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Genetic seed sterilisation a threat to food security
2007-05-30 08:45:59
By Austin Beyadi
Genetic seed sterilisation has become an industry-wide goal hence a threat to biodiversity and food security since 1.4 billion people, primarily the poor in southern Africa depend on farm saved seeds.
The technology is designed to force farmers to buy seeds from gene giants rather than using seeds from the previous year`s harvest.
Speaking during a national project coordinators` meeting for Biosafety Implementation Projects held in Dar es Salaam on Monday, the Minister of State in the Vice Presidents Office (Union Affairs), Hussein Mwinyi said that agricultural and pharmaceutical living modified organisms have rapidly become a multi-billion global industry.
He said that the world had also expressed concern at the effects of GMO crops to intensify corporate monopoly on food, hence driving family farmers to destitution and preventing the essential shift to sustainable agriculture that can guarantee food security and human health.
He said that serious consequences of genetically modified organisms were associated with the potential for horizontal gene transfer including the spread of antibiotic resistance infectious diseases.
He said that the government has so far called upon experts dealing with genetically modified organisms in the country to advise it on how best to use them without affecting environment and the health of people and animals.
`Unregulated movement holds the real possibility of GMOs contamination of local or indigenous seed sources, with far-reaching implications in terms of sustainable agriculture,` he said.
He said modern biotechnology is a powerful tool that offers several opportunities to human kind and that some of these opportunities exist in medicine, industry, environment and agriculture.
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