3/9/02 10:11 AM
© AFP

Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa vowed at the UN World Summit on Sustainable
Development on Tuesday not to expose his people to genetically modifed (GM)
"poisonous" food being offered to aid about 2,5-million Zambians facing
starvation.

"Simply because my people are hungry, that is no justification to give them
poison, to give them food that is intrinsically dangerous to their health,"
Mwanawasa said.

"We have made a decision. We have rejected GM-food. It is not a slight on
donors. There is no conclusive evidence that it is safe. We wish not to use
our people as guinea pigs in this experiment. Our decision is final."

Asked why he was branding GM food as poison, Mwanawasa toned down his
warning to say it was "potentially intrinsically dangerous".

Zambia, one of six southern African countries threatened by famine over the
next nine months, has refused to accept GM food.

Mwanawasa said: "In the next month we expect to harvest about 15,000 metric
tons of maize and we have in the country enough maize to last until
December."

Meanwhile, Sapa reports that Zambia is to send a team of scientists to the
US to assess the safety of GM food, Mwanawasa announced on Tuesday.

Last week, in a statement also issued at the summit, the UN Food and
agriculture Organisation (FAO) urged Southern African countries to think
carefully before rejecting donations of genetically modified food.

"We should make sure before we reject it that there are scientifically valid
arguments on which to base that decision," FAO director Jacques Diouf said.

FAO believed on the basis of current scientific knowledge that the food
being offered to Southern Africa was not likely to present a human health
risk.

Mwanawasa said on Tuesday that FAO and the World Health Organisation had
acknowledged that they had not undertaken any formal safety assessment of GM
foods.

However, donors to the World Food Programme had themselves certified these
foods as safe. Zambia could not understand this contradiction.

"Because of our incapacity to do our own scientific analysis of these GMOs,
the Zambian government has accepted the offer by the director-general of the
US Agency for International Development to sponsor a visit to the US by a
Zambian team of scientists to go and study these GMOs," he said.

"There is a worldwide uncertainty on the use of GMOs in food, we are merely
taking precautionary measures and remain open to conclusive scientific
evidence that GMOs are indeed safe."

In a statement issued on Tuesday, members of the African civil society
grouping at the summit said they refused to be used as a "dumping ground for
contaminated food".

The starvation period was anticipated to begin early in 2003, so there was
enough time to source uncontaminated food.

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