The deadly hand of famine is closing ever more tightly over 13 million people in southern Africa. Yet Zimbabwe, Mozambique and now Zambia have spurned US food aid because the grain involved is genetically modified. Is this gross irresponsibility on the part of these governments or is the United States cynically forcing upon an unwilling world a food product which, it hopes, will ultimately lead US agribusiness to dominate global agriculture?
Is it defensible for African governments to refuse urgently needed food that has been produced via genetic modification, in the certain knowledge that this action will lead to the needless deaths of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of their starving citizens? Surely, in such an emergency, any aid, whatever its provenance, must be accepted? The World Health Organization has certified that the GM grain is fit for human consumption. What then is better — death from starvation in the near future for maybe millions or the debatable deleterious consequences of a man-made agricultural product?
Yet Washington can still be accused of manipulating a desperate situation for its long-term advantage. The reason for this is that it could, if it wanted, supply non-GM food to these stricken areas. So too could the European Union, whose attitude to GM technology remains one of considerable doubt. As an alternative, both Washington and Brussels could fund the purchase of non-GM foods from all over the world. There can be no doubt that simply supplying funds as Zambia has proposed would be a cumbersome process and the truth is that a very great deal of food is needed yesterday, not sometime in the future, after it has been bargained for, bought and shipped.
The case for GM food has not been made. The commercial implications of using laboratory-made seeds which require laboratory-made inputs to allow them to thrive are clear. Any country that buys the seeds is locking itself into a long-term relationship with the agricultural business that developed and patented them. Regardless of the safety of the final product — and the man in the street in America seems blissfully unaware of the potential dangers and is happy to eat these artificially produced foods — GM seeds present a real environmental danger. Cross-pollination is already breeding superweeds which will require ever more potent chemical controls, which will of course only be supplied by the original seed companies.
We have seen with antibiotics how nature inevitably fights back and produces strains of infection which are resistant to all that medical science can throw at them. This is something that the WHO itself has acknowledged. Yet here is this organization endorsing what is effectively exactly the same mechanism as it relates to food. If GM foods become universal, so too will the need to introduce ever more artificial controls to combat nature’s counterattack. Even if Washington really does believe that GM foods are safe, its take-it-or-leave-it attitude to the millions of starving in southern Africa is wrong. It should give the urgently needed non-GM aid now and make its case for GM food when the emergency is over.
It is a hard choice for southern Africa: Starvation now or disaster later.
