By Elizabeth Piper
ReutersJuly 9, 2001
Western environmental groups are blocking ways to ease hunger in the poorest parts of the world by stifling the development of genetically modified foods, the lead author of a United Nations report said.
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, lead author of the U.N. Development Programme's annual Human Development Report, said green groups had failed to consider how gene-spliced crops could help people out of poverty by revolutionising agriculture and food production. "The developing world needs these technologies as soon as possible and European countries and campaigners are slowing everything up," Fukuda-Parr, director of the Human Development Report Office, told Reuters. "I think that first world environmental groups should put on the hat and shoes of farmers in Mali who are faced by repeated crop failure."
She said Europe and Japan, where there was what she called an effective moratorium on gene-modified crops, had little need for pest-resistant crops and cheaper food as most consumers seemed happy with stocked supermarket shelves. But their contentment and increasing fears over the new technology should not prevent poor people benefiting from drought- and pest-resistant crops, she said.
"For European consumers and for Japanese consumers, there is really very little to be gained from having genetically modified food. We don't need lower prices for food and we don't really need a longer shelf-life for our tomatoes," she said. "But it is a very different challenge that some countries are facing when faced with food shortages, chronic low rainfall and chronic crop failure."
She challenged environmental groups to produce hard evidence to back up their fears that gene-modified food was unsafe for the countryside and a threat to public health. Green groups say GM crops, spliced with foreign genes to help them resist drought or ward off pests, will create superweeds, contaminate traditional crops and change the face of the countryside by killing off other flora and fauna.
"The first thing to remember is that scientific evidence for health and environmental harm is quite limited and very weak," she said, adding that the public sector should be more involved in developing and testing new GM crops to make the technology more accessible to poorer nations. "But we are not saying poor people should be guinea pigs." She urged people to open up the debate and see the development of biotechnology from poor countries' point of view.
"I think in Europe and Japan an extreme position has been taken," she said. "Biotech has tremendous potential for...agriculture, to address these problems of hunger and malnutrition and food and security in Africa and other areas of the world and its potential should not be underestimated." The Human Development Report 2001 is due to be officially released by the U.N. Development Programme in Mexico City on Tuesday.
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