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Much
controversy surrounds the safety of GM foods
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Call
it biotech foods, designer foods or simply genetically modified,
GM foods. It is food configured and improved in laboratories with
the intention to feed the hungry millions of the world.
But
the food that was intended to be a sumptuous idea for humanity has
turned into a bitter pill that is generating great concern
occasioning an uproar particularly in Europe and in the developing
world.
Despite
the need to produce more food to feed and sustain the starving
millions in the world, this high-tech agrarian revolution seems to
be attracting a great deal of interest but for the wrong reasons.
Growing
Public Concern
Research
now shows that popularity for GM foods is at its lowest ebb, with
at least 70 per cent of consumers saying they were not in favor of
these transgenic foods.
The
growing public opposition to what should have been a great
innovation meant to ensure enough food on the table for all
humanity is causing concern, and with it what the future holds for
GM-foods.
Agronomists
and other experts are casting doubts that the farming technology
was a good idea after all.
New
evidence points to the fact that the technology, although
promising, fell short of providing conclusive evidence that
transgenic foods had far-reaching human and environmental impacts.
Theories
also abound about grave health safety standards likely to be
contracted from the new food technology, which has gained
acceptance in the United States, Argentina, Canada and more
recently China.
Conservationists
are also up in arms expressing their rejection to crop gene
technology. In the aftermath, the issue has now virtually left the
world divided into two opposing camps.
The
camps pit the United States against the European Union. Reports
say Washington is thoroughly frustrated with the EU’s four-year
moratorium on the new biotech products.
US
farmers mourn that the policy by the EU has cost them hundreds of
millions of dollars in sales each year.
Africa
Prefers Starvation to Donated Grain
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Zimbabwe
prefers starvation to accepting donated grain
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Some
African countries have been reluctant to accept GM food aid from
the United States saying apart from health safety fears, the grain
was likely to be used as seed and affect future exports.
Perhaps
it was after Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his Zambian
counterpart, Mr. Levy Mwanawasa, lifted the lid on the controversy
surrounding GM foods, that other African nations started to
recognize the dangers inherent in biotechnology food products.
Both
Mugabe and Mwanawasa, whose countries have suffered long periods
of food shortages due to prolonged drought, shocked many after
they rejected food donations from the United States.
To
the casual eye, the two African statesmen were being unrealistic,
even insensitive to the plight of their dying country folks.
However,
the message they seemed to be sending to the US government and
other pro-GM food technologists was that Africans would no longer
be so gullible as to accept any type of food even if it was a free
offer.
Mugabe
was vehement that his country would not accept donated grain from
the United States even as his countrymen were to starve to death
because of a ravaging famine in the African country.
A
few countries in Africa, including South Africa, Namibia and
Nigeria, have been cautious about wholesale acceptance of the GM
food regimes.
Risky
Manna
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African
governments fear their hopes of exporting maize to Europe could be
hindered
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Debate
about the safety and utility of genetically modified crops
continues to intensify and pits mainly the EU market vis a vis the
United States.
Claims
that GM crops portend enormous environmental benefits due to the
fact that the technology reduces the use of pesticides have been
made.
Yet,
others contend genetic engineering of crops- which is plant
breeding at the molecular level- is not some kind of witchcraft,
but rather the progressive harnessing of the forces of nature to
the benefit of feeding the human race.
Analysts
argue that much as this could be a significant move by the
developed world to ensure food self-sufficiency, there is a catch
in all the manna that is dropping from the West.
There
are schools of thought that opine that there is no conclusive
evidence that GM foods or crops are safe for humans.
Biotechnologists
argue that there could be some risks of unintended outcomes.
President
Mwanawasa was recently quoted as saying he had been told by
anti-biotechnology lobbyists that donated American maize is
poisonous because it contains genetically modified kernels.
The
Zambian leader said he was willing to risk thousands of additional
starvation deaths rather than accept maize donations from the
United States.
Other
African leaders, whose people face famine because of long spells
of drought occasioned by lack of rains, are unwilling to accept
genetically modified maize because its pollen will contaminate
local corn varieties, with dire environmental consequences.
The
fear by the African governments to go GM foods is compounded by
the row between the US and the European Union over mass production
and sales of such crops.
As
pressure continues to mount on Europe to open its markets to
genetically modified crops, African governments are at a dilemma
of what to do.
African
governments say they do not want to go GM foods for fear that
their hope to export maize to Europe in the future could be
stillborn.
Their
fear arises from the fact that their products could be rejected by
the European market if genetically modified foods are allowed to
enter their countries.
Pressure
by the United States on the EU to open its markets might come to
bear fruit by year’s end. It will then be left to consumers to
decide what is good for them.
Biotech
foods will need to be adequately and comprehensively branded or
labeled in the future to be accepted by consumers.
Haroun Wandalo
is the “East African Standard” Kisumu Bureau
Chief. Your comments and suggestions will be forwarded to
him by contacting the editor at: ScienceTech@islam-online.net.
