The consequences of growing and eating genetically modified organisms could hit South Africans before we’ve had a chance to debate the issue, writes Ann Eveleth
The growing international debate over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is finally filtering into the public domain in South Africa. But information about the pros and cons of this “food revolution” is leaking into the country more slowly than the controversial produce.
If you eat meat fed on maize, if you are a vegetarian, or if you like sushi, you have probably already eaten the fruits of science’s most controversial offering: genetic engineering. And thanks to globalisation and the slow development of government – and global – policy on the matter, you had no way of knowing it.
According to FW Jansen van Rijssen, Deputy Director of Food Control in the Department of Health: “The only genetically modified crops currently being grown [commercially in South Africa] are yellow maize for animal feed and cotton seeds. Cotton oil from these crops may appear in foodstuffs later this year. Genetically modified soybeans are internationally available and may find their way into processed food imported by South Africa.”
Other GMO crops currently in the testing phase in South Africa include soybeans, canola, apples, tomatoes and potatoes, according to Professor Jennifer Thompson of the South African Committee on Gene Experimentation (Sagene), which currently advises the government on proposed new GMO trials.
Yet the Departments of Health and Agriculture, Jansen van Rijssen adds, are still consulting “stakeholders” about whether and when foods containing GMOs should be labelled. Jansen van Rijssen was speaking at the “Gene Technology – Food for Thought” conference hosted in Johannesburg on October 29 by the Consumer Institute of South Africa in a bid to open public debate on the issue.
The conference brought together government officials, scientists, agrochemical producers and consumer and environmental activists in an often heated exchange between proponents and opponents of the new technology.
Genetically-modified organisms are the products of a new kind of biotechnology. Normal breeding practices can cross-breed similar organisms to create a hybrid. But genetic engineering can potentially splice the DNA of a fish into an onion, a cockroach into a tomato, or vice-versa. DNA can be exchanged between plants, animals and micro-organisms.
The aim of this new technology is to give the recipient species a new trait, such as the ability to resist herbicides and pesticides, to grow in abnormal climates, or to be more nutritious.
Proponents of GMO technology, including many scientists, agro-input producers and food suppliers, say GMOs could help defeat world hunger and cure diseases and malnutrition. Opponents, including many other scientists, enviromentalists, and consumer activists, say GMOs can destroy the environment, make people sick, and further concentrate control of world food production in the hands of an ever-shrinking number of multinational corporations.
The promise of gene technology is the stuff of Star Trek: bananas that vaccinate your child against the measles; maize that can grow in Africa’s parched soils and survive drought conditions; and maybe even an orange that can prevent cancer.
The problem, say critics like environmental lawyer Miriam Mayet, is that GMOs have been channelled into the food chain at a pace that has outstripped the ability of governments to either regulate them, or address the concerns of opponents.
GMOs have not, for example, been subjected to environmental impact assessments in South Africa.
“This means that one of the most important ecological safeguards to protect the environment and enforce our constitutional rights has been sacrificed in favour of expediting the application of this technology,” says Mayet.
Apart from the environmental concerns, GMOs raise a number of health concerns.
Dr Harris Steinman of the SA Allergen Society says that chief among these is the effect the new foods will have on the nature and extent of allergic reactions among consumers.
Steinberg says that the past decade has seen a 300% increase in allergies around the world.
Exposure to new foods can reveal new allergies, and the combination of genetic material can lead to “cross-allergenicity” where people allergic to one thing may be allergic to the genetic material that has been added to an item they once ate safely.
Allergic reactions can be extremely mild, or deadly.
An easy, though expensive, way to reduce unexpected allergic reactions would be to label foods containing GMOs, and to test the products as rigorously as are new medicines.
But in the United States, where most GMO products originate, many GMO foods have escaped the labelling requirement through the claim that they are “substantially equivalent” to their natural predecessors.
Vocal environmental and consumer lobbies oppose GMOs in the US and the European Union. But attempts to make labelling internationally mandatory have been bedeviled by US government and producer opposition in the United Nations’ food safety agency, the Codex Alimentarius Commission.
South Africa adopted legislation – the Genetically Modified Organisms Bill – in 1997 to govern GMOs through a council that will oversee safety and other concerns.
The Bill is only scheduled to take effect on December 1, but even this will not make GMO labelling mandatory.
While Sagene currently oversees the application process for local GMO experimentation and the general release of GMO products, South Africa currently has no means of forcing international producers to disclose when they are importing foods containing GMOs.
This policy gap, say consumer critics, opens the way for GMO producers in the global north to seek new markets in the global south as northern consumers increase their demands for GMO-free food.
Michael Hansen, of the US-based Consumer Policy Institute, says the products are being allowed on to the market ahead of appropriate policy platforms around the world because they are being pushed by powerful corporate interests.
“The major actors in the development of genetic engineering in agriculture are the large transnational [pesticide] corporations … There are five major transnational corporations, the so-called ‘Gene Giants’, that are collectively responsible for virtually 100% of the global acreage in transgenic [GMO] crops,” he says.
“Their goal is to maximise profits by controlling the farmer’s choice of seed variety, in effect to lock a farm operation into a particular pest management system that, among other things, includes reliance on proprietary pesticides and on biotechnologies,” adds Hansen.
Most GMOs are bred for resistence to a particular herbicide or pesticide, usually the one produced by the same company.
In spite of this, South Africa’s agriculture specialists are excited about the new technology. Dr Johan Brink of the South African Agricultural Research Council says GMO “is not a silver bullet for achieving food security”, but adds that the new technology “used in conjuction with traditional and conventional agricultural research methods may be a powerful tool in the fight against poverty”.
Brink says Africa missed out on the benefits of the so-called Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s – the introduction of modern hybrids and industrial-scale farming methods into the Third World.
With the population of sub-Saharan Africa expected to double by the year 2020, some argue the continent cannot afford to miss out on GMO technology.
For many developing countries, however, the Green Revolution was a disaster.
Hansen says the cost of initially increased crop yields in south-east Asia was marginalisation of small farms and rural unemployment.
He fears this history will be repeated by the GMO revolution.
Sagene, however, points to successful GMO trials with small farmers in the Makhatini flats as evidence that the new technology will be useful to all farmers.
But Hansen warns that the new technology will be too costly for most subsistence farmers. GMO producers are already seeking patents on a series of “terminator” genes that would stop farmers saving seed for replanting, forcing small farmers to buy new seed each year.
As GMO companies increase their already substantial control of the global seed industry, the ability of farmers – and consumers – to opt out of GMO technology will be curtailed, he adds.