Half the countries facing famine in southern Africa are stalling food aid from the United States fearing that genetically modified (GM) maize may cause health problems and harm their exports, but the United Nations is warning they are putting the hungry at greater risk.
Judith Lewis, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) director for southern and eastern Africa, said Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe had raised concerns about receiving shipments of yellow corn, which forms the bulk of aid supplies sent by the United States.
The loudest protests have come from Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, who was quoted on international television as saying: “It is necessary to examine the maize before we give it to our people… we will rather starve than get something toxic.”
Lewis said that most of the seven countries threatened with famine –Angola, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe –had in recent years received US-grown corn to make up for food shortfalls but that the safety objections surfaced only recently.
“The debate has suddenly cropped up. The countries are asking whether there is a health risk, and they also fear that the maize could be planted and cause cross pollination of their crops or influence meat if it is eaten by their livestock,” she told AFP from Johannesburg.
At a meeting on Monday, Zambian Agriculture Minister Mundia Sikatana accused international donors of having deceived the country for years.
He gave no indication of whether the government would accept a shipment of 23 500 tons of relief corn from the United States which Lusaka-based US officials said was due to arrive at the end of August.
Zimbabwe, which is home to half the region’s people threatened with famine and has seen its food production plummet because of President Robert Mugabe’s turbulent land reform programme, in May failed to accept a consignment of relief corn from the US and the grain was sent elsewhere, Lewis said.
A second shipment of 15 500 tons of US corn arrived in Durban at the beginning of August but has not been sent on to Zimbabwe as, WFP officials say, “it is not a done deal”.
“We received an import permit but the grain is still sitting in Durban, in a silo. Why? We do not know for sure,” South Africa’s registrar for genetically modified produce, Shadrack Moephuli said on Tuesday.
Lewis said Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia had asked whether grain would be milled to prevent it from sprouting in the soil, or transferred in sealed containers, and whether the agency would mount a “vigorous campaign” warning recipients not to plant the grain.
Swaziland, Lesotho and Malawi have accepted GM shipments without any conditions.
The United States, which is expected to supply half of the million tonnes of food the WFP has called for and has so far sent 165 000 tons of corn, refuses to mill the grain, and the WFP says it does not have the cash to do it.
The UN World Health Organisation has certified the US corn as safe.
Jason Lott, a research fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said milling would shorten the shelf life of maize and prevent it being stored for coming months, when the real famine is expected to hit.
“This is a mixture of ignorance and malice on behalf of African leaders. The grain is safe but they are shifting the political agenda from the problems they have created to problems pushed on them by the UN and the US. Zimbabwe won’t blame the famine on the farm crisis,” Lott said.
A European Commission official in Brussels said the concerns were groundless as any crop contamination that could occur from the relief supplies was likely to be too small to matter.
“Unless you grow a GM crop it is highly unlikely that traces of GM would be significant. And the EU has no requirement on labelling livestock fed on GM feed,” he said.
Lewis said the WFP hoped that South African President Thabo Mbeki, who will host the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development this month, would “play a mediating role” in resolving the matter.
?The dilemma is that we have food available and people who need it. We have to resolve this and get the food to the people,” she said.
The agency has termed the threat of starvation in southern Africa the world’s worst humanitarian crisis at the moment, saying seven million people need emergency food now, with that figure expected to rise to around 13-million by the end of the year.