Interesting article from Nigeria.

EXCERPT: The scramble for Africa is getting hotter today than it may have been during the Berlin Conference at which she was partitioned. The partitioning of Africa sowed the seeds of discord and conflict that we are reaping today... We are talking about the onslaught by the biotech industry...

The siege is on. Many people imagine that the pressure on Africa to accept genetically modified grains or other crops as food aid ended with the widely known case with Zambia in 2002. That emblematic case rightly showed that every country has the sovereign right to determine what type of food to eat, irrespective of whether it is purchased in the market or is donated as aid. And it demonstrated to the world that the predicted catastrophe of Zambians starving never happened.

Genetically engineered food has been presented as the ultimate weapon against hunger in Africa and the world. This is also seriously suggested in the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) meaning that this may be the direction efforts will be concentrated in the years to come. African leaders have largely been co-opted into thinking this way because they are warned that since the so-called Green Revolution train left Africa standing at the station they should not miss the gene train. It has been noted that the Green Revolution required extensive chemical and equipment inputs and although food production increased in some areas, small scale farmers were marginalised, the environment took a beating and on the aggregate hunger was boosted in the world.
-----

Conned with corn
Nnimmo Bassey
Lagos
This Day (Lagos), April 22, 2005
http://allafrica.com/stories/200504250259.html

The scramble for Africa is getting hotter today than it may have been during the Berlin Conference at which she was partitioned. The partitioning of Africa sowed the seeds of discord and conflict that we are reaping today. Today, certain concepts have been painstakingly constructed and foisted on the continent. And this has been done in order to have Africa so compromised that she would simply just beg to be colonised once more. We are talking about the onslaught by the biotech industry on the innards of this continent.

The siege is on. Many people imagine that the pressure on Africa to accept genetically modified grains or other crops as food aid ended with the widely known case with Zambia in 2002. That emblematic case rightly showed that every country has the sovereign right determine what type of food to eat, irrespective of whether it is purchased in the market or is donated as aid. And it demonstrated to the world that the predicted catastrophe of Zambians starving never happened. The country thereafter recorded food surpluses, besides the fact that in the heat of the crisis the shortage was limited to sections of the country and there were supplies in other regions that simply needed to be procured for the needy areas.

Genetically engineered food has been presented as the ultimate weapon against hunger in Africa and the world. This is also seriously suggested in the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) meaning that this may be the direction efforts will be concentrated in the years to come. African leaders have largely been co-opted into thinking this way because they are warned that since the so-called Green Revolution train left Africa standing at the station they should not miss the gene train. It has been noted that the Green Revolution required extensive chemical and equipment inputs and although food production increased in some areas, small scale farmers were marginalised, the environment took a beating and on the aggregate hunger was boosted in the world.

The next major push has manifested in the presenting of Monsanto's genetically engineered cotton (Bt Cotton) as the solution. This cotton variety which has been engineered to withstand certain pests and to be suitable for use of certain herbicides has been planted in India, Indonesia, South Africa, etc. The biotech industry touts these as huge successes, but the farmers have recorded lower yields, have gone into debt and some have been forced to commit suicide! The manifold failure of Bt Cotton is so well documented that we may not need to go into details here. Suffice to say that industry's underhand push and shove has been vividly illustrated in the bribery scandal that rocked Indonesia where a prominent biotech industry bribed as many as 144 serving and retired government officials in order to have approval for the commercial cultivation of the variety.

Last year, some governments in West Africa pledged to embrace this same variety of cotton. The next point of call of the proponents of Bt Cotton is Tanzania. All these efforts have been made under the direction of the USAID one of whose major goals is promoting the spread of GMOs in the world and pointedly working to "integrate GM
into local food systems."

The push into Tanzania gathered momentum in 2002 when USAID began meeting with Tanzanian scientists to describe the potential of engineered foods. Some of these USAID advocates were also the architects of the Memorandum of Understanding signed with Nigeria in 2004 for a biotech programme managed by IITA, Ibadan, Nigeria.

The interesting thing about the Tanzanian case is that although cotton production was suspended in the southern part of Tanzania because of the spread of redball cotton disease in 1968, the country is currently experiencing cotton production surpluses. When this is coupled with the record low cotton price in the market, it becomes hard to see what arguments could be pushed for the genetically engineered variety of cotton.

Barring a change of Heart by the government of Tanzania has already buckled under intense pressure and the country is set to join Tunisia, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Burkina Faso and Kenya in conducting confined field trials (CFT) for genetically modified crops. These so-called field tests will eventually open the nation's doors to genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

As already noted, food aid is one of the main vehicles for putting GMOs on the platter of the world. Do we call that charity? Not so. One issue about some of these food aids is that citizens in the recipient country may not even know that their country receives food aid. In 2003 Nigeria received 11000.6 Metric Tons of soy meal as food aid from the United States, under the US title 'Food for Progress '. Taking into account that over 80% of soybeans in the US are genetically modified we strongly suspect Nigeria has been receiving GM products without any prior information to the Government, and with our population completely uninformed on this. In 2004 the country was billed to receive 10,500 tons of rice.

