited 81
separate studies that support this view.

Never, in nearly 40 years of operations, has the World Food Program
confronted a blockade of its food aid in peace. We will try our best to
save lives, working with recipient country governments, a wide spectrum of
donors and our partner nongovernmental organizations. But we urge the
political leaders in Southern Africa to weigh the scientific facts. The
fate of millions of hungry people lies in their hands.