NEWS FROM AFRICA
1.Governments warned over agribusiness giants
2.State to 'soften' bio-tech rules
3.Anger over GM loophole
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1.Governments warned over agribusiness giants
ORTON KIISHWEKO
Daily News (Tanzania), 11 April 2011
http://dailynews.co.tz/home/?n=18899&cat=home

A GROUPING of small scale farmers in 12 African countries has asked governments to be wary of agribusiness giants who want to bring in Genetically Modified Crops under the disguise of support to small holder farmers.

The grouping, under Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers' Forum (ESAFF) said in Dar es Salaam on Monday that there was threat that genetically modified (GMO) crops pose for indigenous plant species, organic harvests, small farmers, and the health and welfare of everyone.

ESAFF Regional Chairperson Elizabeth Mpofu said it was important to educate everyone about genetically modified crops and, more importantly, how to fight big billion dollar companies like Monsanto that are hovering like hawks ready to swoop in for the kill.

She warned about the ruthless practices of corporations which acquire patents, sometimes illegitimately, to crop genes and end up controlling the farmers who grow them.

"Our seed has stood the test of time and can be used to produce bumper harvest," she said.

She said there should be something to relieve the economy of farmers towards escalating seed prices.

ESAFF also said small scale farmers should push for the governments in Africa to allocate more money into the agriculture sector by honouring the 10 per cent budget allocation to agriculture as of their Maputo 2003 declaration.

They said that since small scale farmers are the biggest producers in member countries, they should be included in decision making processes at policy level on land rights, access to inputs, farm equipments since they feed nations.

In Tanzania, the sector experienced a 35.5 per cent increase in funding from 666.9bn/- the previous fiscal year to 903.8bn/- in the current 2010/2011 national budget.

The ESAFF triennial general summit starts in Morogoro today with Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Seychelles, Madagascar, South Africa, Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi while Mozambique has applied for membership.

The objective is to bring farmers together to share about the challenges of new agriculture caused by internal and external factors.

The ESAFF chair said some of these include the food price increase, climate change, land grabbing, market access and also the growing concentration of agriculture input supply to few global agrochemical companies.

"There is a trend that shows that Monsanto, Syngenta and DuPont are using these initiatives to colonize Africa from seeds to super marketing. This will mean that small scale farmers will lose their right to seeds and the whole productive chain," she said.

ESAFF Board member from Tanzania, Mr Elias Kawea, argued that it is also known that, these agrochemical companies are promoting non conventional seeds (GMOs) and imposing them through various programmes made as rendering solutions to the African hunger situations.

Their proposition to African governments is that all these initiatives must include the decisions of the real practitioners of production of small scale farmers.
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2.State to 'soften' bio-tech rules
JAMES MPINGA
Daily News (Tanzania), 27 March 2011
http://dailynews.co.tz/home/?n=18472&cat=home

THE government is set to review, and ultimately repeal, a legal clause that holds everyone liable to punitive sanction -- from developers, financiers and other partners, down to the last sales outlet, should anything go wrong in the development and utilization of agricultural biotechnology, scientists say.

Costech Director-General Dr Hassan Mshinda said at the weekend negotiations with relevant government authorities were underway to amend some of the critical clauses, arguing that scientific inquiry must take its course because the government needs to make its policy decision on "sound scientific evidence."

The government move follows high-level consultations within the scientific community and policy-makers -- and comes amid calls by scientists that the "strict liability clause" in the country's regulatory framework "is so prohibitive that even Tanzanian experiments involving regional biotech programmes have had to be done on foreign soil".

At a recent public lecture held at the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (Costech), American scientist Dr Judith Chambers called for "innovative" and "time-bound" regulations to stimulate meaningful application of the emerging promise of agricultural biotechnology.

This echoed similar sentiments from Dr Roshan Abdallah of the Tropical Pesticides Research Institute (TPRI) in Arusha, who voiced concern that Tanzania was way behind neighbours Kenya and Uganda in research on what are now popularly known as genetically modified (GM) crops.

"I was part of the team that formulated our regulatory regimes ... but I didn't know at the time what we were walking into ... our regulatory framework is so rigid that we had to do research meant for Tanzania on Kenyan soil," she told an attentive audience at the public lecture on 'Effective Regulation of Agricultural Biotechnology to Improve Productivity and Food Security.'

But opinion remains sharply divided. "We did not coin the 'strict liability' clause in Tanzania," a participant retorted, adding: "Those who did it probably knew there was something 'fishy' with this new technology."

He also called for "more time" to enable the government evaluate the technology and make an informed decision -- but fell short of saying exactly how long the government would need to do such evaluation. He also reiterated that 'locked-in' fears over GM crops were largely unfounded.

Last year, Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda rubbished opposition to genetically engineered foods, saying the protagonists were riding on ill-informed fears.

The premier made the remarks -- the first such statement from a high ranking government official -- at a meeting with the country's top researchers, scientists and policy makers, adding: "It is foolish even to imagine that we would be the only clever ones around, as our neighbours around us push ahead with the promises of biotechnology in agriculture," he said in March, last year.

Tanzania is currently implementing a regional collaborative project known as Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), aimed at developing drought-resistant maize varieties along with Kenya and Uganda in East Africa, as well as Mozambique and South Africa within the SADC region.