People around the world have been vocal is calling for caution in the introduction of genetic engineering in food crop propagation. The biotech industry with their powerful lobby has stoutly resisted compliance with the precautionary principle enshrined in the Cartagena Protocol on Bio-safety. The precautionary principle as the name implies requires that countries apply caution when considering or opening doors to bringing GMOs into their environment. One of the reasons for this is that the safety of GMOs has not been unequivocally proven.

The biotech industry thrives on subverting the ability of people to protect themselves and their environments. They do this through deliberate contamination and illegal release of genetically modified crops into the environment. In fact, when environments are acutely contaminated, nations have no option but to legalise the illegality. Many suspect that this may have been the case with Brazil. Also, when organic farms are contaminated by genetically modified neighbours, the innocent farmers are made liable and pay compensation to the polluter instead of the other way round. This is cowboy justice.

The argument usually put forward as a response to the insistence on caution is that GMOs have not harmed anyone. But studies have shown allergic reactions in some cases and deaths have been recorded in animals fed on certain varieties.

The biotech industry is like a bull set loose in a china shop and needs all the controls possible. Recent reports of contamination of food supplies with illegal varieties should worry everyone. We refer to the case of Latin America where corn varieties with StarLink which are not authorised for human consumption have been found in food aid sent there in 2002 and also in 2005. Where they cannot deny the presence of the illegal grain the response of the biotech industry has been that the illegal corn is okay for consumption. No apologies.

Africa received huge quantities of corn from the USA as food aid and the presence of StarLink corn varieties was real. From reports Africa was the top worldwide recipient of U.S corn as food aid in 2004. Three African countries, Angola (62.400 MT), Tanzania and Burundi (28.000 MT) were among the top five. Other African countries included Uganda (20.900 MT), and Kenya (13,600 MT). We recall here that after the refusal of GMO grains by Zambia and Zimbabwe the shipments of food aid to these countries in 2003 and 2004 dropped to zero.

It is well known that the local population received these GM corn as grain they would inevitably save some grains for planting, thus compromising the native stock, exposing the population and their biodiversity to danger. The push continues even though proponents like the USAID recognises that GM corn sent to Africa as food aid 'would be expected to perform poorly in African growing conditions' and is 'not well suited for planting'. Despite this, the maize keeps coming to Africa. If one country rejects it it is channelled to another like the case of Tanzania and Burundi which since 2003 the corn food aid grain shipments continue to grow.

We have many reasons to worry. Another reason is that the industry does not have GMOs under control and the risks to health and environment are unknown. A few weeks ago it became public that an untested experimental crop, from Swiss agrochemicals multinational group, Syngenta, called Bt10, has been illegally planted from 2001 until 2004 in the USA. This illegal variety contains antibiotic resistance marker genes, which the British Medical Association recommended not to commercialise due to the potential risks for human health. The EU, Japan and South Korea have already protested against this and are taking measures to test the grains in order to isolate and destroy the illegal variety. All Syngenta could say is that they planting of 1000 tons of Bt10 food entered the EU accidentally. They claim that Bt10 and Bt11 (the approved type) are virtually identical. What other areas have confused the biotech industry? United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) fined Syngenta $375,000 for this illegal release.

What measures are taken by our Governments in Africa? Africa continues to be the biggest corn food aid recipient, not only grain, but also corn soy blend and cornmeal. Are we going to continue to let our population be at risk of consuming these GM products without even knowing about them?

Following the scandal of the illegal release of Bt10 corn, the European Commission is about to authorise studies that would tell it the potential 'cumulative long-term effects' genetically modified (GMO) crops might have on human and animal health in the longer term. This is coming eight years after the EU first allowed biotech crops. If the European Commission is only now considering commissioning such studies, it goes to show that both human and animals may already have had their health greatly compromised. And if that is the situation in Europe, we have every reason to pause
and think.

Genetic pollution is not comparable to oil or other environmental pollution. Chemical pollution may finally dissipate after a thousand or so years, but genetic pollution on the other hand grows exponentially with time. They simply do not diminish. The problem expands.

With the huge contamination of the world's corn stock almost irreversible right now, the biotech industry is now seriously working on commercialising GM wheat and rice. Indeed it is reported that China may release GM rice into the market in the next one year. With the bulk of rice in Nigeria coming from Asia, it is a matter of time before GM rice from China floods our supply lines. This is inevitable, unless something is done, and quickly too.

Right now researchers have made an application in Nigeria for the testing of genetically modified cassava. Note that we are talking only of crops and not of animal species as that is another ball game entirely.

Just to think about all these makes us feel really scared about the food we that is placed on our plates, and the seeds that we may be planting? If we blindly follow the biotech agri-business path we are bound to find that all traditional food crops will be genetically engineered in no time and as we have seen already, when the plague hits, the chance of recovery will be slim.

This is the time for everyone, Nigerian, Tanzanian, Togolese, or Swazi to stand up and defend our collective right to live in dignity and to choose what seeds to plant and what foods to eat. We cannot afford to place our future in the hand of an industry that has lost control of its Frankenstein. Our governments, if the represent us, must begin now to ask questions, and to act. Tomorrow will be too late.

-Bassey is the Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria