GMOs are not for human consumption - Researchers

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By Waswa Deo

Organizations that are advocating for Agro ecology farming practices among small holder farmers in Uganda and Africa at large have urged Uganda government and policy makers to support small farmers in terms of finances and knowledge  to increase on food production for their families,  and income earning, instead of opening Uganda to genetically modified organisms(GMOs).

Speaking at the closure of 4 days conference held at Masaka St Jude Agro ecology center to propose Agro ecological solutions to world hunger, rural poverty and environmental degradation, Henk Hobbelink, coordinator, Grain, an international Agro ecology organization based in Barcelona Spain, noted that adopting genetically modified organisms will not increase  food.

‘’As international Agricultural experts, we find it troubling that Uganda, a country which is fourth in the production of organic foods in the world and first in Africa, wants now to opt for GMO’’ Hobbelink, told the press.

He added that  GMOs are not for human consumption in countries that use them such as United States.

The four day conference attracted leaders from global Agro ecology movement to share knowledge and experience and debate strategies to feed the world through health and sustainable food system based in Agro ecology.

Mean while, 3000 cotton farmers in Maharashtra and Punjab states in India have  so far committed suicide  for the last few years after planting BT cotton, a genetically modified  that failed to market.

Neha Raj Singh, project coordinator and research analyst, at Navdanya farmers’ movement, Cotton told the same gathering that more farmers acquired huge loans to plant cotton and failed to repay.

On the same concern, Bridget Mugambe, the policy advocate at Alliance for food sovereignty in Africa noted that the task that the 10TH parliament should begin with is to pull out the Bio safety and Bio technology bill from parliament because it seeks to facilitate GMO’S other than regulating.

She said the “Biosafety” aspects in the Bill are lacking which is a key tenet of any national bio safety regulatory system intended to assess the safety of GMOs to humans and environment. This is a fundamental disconnect between the title and content of the Bill.