Zambia says rejection of GM food aid is final

By Manoah Esipisu

JOHANNESBURG, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa said on Tuesday his government would not reconsider its decision to reject genetically modified food, mainly from the United States, as aid to avert a hunger crisis.

"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," Mwanawasa told reporters.

"We have enough food to take the country to December," he said, adding he believed that by then Zambia could get donations of food that was not genetically modified (GM) from other countries and could also bring in GM-free commercial imports.

Zambia is at the heart of a hunger crisis ravaging six countries in southern Africa and threatening up to 13 million people. Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi have expressed concern about the environmental consequences of GM grains being planted. Zimbabwe and Malawi will only consider importing milled grains that cannot be used for sowing.

Mwanawasa said he had been told by the United Nations that its food aid agency FAO and the World Health Organisation had not undertaken any formal safety assessments of GM foods. He said Zambia could not understand why the agencies would vouch for the safety of GM foods when they had not studied them.

He added that Zambia had agreed to send scientists to the United States under a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) grant to study the safety of GM foods because it did not have sufficient infrastructure to conduct the research. He conceded it could take months or years to complete the research.

"WE HAVE TASTED POISON"

Zambia has received GM-food aid over the past seven or eight years, Mwanawasa said, but it was because the government had not been informed at the time that donations contained GM foods. The country had been denied the right to make an informed decision, he said.

"But the fact that we have tasted poison does not mean that we should continue tasting poison, now that we have the facts. The facts are that research is not conclusive," he said. He said he would use commercial imports, a small harvest of 15,000 tonnes of maize from a winter crop, and increased donations of GM-free food to "avert this potential calamity."

But analysts said Mwanawasa's government was slow in acting to stem the hunger crisis and had yet to issue tenders for commercial imports despite saying it wanted to bring in at least 400,000 tonnes of maize from Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) -- the world's biggest food agency -- said on Sunday it would soon run out of distributable food in Zambia, where it has been barred from using GM-altered supplies to feed 2.4 million people facing starvation. WFP has halted distribution of 15,000 tonnes of maize suspected to have GM content, and has about 7,000 tonnes of non-GM food left in the country to hand out.

Jo Woods, WFP spokeswoman in Zambia, told Reuters on Tuesday that Zambia did not have enough food to last to December, and that donations received from five countries so far provided only one third of food requirements to March next year. "With (food) contributions as they stand, we do not have enough food," Woods said. She added that while WFP had 7,000 tonnes of GM-free food, monthly needs totalled 15,000 tonnes.