Zambia set a controversial precedent for developing countries this week by confirming that it would not accept genetically modified (GM) relief food despite the threat of famine.
The government said concerns about its effect on health and the environment made the food too risky to be distributed to an estimated three million hungry people.
Leading environmental and development groups said Zambia deserved credit for asserting its sovereignty against pressure from United States aid agencies and biotechnology companies to accept GM maize.
Critics condemned the decision as irresponsible grandstanding that would deny urgently needed nutrition to isolated, enfeebled families.
President Levy Mwanawasa said in August that Zambia would not accept relief food he deemed ”poison” but agreed to send a scientific delegation to South Africa, Europe and the US to study GM food and report back to the government.
The report has not been published but one of its authors, Dr Mwananyanda Lewanika, told The Guardian the delegation had been most impressed by Norway, which is hostile to GM, rather than by South Africa, which has recently adopted the technology for commercial purposes.
This week’s decision followed a Cabinet meeting where the president gave the report to his ministers.
Agriculture Minister Mundia Sikatana said the scientific uncertainty surrounding the technology meant more tests were needed before it could be deemed safe. ”The country should thus refrain from actions that might adversely affect human and animal health as well as harm the environment,” he said.
Levy’s hostility to GM food has been echoed by state media, which have played down the risk of famine. Several warehouses storing GM maize have been looted.
Refusing GM food was popular with the urban elite, which saw the issue as a test of national strength, while the hungry villages who wanted it lacked political muscle, one diplomat said.
Four other Southern African countries facing food shortages — Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Lesotho — have accepted GM maize only if the seeds are milled into flour. Planted seeds could cross-pollinate other crops, thus endangering biodiversity and agricultural exports to Europe.
Zambia has gone further by banning even milled seeds, arguing that eating GM maize could harm the health of Zambians for whom it was a staple.
”This decision is a triumph of national sovereignty. The US has been putting pressure on countries to accept the GM surpluses produced by its farmers,” said Charlie Kronick, a Greenpeace spokesperson.
Jane Moyo of ActionAid said Zambia’s decision should be respected — as long as it did not mean people would starve — and that the US should follow the United Kingdom by donating money rather than food.
About 15 000 tonnes of GM maize which the United Nations’s World Food Programme (WFP) stored in Zambia will probably be given to neighbouring countries.
A WFP spokesperson said every government had the right to accept or refuse food aid, ”but such a decision will complicate the work of WFP, which may not be able to respond to all those in need of food”. Only half of those targeted were reached last month.
Guy Scott, a former Zambian agriculture minister, said the government had painted itself into a corner with ”overly paranoid denunciations. What we will see now is how many people die as a result of the disruption of the relief programme — and how the various international NGOs that have spoken approvingly of the government’s action will square the body count with their various consciences.” — (c) Guardian Newspapers 2002