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(COMTEX) B: Conned With Corn ( This Day/All Africa Global Media )

Lagos, Apr 22, 2005 (This Day/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- 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
Nationis 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. They 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 nationis
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 iFood for
Progressi. Taking into account that over 80% of soybeans in the US is
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 compensations 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 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 iwould be expected to perform poorly in African growing
conditionsi and is inot well suited for plantingi . 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) and
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 consume this
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
icumulative long-term effectsi 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 worldis 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

by Nnimmo Bassey

Copyright This Day. Distributed by All Africa Global Media(AllAfrica.com)

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[F6 note -- in addition to the post to which this post is a reply and preceding, see also:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=6020261 (and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3722105 );
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=5726870 ;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=5699564 ;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=5595760 ;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=5571124 ;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=5263132 ;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=5211456 ;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=5059540 and preceding;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4307110 and preceding;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3823516 (and following);
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3589805 and following;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3476413 ;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3146738 and preceding;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3061853 ;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3044271 ;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2811020 and preceding and following; and
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2571599 (and preceding) --
and also see http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=5375567 and following]