Willie DeGreef - described as "a biotechnology consultant from Belgium" has told a U.S. Grains Council meeting in California that it is an outrage and tragedy when third world policy makers reject "genetically enhanced foods" and, in the words of the article below, "state that they'd rather have their children starve than to eat".

DeGreef is quoted as saying, "How did we get that far; who was responsible for whispering (those) messages to those policy makers," who rejected GM food aid. "That is something that I would rather sooner or later want to find out, because you're talking about literally crimes against humanity."

This is fantastically misleading. In the case of Zambia, the country that is most often quoted in relation to the rejection of GM food aid, its president Levy Mwanawasa only reaffirmed his rejection of U.S. GM maize sent by the US, on the advice of his own experts.

This was a perfectly transparent process in which pro-GM scientists had ample opportunity to more than whisper their messages. A delegation of Zambian scientists and economists, headed by Dr. Wilson Mwenya of the National Science and Technology Council, completed a fact-finding tour of laboratories and regulatory offices in South Africa, Europe and the United States, before reporting back to the president. The report concluded that studies on the safety of GM foods are inconclusive, and the US maize should be rejected as a precautionary measure.

And there is no evidence that anybody died as a consequence of the President's decision. As late in the crisis as November 2002 the head of the US dominated World Food Programme admitted that there might well not be any deaths as a result of Zambia's rejection of GM food aid. This was said by someone who had persistently sought to maximise the pressure on Zambia to accept the US food aid while the WFP dragged its feet on making alternative supplies available in order to crank up the pressure (see item 2).

Willie DeGreef somehow seems to have failed to mention that he used to punt GM foods for Syngenta. Some, of course, might see the contamination of the world's food supply with grains for which there is insufficient evidence of safety, and the distracting of so much energy, monies and resources away from the very real practical measures available to meet the needs of the hungry, as the real crime against humanity. And amongst the worst of the criminals must be the consultants and lobbyists who seek to exploit that suffering to punt their products.

"There are 800 million hungry people in the world; 34,000 children starve to death every day. There are those who consider this a tragedy, and then are the biotech companies and their countless PR firms, who seem to consider it a flawless hook for product branding. It is an insult of the highest and most grotesque order to turn those who live from day to
day into the centerpiece of an elaborate lie... the companies who make [GM foods], and the flacks who hawk their falsehoods, offer us a new definition of depravity, a new standard to plunge for in our race to care least, want more, and divest ourselves of
all shame." - WELCOME TO THE SPIN MACHINE
http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/2001/04/biotech/

1.Biotech rejection a 'tragedy' among developing countries
2.NO ONE DYING BECAUSE OF GM REJECTION - ZAMBIA
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1. Biotech rejection a 'tragedy' among developing countries
Monday, February 7, 2005
by Tom Steever
http://www.brownfieldnetwork.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=EFD3D9EE-C32F-0154-2AD0DBB3023111B0

A European consultant says more has to be done to coax biotechnology acceptance among developing countries.

Failure of developing countries to accept genetically enhanced crops is a tragedy, according to Willie DeGreef, a biotechnology consultant from Belgium who spoke at the U.S. Grains Council meeting in Huntington Beach, California.

DeGreef calls it an outrage and tragedy when third world policy makers state that they'd rather have their children starve than to eat genetically enhanced foods.

"How did we get that far; who was responsible for whispering (those) messages to those policy makers," says DeGreef, referring to leaders of developing countries who have rejected humanitarian shipments of food that may contain genetically enhanced ingredients. "That is something that I would rather sooner or later want to find out, because you're talking about literally crimes against humanity."

One way to combat the problem, according to DeGreef, is by getting information from farmers familiar with biotechnology to third world farmers who might benefit from the use of biotechnology. That is effective, says DeGreef, because producers in developing countries make up 50 percent of the voting public.
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2.NO ONE DYING BECAUSE OF GM REJECTION - ZAMBIA
22 November 2002
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=427

In the article below, along with yet more pro-GM propaganda from the US dominated World Food Programme, the head of the WFP says that there may well not be any deaths as a result of Zambia's rejection of GM food aid.

If that does prove to be the case, it will be no thanks to the WFP who have behaved in what can only be described as a criminally irresponsible manner over this issue.

Zambia informed the WFP of their choice over GM back in June, which has left half a year for the WFP to source alternative non-GM food aid.

As George Monbiot noted earlier this week, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation "there are 1.16m tonnes of exportable maize in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa. Europe, Brazil, India and China have surpluses and stockpiles running into many tens of millions of tonnes.

"Even in the US, more than 50% of the harvest has been kept GM-free. All the starving people in southern Africa, Ethiopia and the world's other hungry regions could be fed without the use of a single genetically modified grain."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,842999,00.html

Instead of taking immediate action to help respond to Zambia's need, the WFP chose to spend those months pressurising Southern African countries to accept GM grain, in what was clearly a calculated attempt to force Zambia to back down.

The suggestion that the choice is between GM or death has always been false. It's been a question of whether the US, USAID and the WFP, which has been forced to own up to delivering GM contaminated aid to recipient countries since 1996 without ever informing them, would risk, or even actively engineer, starvation in pursuit of their own agenda.

"there is no shortage of non-GMO foods which could be offered to Zambia by public and private donors. To a large extent, this 'crisis' has been manufactured (might I say, 'engineered') by those looking for a new source of traction in the evolving global debate over agricultural biotechnology. To use the needs of Zambians to score 'political points' on behalf of biotechnology strikes many as unethical and indeed shameless. " Dr Chuck Benbrook, a leading US agronomist and former Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture for the US National Academy of Sciences

for a primer on what's going on in southern Africa:
http://ngin.tripod.com/forcefeed.htm

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No one dying because of GM rejection: Zambia
Thursday November 21, 2002 2002
Western Producer
http://www.producer.com/articles/20021121/news/20021121news23.html