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Activists Fear Biotech Firms’ Silence on GM Food Safety

By Bert Wilkinson

In food-poor Zimbabwe, the choice has already been made – genetically modified food products are unwelcome.

Yesterday, leading environmentalists lent support to the Zimbabwean government’s decision not to accept food aid if that assistance contained GM food and seeds, by calling for a boycott on bioengineered seeds and food products until independent scientific research shows it is harmless to humans.

“We would rather die from starvation than be poisoned by this industry,” declared Fred Kalbwani, regional coordinator for Zimbabwe’s Participatory Ecological Land Use Management Association (PELUM).

The activists say that the current reluctance of the big biotech companies to produce data showing GM foods are safe is in itself damning evidence they have something to hide.

The group’s stance comes even as it acknowledges the threat of starvation in some poorer countries, including territories in southern Africa.

Kalbwani said that many farmers who have tried the GM seeds are now poorer because the seeds do not result in plants that bear viable seeds for use in the next planting season.. “So many are in debt today. Many want to return to their old ways, but they have no money to buy these seeds from these companies. We are against this industry totally.”

Twenty thousand Indian farmers have committed suicide this year because of indebtedness linked to their inability to buy new seeds for the next planting season, says Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva.

“We even came across two peasant farmers who had to sell their kidneys to pay debts. That is what it is coming to. We need scientific research on GM foods and seeds, but not that which is produced by the companies. Their data is a fabrication.”

The clear message emerging from yesterday’s forum had to do with fears that the world’s big five biotechnology companies, including the U.S.-based Monsanto, could soon control the globe’s entire seed production industry, creating artificial famine in regions that do not have money to buy their product.

Already several seed companies in Africa, Brazil and India have been bought out by the larger western firms.

Zulu Chief Thina Bantu Shange told the packed auditorium how hundreds of farmers who tried the seeds now regret doing so because it appears that their old crops are not growing on the soil anymore.

“We now need these companies to come and heal the land because we are in trouble. We are not sure what has happened,” he added, calling it a terrible mistake and warning farmers from other countries to beware until proper research is done.

Shiva thinks that contamination from GM foods and the release of harmful bacteria in the soil could account for the sterile soil.

Several African countries, China, India, South Africa, Malawi and Zambia are using engineered food products and seeds, while scientists in Mexico have reported damaging cross contamination with regular crops.

“The time is soon coming when farmers all over the world would be dis-empowered and they would soon lose the right to be able to plant because their traditional seeds have been destroyed,” said Kalbwani.