QUOTES: "Maize is a staple. That means poor people are ingesting large amounts of GMOs, without being given any choice." - Mariam Mayet, head of the African Centre for Biosafety

"The reason we need to label GMOs is that they can fairly easily cause allergic reactions. GMOs have also been implicated in immune problems and they threaten the livelihoods of small farmers who are then forced to continue buying seed and herbicide from the biotech companies." - Michael K. Hansen, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, Public Policy and Advocacy Division Consumers Union, USA
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Sparks fly as pro-GM and pro consumer choice activists go head to head
PRESS RELEASE

When activists campaigning for the customer's right to choose whether to buy genetically modified (GM) food or not in a Randburg Shopping Centre yesterday, the pro-GM lobby, funded by biotech multinationals, arrived bearing 'I love GM food' placards.

Feelings ran high as the 'right to choose' activists represented by Consumers International, The African Centre for Biosafety, Safeage, Earthlife Africa and numerous activists from around Africa asked the pro-GM people to please stop disrupting their 'street theatre'.

The environmentalists performance consisted of one of the young activists, delightfully dressed in a Maasai-style kanga, pretended to be a concerned mother buying food for the family. The experts pointed out that 'she' could not choose to avoid GM-foods (or for that matter to buy it) because the government does not require the mandatory labelling of GM foods.

"The products most likely to contain GM ingredients are maize and soya," Michael K. Hansen, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, Public Policy and Advocacy Division Consumers Union of US pointed out. He is currently in South Africa running workshops to educate people about the need to accurately label foodstuffs containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

"The reason we need to label GMOs is that they can fairly easily cause allergic reactions," he cautioned. "GMOs have also been implicated in immune problems and they threaten the livelihoods of small farmers who are then forced to continue buying seed and herbicide from the biotech companies."

Hansen estimates that as much as 50% of soya products grown internationally is genetically modified.

Mariam Mayet, head of the African Centre for Biosafety says that about 15% of maize in South Africa is GM and hundreds of thousands of tons of GM maize are being imported from Argentina. "Maize is a staple," she says. "That means poor people are ingesting large amounts of GMOs, without being given any choice. This is unacceptable and unconstitutional."

Interestingly, although the pro-GMers and environmentalists differed on many points, the industry disruptors readily conceded that GM products should be labelled.

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