Editor,

RE: "Legalising GMOs will put food security at risk” (The New Times, January 17).

The evidence by Steve Drunker’s book is worrying especially to developing countries. As much as western countries want us to believe that GMOs are the answer to global food security, there are western multinational biotech firms and organisations that want to monopolise the world food supply.

Food items that contain GMOs are unlabeled in America leaving people to question why the companies producing them do not mention so. There is need for our agro researchers to gather enough evidence on the safety of GMOs.

Gerald Mbanda

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GMO companies have put enormous financial resources and lobbying efforts into defeating GMO labeling because they understand consumers are suspicious and would refuse to buy any foodstuff containing GMOs, whose health effects they fear, were they given the choice.

That already tells you enough about the stuff; they can only be pushed under the mushroom principle: Keep consumers in the dark and feed them a lot of GMO manure.

Unlike the US and some South American countries where their use are widespread, European countries are relatively restrictive regarding GMOs, requiring their labeling (therefore giving consumers a choice of whether they buy or refuse to buy them), traceability to facilitate close monitoring of potential effects on the environment and on health.

EU legislation foresees that such labeling and traceability will make it possible, where it becomes necessary, to withdraw GMO-containing products when any unexpected risk to human health or to the environment is detected.

Despite the EU precautions, many European countries, e.g. Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland have expressed very strong opposition to any liberalisation of GMO growth and human consumption on their own territories.

Glyphosate, the most used active herbicide agent for crops genetically modified to resist it (i.e. GMOs) received a very grudging extension of authorisation to be sold in the EU, but only for five years, following very tough and prolonged negotiations.

Meantime, the WHO’s specialised unit, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), has, for its part, determined that there is sufficient evidence to declare glyphosate a possible carcinogen (i.e. may be cancer-causing).

In view of this and many other considerations, including avoiding ceding our food supply and food security to profit-driven global GMO corporations, the well-established precautionary principle, where new products with an uncertain understanding of their risks are concerned, should fully apply in our own position on GMOs.

Make haste very slowly, understanding that those pushing GMOs on us have a vested interest in our adopting them. They are not disinterested parties. But, our people, our livelihoods and our food supply are the ones we would be putting at risk.

Mwene Kalinda