Monday, May 26, 2003
Bush Wants East Africa to Allow GM Foods
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
THE US is pressing East African countries to accept imports of genetically modified (GM) foods and to move forward with the production of their own GM crops.
President George W. Bush and the top US trade official, Robert Zoellic, both argued last week that African countries could enhance their food security if barriers to GM farm products were removed.
Africa’s agricultural productivity could be dramatically increased through use of "new high-yield bio-crops," Bush said in a speech on May 21. The American president blamed the European Union for impeding US efforts to promote biotechnology agriculture in Africa.
Citing an EU moratorium on approval of genetically modified foods, Bush said, "this has caused many African nations to avoid investing in biotechnologies for fear that their products will be shut out of European markets."
Mr Zoellic, the US Trade Representative, pointed specifically to Uganda’s refusal to allow tests of a genetically modified banana designed to resist disease.
Half of Uganda’s banana crop has been destroyed during the past 20 years by fungal diseases and root-eating worms. Preliminary work on a GM banana potentially immune to these threats has been carried out at a laboratory in Belgium. But the Ugandan government, worried about the EU’s reaction, has not permitted scientists to conduct field tests of the banana in Uganda.
Kenya appears more receptive to claims that biotech agriculture can help prevent famine by increasing crops’ resistance to drought and disease.
Kenyan agricultural researchers are reportedly experimenting with GM versions of maize, sweet potatoes, cassava and cotton. And Agriculture Minister Kipruto Kirwa has said that the government would embrace biotechnology to increase food production.
But at a summit of the seven poorest countries held in Nairobi last month, Kenya's position on GM foods was strongly criticised, with delegates from other African countries expressing suspicion that Kenya's position was influenced by the US biotechnology giant, Monsanto, which they said had "an unholy, secretive relationship with leading researchers at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari)."
A leading Zambian biochemist, Dr Mwananyanda Lewanika, said that this suspicion was fuelled by the fact that the Biotechnology Trust Africa was funded by Monsanto and that Kenyan scientists had criticised the Zambian government on the position it took on GM foods during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg last year.
A report carried by Knight Ridder, a US news agency, in January said that Kenyan scientists have been investigating whether GM maize imported from a research centre in Mexico could withstand the effects of the stem borer, a pest that destroys 400,000 tonnes of Kenyan maize per year.
Kenya's Assistant Environment Minister, Prof Wangari Maathai, however, said that the circumstances under which Kari researchers developed and released some genetically modified crops two years ago were still unexplained.
The Greens lobby in Europe says that the aggressive campaign to have African countries accept GM foods, even though their safety was questionable, was part of a conspiracy to cripple the ability of poor countries to feed themselves.
"This conspiracy has taken the form of the introduction of GM seeds," said Ms Christine Andela, a delegate from Cameroon at the Nairobi summit. "Propagated by gene giants, Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer," she said, "such seeds are fast reducing Africa’s genetic diversity that is crucial to food security and food sovereignty." The Greens recalled the proclamations of US Senator Hubert Humphrey at the height of the controversy surrounding the US' GM food aid to Zambia. Humphrey said: "–to get people to lean on you and be dependent on you in terms of their co-operation with you, it seems to me that food dependence would be terrific."
They hailed Zambians for rejecting GM food aid and for subjecting recommendations made by the World Bank and the IMF to a national debate.
In July 2002, both Zambia and Zimbabwe said that in spite of a major food crisis in both countries, neither would accept GM aid (maize in particular) as part of international humanitarian assistance.
Zimbabwe subsequently said it could accept GM food aid, provided that it was milled prior to distribution, but Zambia said in October that its total ban on the importation of GM foods would stand.
In Kenya, the US news agency said that officials ensured that the experimental GM crops remained isolated from non-modified varieties and did not make their way to the market.
In 2001, the US donated 94,000 tonnes of maize and 19,300 tonnes of corn-soy milk to alleviate hunger in drought-stricken parts of Kenya. About one-third of the US maize crop and 80 per cent of US soybeans are grown from genetically modified seeds.
Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe will accept US maize only if it is milled prior to distribution.
And even as Kenya was welcoming shipments of US soy in 2001, Ugandan Customs officials at Entebbe Airport were confiscating imports of American soy flour intended to help feed 60,000 Aids sufferers.
The Ugandan government indicated at the time that it took the action due to concerns that the shipment might contain GM soy. The impounded commodity was eventually released on the understanding that all future shipments would conform to Ugandan labelling standards and regulations.
Many respected research institutes, including the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, say there is no evidence that GM food is harmful to human health or to the environment. Government monitoring agencies in the US have cleared several types of GM seeds, and Americans are eating increasing quantities of foods produced through biotech methods.
But large-scale farming interests in the US are complaining about the economic damage they are suffering due to the European Union’s barriers against import of GM products.
The agriculture lobby has urged President Bush and the US Congress to force Europe to end its five-year-old moratorium on approval of bio-engineered food.
At stake are not only direct US sales to European countries but also sales that American farmers could make to African and Asian nations, were it not for fears of EU retaliation against countries that accept GM imports from the US.
Washington recently filed a legal action with the World Trade Organisation, seeking an end to the EU moratorium. Twelve nations gave formal support to the US move.
According to some reports, Kenya was expected to join the case on the side of the US, but Kenya is not included among the 12 countries that have endorsed Washington’s action.
Meanwhile, a Kenyan economist says it is time African governments accepted GMOs.
"If Americans are eating GM foods, why should Africans die of hunger even in cases where donors have made the same food available to them?" posed Dr Dingu'ri Mwaniki, a World Bank consultant who is also the managing director of Coda Consulting Group.
Additional reporting by John Mbaria and Chris Mburu
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