Africa: Are We Ready to Risk Smaller Brains, Livers And Testicles?
John Mbaria
Nairobi

ALTHOUGH evidence is mounting that GM crops are not safe for consumption and that they pose significant risks for the environment, Africa is still being exhorted to feed its people on GMOs.

The GMO push, backed by big dollars, is coming at a time when the technology is being rejected elsewhere. For instance, in April 1999, the anti-GMO campaign in Europe forced most big manufacturers there to publicly commit themselves to stop using GM ingredients in their European brands.

European anti-GMO campaign received a massive boost from one of the top researchers in the field, Arpad Puszai, in early 1999. Working at the Rowett Institute in Scotland, he managed to prove that rats fed on supposedly harmless GM products developed cells that were potentially cancerous, smaller brains, livers, and testicles, and ended up with damaged immune systems. Puszai found that the rats' plight was due to the unpredictable side-effects arising from the very process of manipulating genes.

By implication, this meant that GM foods already on the European market, which were created from the same process, could also have been having such effects on humans.

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