But further progress beyond 'mock trials' at an experimental farm at Makutopora in Dodoma have been 'held back' pending current consultations that could pave the way for the partners the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation, the Nairobi-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) and others -- to proceed to the next steps that could lead to Tanzania's first commercial GM maize, possibly by 2017 as earlier envisaged.

Globally, land brought under commercial GM crops exceeded one billion hectares during the first 15 years, 1996 to last year (2010).

Notably, over 90 per cent, or 14.4 million of the beneficiaries were 'small and resource-poor' farmers in developing countries. "This is contrary to the predictions of some critics ... that biotech crops were only for the rich and large farmers in industrialized countries," the report argues.

In the meantime, the percentage of global biotech crops grown by developing countries has increased 'consistently' every year over the past decade -- from 14% in 1997 to 30% in 2003; 43% in 2007 to 48% in 2010, the report adds.

"Developing countries are almost certain to plant more biotech crops than industrial countries, well before the MDG (Millennium Development Goal) year of 2015," the report says, adding that the push for biotech crops would come mainly from the so-called 'BRICs' -- Brazil, India and China -- group of emerging economies as well as Argentina and South Africa.

The defining moment for Tanzania came at a consultative meeting held on September 13, 2010, bringing together the country's decision-makers and top lawyers from the Vice-President's Office (VPO), Ministries of Agriculture, Food Security and Co-operatives;

Communication, Science and Technology; Livestock Development and Fisheries and other stakeholders to discuss the implications of the 2009 Biosafety Regulations.

At issue were three clauses that 'appeared' to hinder effective research and development in GM technology in Tanzania, namely, the Precautionary Principle; Strict Liability and a Requirement for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) at the level of doing any research in agricultural biotechnology.

In particular, the 'Strict Liability' clause states that "a person who imports, arranges transit, makes use of, releases or places on the market a GMO or product of a GMO shall be strictly liable for any harm caused by such a GMO or product of a GMO" and that "the harm shall be compensated".

There lies the crunch. "If anybody were to raise any claim against this project ... everyone from Bill Gates to our scientists here would be held answerable," a senior Tanzanian scientist says.

There isn't any GMO research in Tanzania currently, but Tanzanian scientists and postgraduate students are conducting GM trials in cassava and maize in Kenya -- a trend some scientists fear could brain drain into our neighbours.
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3.Anger over GM loophole
heree Bega
Saturday Star (South Africa), April 9 2011
http://www.thestar.co.za/anger-over-gm-loophole-1.1054528

After a decade-long battle to have genetically modified (GM) food labelled, consumer watchdogs believe misleading clauses in the new Consumer Protection Act could instead "hoodwink" and "confuse" the public and protect "big business".

Both the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) and SA Freeze Alliance on Genetic Engineering (SAFeAge) have “cautiously welcomed” the mandatory labelling regime for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the act’s final regulations, which were released by the Department of Trade and Industry last week, but say these are “fraught with legal uncertainties and ambiguities”.

Mariam Mayet of the ACB said consumers could be faced with up to five labels on GM foods “owing to attempts by the government to appease agribusiness”.

From October 1, when the act becomes law, food producers, importers and packagers will be required to choose one of three mandatory labels for GM foods and marketing materials.

Where the GM content is at least 5 percent, the food will be labelled as “containing GMOs”. Where the food is produced directly from GMO sources, there will be no need for testing, and food must be labelled as “produced using genetic modification”.

Industry may also opt for “may contain GMOs” labels in circumstances where they are able to argue that it is scientifically impractical and not feasible to test food for GM content.

And it is this label that irks Fahrie Hassan of SAFeAGE. “This provides industry with broad latitude to circumvent the labelling regime and the need for testing and in so doing, undermine consumer choice. We find this totally unacceptable.

“That particular clause has given industry the loophole to ignore all the others”¦ Most businesses will opt for this clause because it’s the easy way out.

“This is the one thing we've been fighting for in our campaign the rights of consumers to choose what they want to eat. And here with that clause, they’ve been given a big loophole to confuse and hoodwink (them).

“The department has actually turned around, bent over and climbed into bed with big business, but consumers are the ones who should be protected in this act from the exploitation of their rights by big business.

“The joke is on any company who, at all costs, wants to present to the consumer non-GMO food for the benefit of their health, who will now be liable to test their products for GMOs, whereas the company promoting, producing and marketing GMOs won’t have to test.”

GMOs are produced artificially by genetic engineering where genes are taken from unrelated species such as viruses or bacteria and inserted into food crops, which pose “unacceptable risks to human and animal health, the environment and society”, according to the groups.

Said Hassan: “Clearly we must thank the good Lord up there, that at least after 10 years of struggle, to get this legislation at least passed, is a small victory after a long hard struggle. But it’s not what we hoped for. At least it is going to mean companies will have to label products with the wording GM/or GMO whereas previously companies got away with using the term ‘modified starch’ in their labels, which is a nonsense term.”

The regulations state that two voluntary labels are also permissible: one denoting that the food “does not contain GMOs”, where the GM content is 0.9 percent or less and the other, stating that the “GM content is less than 5 percent”, where the GM content is between 1 and 4.9 percent.

But few food products are likely to be labelled as not containing GMOs owing to the widespread contamination in South Africa between GM and non-GM food. In South Africa, any product containing maize, soy or cotton has a high probability of containing GMOs.

Hassan said the Act had ignored the concept of animals fed with GMO products as well as the use of rBst, a genetically engineered hormone, injected in cows to increase milk production.