Biotech controversy ensnares US food donations

WASHINGTON - As the United States and Europe fight over the future of genetically modified foods, poor countries needing donations of corn and soybeans are increasingly finding themselves in the backwash of the high-tech argument.

At stake is whether Europe's concerns about the long-term environmental and health effects of gene-spliced foods trump what Washington says is a scientifically proven safe way of cultivating crops, whether they are destined for western dinner tables or Third World relief centres.

Nowhere was the dispute more apparent than earlier this month, when a US government donation of 10,000 tonnes of corn bound for Zimbabwe was diverted because of biotech concerns.

The corn is now finding its way to other destinations in southern Africa, even as half of Zimbabwe's 11.5 million people are facing starvation due to drought and political turmoil.

Food aid experts note that these kinds of problems will only grow, as scientists work to perfect more and more biotech food varieties, including staples such as wheat and rice.

According to one private study, about 25 per cent of global food aid already comes from seeds engineered to repel destructive insects or withstand herbicides.

With the looming commercial introduction of biotech wheat, which is several years away, that figure could grow to 82 per cent, according to the Agricultural Cooperative Development International/Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance report published last summer.

"Where it comes down to GM (genetically-modified) food or none, most people facing that choice say they would rather eat than starve over an unproven, but possible risk," said Marc Cohen, special assistant to the director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Cohen's Washington-based organisation is an agriculture research centre that aims to foster global food security.

Despite the fact that there are "zero reported cases of problems with human health" related to ingesting approved biotech foods, Cohen said Zimbabwe's reasons for rejecting the US corn "make sense."

Officials at the US Agency for International Development and the United Nations World Food Programme said Zimbabwe indicated it would have had no problem with the food donation had it been milled corn instead of whole-grain corn.

But as whole-grain corn, it could have been used by farmers as seed, not for consumption. That could have created a two-fold problem.

Biotech corn could have entered Zimbabwe's food chain before its government was ready to take that step. And if the high-tech corn ultimately were to be eaten by livestock, it could have jeopardised future Zimbabwe beef exports to Europe.

The EU has put on hold the approval of all new biotech products, while it crafts a policy for registering and labelling such foods and pharmaceuticals.

The United States has accused the EU of using biotechnology to erect unfair trade barriers against US goods.

The first transgenic plants were developed by scientists in the early 1980s. Since then, biotech plants have been used most widely by large farms in the United States, where nearly 70 per cent of soybeans and 25 per cent of corn is biotech.

But the technology has also been touted as an important tool in combating global food shortages as poor farmers could, for example, plant an insect repellent crop that would have higher yields without having to apply costly pesticides.

The technology dovetailed with a UN goal of reducing the world's 800 million undernourished people in half by 2015.

But that technology has run into opposition from consumer and environmental groups who say biotech foods are risky.

In 1999, after a cyclone hit Orissa, India, anti-GM groups waged a campaign against the donation of a corn-soy blend. The genetically modified food ultimately was accepted by India's government.

Last week, anti-GM activists from Nicaragua lobbied Washington policymakers to complain about US donations of biotech food.

On Monday, the group Friends of the Earth claimed that some US corn donated to Bolivia tested positive for StarLink, a biotech corn variety that was approved by the US government only for animal use.

A spokesperson for Aventis SA , the French-based pharmaceutical company that made StarLink, refused to comment.

Ellen Levinson, who works in Washington for a law firm representing non-governmental US organisations that deliver food aid, said, "It is really unusual for a country to completely reject" biotech food that is being donated.

More often, she said, governments receiving aid must first find a way to quell concerns by GM opponents and local media.

Zimbabwe, according to a World Food Programme official, just might accept a July shipment of US corn, if it meets certain specifications and is "accompanied by an education/sensitisation campaign so the maize is neither planted or fed to livestock."

- REUTERS


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