An American food relief expert urged the Zimbabwean government to drop restrictions on the import of corn that could not be certified free of genetically modified material, saying the food was the only way to avert starvation in the country.
The US corn was safe, Roger Winter, a senior USAid official who visited food relief distribution centres in northeastern Zimbabwe, said on Tuesday.
”It is the same food that Americans eat every day. It is the same food that has been approved by our Environmental Protection Agency,” he said.
”We want to help in this food emergency but we don’t have a substitute (for the corn) and the volumes are not available anywhere else.”
Aid agencies have warned that almost half the country faces starvation as a famine looms, caused in part by President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land redistribution program to transfer the country’s white-owned farms to landless blacks. The violence and chaos accompanying the seizures has brought commercial agriculture to a standstill.
Erratic rainfall has also contributed to the food shortage.
The US government has been outspoken in its criticism of the land seizsures.
On Tuesday, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe accused western nations of using aid to try and pressurise the government to change its policies.
”We certainly abhor sinister interests, which seek surreptitiously to advance themselves under cover of humanitarian assistance,” Mugabe said.
Winter declined to respond, saying the United States was only interested in preventing famine.
”If there is inadequate action to prevent famine, people will die because there is nobody to make up for the role the US is prepared to carry,” he said. ”President Bush … has told us he does not want famine on his watch.”
There was no immediate government response to Winter’s appeal. In May the government rejected a 10 000 ton donation of corn from the United States because it could not be certified that it was not genetically modified.
Zimbabwean officials have not said specifically why they object to genetically modified food. But some scientists have been concerned that genes from modified field crops would so thoroughly invade nearby fields that no field crops could ever be completely free of the effects of the new gene manipulation techniques.
Zimbabwe has to date bought 500 000 tons of corn from South Africa, Brazil, China and Kenya without questioning whether it was genetically modified. Much of the corn is still in transit due to logistical problems.
Zimbabwe had accepted all other food shipments to the country without reservation, a representative for the US Embassy in South Africa said. No other countries in southern Africa receiving US aid expressed concern that shipments may contain genetically modified food, the representative said. – Sapa-AP