Source: Govt urged to embrace GMOs – DailyNews Live
Andrew Kunambura 28 August 2017
HARARE – Zimbabwe has been urged to embrace genetically modified (GM)
crops to improve harvests and reduce crop production costs.
This comes as government has remained rigidly averse to GM crops, commonly
known as GMOs, despite genetic engineering making a rapid entry into
agriculture in other African countries such as South Africa and Botswana
over the past decade.
Eminent Zimbabwean scientist Christopher Chetsanga, who is a member of the
African Academy of Sciences, told a Non-Aligned Movement (Nam) Science and
Technology technical meeting on industrial biotechnology last week that
government’s tough anti-GMO policy was not based on any scientific study
and therefore erroneous.
“I encourage the government to adopt GMOs. They are the answer to the
world’s hunger crisis and they are the future of food production
everywhere,” said the leading biochemist, who is the key speaker at the
conference, which brought together the sharpest biotechnology minds from
Nam’s 121 member states.
“I have been told several times that the ban on GMOs is on health grounds,
but I have worked in the United States before in this field and I can
safely tell you that US people have been eating GMOs for over 20 years and
there are no such health fears.
“Instead, there has been significant interest in making GMO plants more
nutritious, to help combat nutritional deficiencies and to help ensure
that people are healthy.
“This means that GMOs manipulated in this way could be significantly
healthier than their non-GMO counterparts,” Chetsanga said.
The call comes at a time when campaigning against the technology is at its
most strident, with the most adamant critic of GMO products being
Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development minister Joseph
Made.
“The position of the government is very clear, we do not accept GMOs,” he
recently told the National Assembly.
Deputy minister in the ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science
and Technology Development Godfrey Gandawa emphasised the government’s
position in an immediate response to Chetsanga while officially opening
the conference.
“The government’s position remains the same; GMOs are not allowed in the
country. We challenge scientists to prove us wrong on health issues. There
is need for a thorough research if that policy is to change in future,” he
said.
Proponents of genetically modified crops argue that the new transgenic
crops improve yields, reduce pesticide use and increase food security,
especially in developing countries, a promise that most countries facing
food shortages want to believe.
“With so much hunger out there, this potential is one of the most heavily
promoted arguments for the use of GMOs, and with good reason,” Chetsanga
said.
He said the GMO regime is just a new agriculture revolution, equating it
to major revolutions in agriculture and in the way that people produce
food.
“While GMOs may seem extreme, they are simply the next major change to
agricultural processes,” he said.
The most popular biotech crops currently being grown in Africa include
potatoes, sugarcane, maize, cotton cassava, rice, bananas, and cucumber,
wheat, sorghum and water melons.
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