A bitter row over genetically modified food is casting a shadow over efforts to rush aid to millions of Africans facing starvation.
A relief campaign has been launched to help about 14 million people in six drought-stricken southern African countries and another operation is likely for Ethiopia, which on Thursday warned that up to 15 million people were at threat.
But even as millions of people suffer from malnutrition, thousands of tons of food stockpiles are lying unused — or are even being shipped away.
The problem: genetically-modified maize provided by the United States, by far the biggest single supplier to the aid effort and a fierce supporter of biotech food.
Five of the six southern African countries are imposing tough restrictions on the maize, fearing it either is unsafe to eat or could contaminate their environment.
Malawi, Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe say they will only accept the grains provided they are milled to prevent germination in the event of spillage, while Zambia has imposed a total ban, milled or not.
Only one country, Swaziland, has not raised objections.
In Zambia, whose president Levy Mwanawasa has gone on record as branding GM food ”poison”, the World Food Programme (WFP) will have to ship out 18 000 tons of rejected grains that are already in the country, 7 500 tons of which have been ground up.
”One concern is security. If you’re pulling food out of a food-insecure area, there is always a risk”, Richard Ragan, the WFP’s representative in Zambia, told reporters in Johannesburg on Friday.
He said he knew of two cases of looting, both of them
minor, on GM food stockpiles at WFP facililties.
”The way we’re going to try and deal with it is we’re going to move food in as we move food out, so that hopefully will mitigate some of the potential concerns,” he said.
The United States has angrily condemned the Zambian ban as groundless and likely to worsen the starvation peril, although it says it is willing to look for alternatives to the contested maize.
But it reserves its bitterest ire for Europe’s greens, who accuse Washington of wanting to exploit the famine crisis to widen international acceptance of GM food.
US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman has branded their actions as a scare campaign, a ”disgraceful” attempt to spread ”misinformation and create an atmosphere of fear”.
Environmental groups ”can play these games with Europeans, who have full stomachs,” Andrew Natsios, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, said at the Earth Summit in August.
”But it is revolting and despicable to see them do so when the lives of Africans are at risk.”
Geert Ritsema, campaigner on GM issues for Friends of the Earth Europe, said it was unfair and untrue to tar green groups this way.
Even though his group and others fiercely opposed GM foods, ”our position is that it’s up to the governments to decide,” he said.
”In this case, you have a completely different dimension added to the debate — there is a hunger problem. We don’t have such a problem in Europe, so we don’t feel we are the right persons to judge about this. It is a matter for the local African governments and the local NGOs (non-governmental organisations).”
The United Nations became embroiled in the debate last Tuesday, when one of its officials, Jean Ziegler, a Swiss sociologist and former legislator declared GM foods ”could pose a danger to the human organism and public health in the medium and long term”.
But this is not the universal view within the UN. The WFP says the food aid can be eaten safely, and Gro Harlem Brundtland, director-general of the World Health Organisation (Who), agrees.
GM foods are crops into which a gene from another species has been inserted in order to introduce certain characteristics, such as a resistance to herbicide — thus making it easier for farmers to kill weeds by doing a once-over spraying of an entire field — or exuding a toxin to kill insect pests.
Among scientists, the consensus is that no evidence has emerged that the first generation of these crops is dangerous for health or the environment.
The main evidence for this is from the US population, which eats tens of millions of tons of GM maize, tomatoes and other crops each year.
Some experts caution, though, that only a few years have elapsed since these plants were introduced, and it is too early to make a firm conclusion.
European countries, where there is enormous public sensitivity to environmental issues, have either barred or imposed a moratorium on GM crops, triggering a trade dispute with the US in the process. – Sapa-AFP