In 2002 a food crisis affected many
countries in Southern Africa , namely
Angola , Malawi , Zambia , Zimbabwe ,
Lesotho , Mozambique and Swaziland .
Zimbabwe was the first country to reject US
food aid, and others followed. After a few
months, some countries accepted food aid
that had been milled, in order to avoid the
accidental planting of GM seeds. Only
Zambia decided to reject GM food aid in
both the grain and milled forms .
restricting the right to
choose
African countries that took a
precautionary approach and asked for
non-GMO food aid were initially left with
little choice. The US and even the World
Food Program told them that they should
accept some GM content. Their right to
choose was clearly impaired. An unnamed US
official was even quoted as saying that
“beggars can't be choosers”.
The shipment of whole corn kernels as
food aid carries the danger of genetic
contamination, as it allows GM grains to be
planted in countries with neither biosafety
regulations nor the capacity to deal with
GM crops. Further concerns include a
negative impact on agroecosystems,
including the development of resistance in
target insect pests, harmful effects on
non-target insects, the development of
herbicide tolerance in weeds, and genetic
erosion or loss of traditional crop
diversity as a result of genetic
contamination through crossfertilization.
To avoid these potential risks, most of the
countries decided that the GM food aid
should at least be milled to prevent the
planting of the grain.
However, milling the maize did not take
into account any possible potential risk
derived from the consumption of GM food.
According to Norway 's Minister of
International Development: “There might
also be a probability of higher risk when
one is in a food crisis situation,
consuming only one GMO product over time.”
Many Third World based organizations have
been very critical of this risk,
considering that the “assumptions about
alleged GM food safety are based on a
limited range of experiments that do not
take into account the specific situation of
people in developing countries”. These
organizations believe that populations fed
with food aid, especially children, are
particularly vulnerable due to malnutrition
and lack of food, and that any potential
danger presented by GM foods might increase
when they are consumed by an
immune-depressed population. According to
UK Chief Scientific Advisor Professor David
King, forcing GM foods into Africa as food
aid is “a massive human experiment”.
“is it better to die than to eat
gm food?”
“It is very interesting to note that
for the first time, Zambia was being forced
to accept a gift. Doesn't this worry us as
recipients that the giver is insisting that
we take the GM foods? Are the Americans
just concerned about our stomachs or there
is something behind the gift?”
Zambia Daily Mail, November 5, 2002 .
Africans were forced to accept some GM
content in their food aid. Nevertheless,
the case of Zambia proved that there were
alternatives to GM.
“Is it better to die than to eat GM
food?” This question, often raised during
the Southern African food crisis, presented
a scenario in which there was nothing but
GM food available. This scenario has since
been proven false, since alternatives could
have been made available and are now being
provided in large quantities. Current
research shows that there was ample non-GM
maize and non-GM cereals in the world that
could have been sent to countries
preferring not to accept GM food, African
nations as well as India and Mexico . In
fact, it has been shown that even the
United States had enough non-GM corn to
supply the requisite food aid.
Nonetheless, the World Food Program
argued at the end of 2002 that the main
goal was to meet the countries' short-term
food needs. In the case of Zambia, which
was the only country accepting no food aid
whatsoever, the WFP claimed that it was
impossible to mobilize non-GM food fast
enough, as organizing food aid operations
requires considerable time and resources.
efood
But again, the lack of choice was just
an illusion. Zambian NGOs pledged that they
could quickly mobilize surpluses of
traditional foods available in the country,
like cassava, to food deficit areas if
financial resources were made
available.
The drought season in Zambia
particularly affected the southern part of
the country, and the local maize supplies
were clearly insufficient. However the
northern part of the country, particularly
the northwestern province, had food
security due to the fact that there were an
estimated 300,000 metric tons of cassava,
one of Zambia 's staple foods, stockpiled
there.
The Zambian government asked the WFP to
use traditional foods to deal with the
crisis. Cassava has a long history as a key
crop in food security. Yet cassava was not
even included in calculations of the
country's food deficit, and the WFP didn't
consider it as a possible solution to the
crisis. The WFP apparently considers
cassava to be an inferior food, although it
is eaten by more than 200 million people in
Africa and constitutes the main staple food
for 30 percent of the Zambian
population.
A coalition of groups, comprising
churches and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), worked with the Zambian government
to form an alliance to raise funds to buy
cassava from areas of surplus and
distribute it to fooddeficit areas. Despite
their recognition that it was a good
project, the WFP refused to support the
initiative. Given that the WFP in Zambia
channels the financial resources of donors
and coordinates all food relief efforts,
their refusal prevented the project from
being implemented.
Instead, the WFP brought barley from the
United States , which is not a staple food
in Zambia and is only used there for
producing beer. This clearly contradicts
the principle that food aid should be
socially and culturally acceptable to
recipient countries. In the end, the
Zambian government stayed firm in its
decision not to accept GM food aid. It
proved able to cope with the food crisis,
supported by many countries and
organizations, and the country enjoyed a
bumper crop in 2003.
linking aids funds to gm food
aid
“It was a wrong decision by the
government and I hope they will rethink it.
We are going to make more food available to
AIDS patients and the government must
decide. […] GM (genetically modified) food
is absolutely safe, our experts have done
tests and found it completely
safe.”
Tommy Thompson, US Health Secretary,
December 2003, referring to the Zambian
government's rejection of GM food aid.
Another issue of serious concern arose
in May 2003 when the US Senate passed a
bill linking assistance for AIDS to
acceptance of GMOs. The United States
Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis,
and Malaria Act of 2003 urges African
states to accept GM food aid, implying that
this is a condition for the release of
assistance funds. In December 2003 this
became even clearer when US Health
Secretary Tommy Thompson, in a visit to
Zambia related to future donations on the
topic of HIV/AIDS, criticized the decision
of the Zambian government to reject GM food
aid. more information: FoEI report Playing
with Hunger:
www.foei.org/publications/pdfs/playing_with_hunger2.pdf
