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.
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