An NGO has gone to the Pretoria High Court to force the government to lift an alleged veil of secrecy over the machinations of the genetically modified organism (GMO) industry in South Africa.
The Biowatch Trust is seeking an order to compel the GMO registrar, the executive council for GMOs and the minister of agriculture to release information that the NGO says all South Africans are entitled to under the Constitution.
Section 32 (1) of the Constitution provides that ”everyone has the right of access to (a) any information held by the state; and (b) any information that is held by another person and that is required for the protection of any rights”.
South Africa issued 122 permits last year for genetically modified crops, excluding import permits, up from one in 1990. Biowatch says permits have been granted for trials and experiments with apples, canola, cotton, eucalyptus, maize, potatoes, soybeans, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, wheat and a host of micro-organisms.
The trust’s court papers describe requests dating back to July 1999 for information about licences granted for field trials with GMOs, the location of the trials and risk assessment documentation. Biowatch also asked to view records about compliance with the public participation provisions of the GMO Act, and the geographical coordinates of field trials and crops approved for commercial release.
None of the requests elicited a ”substantive” response and some information from GMO Registrar Shadrack Moephuli was ”incorrect”, the trust said.
Without access to the information, the trust said it was unable to determine if anyone was infringing the rights of the public under the Constitution, the GMO Act or international conventions.
The state attorney, acting for the respondents, filed notice of intention to oppose the application on August 28 and has until October 3 to file replying affidavits.
Attempts to elicit comment from Moephuli failed this week. He was more forthcoming last year: ”We believe that as the regulators we can provide some of that information as best we can.
”It’s important to realise that each application is assessed on the basis of the information that is currently available. We cannot predict what is likely to happen 20 years from now,” Moephuli said.
Potential risks to the environment and human health lie at the heart of Biowatch’s application.
In its affidavit Biowatch states that some work done by genetic engineers, particularly in the medical field, may have potential benefits. ”However, certain other experiments with, and releases of GMOs have been disastrously harmful.”
The organisation cites an incident in the United States two years ago when modified maize for animal consumption that contained an insecticidal protein found its way into the human food chain. The event spawned nine class-action suits.
Biowatch also includes in its papers a copy of the British Medical Association’s recommendations on environmental precautions and public health risks. It suggests that countries adopt the precautionary principle in developing GMOs, because risks to the environment and health are not yet known; that a moratorium be placed on the commercial planting of GMOs until the effects on farming practices have been adequately ascertained; and that commercial secrecy should not take precedence over openness of information about public health.
In developing countries such as South Africa, the socio-economic effects on small-scale farmers’ livelihoods is also important, Biowatch said. ”Terminator seed technology”, engineered to stunt the reproductive capacity of seed, threatened communal seed banks. And it was questionable if small-scale farmers could afford to pay technology royalties to the GMO patent holders, it said.