SWITZERLAND: November 14, 2002
GENEVA - The World Food Programme (WFP) sharply criticised a U.N. human rights investigator this week who has repeatedly questioned the safety of genetically modified (GM) food donated to starving Africans.
Jean Ziegler, a left-wing former member of the Swiss parliament who is U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, has said multinational corporations have more to gain from use of GM food than the drought-hit countries. In a statement issued by the United Nations this week, Ziegler reaffirmed GM foods "could present a danger in the middle and long term to the human body and therefore to public health".
But a spokeswoman for the U.N. food agency, which said that 14 million people face starvation in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland, said Ziegler was not qualified to make such statements.
"That is his personal opinion, which we don't share. He is not a scientist, he is not qualified to make such statements," WFP spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told Reuters.
Both the World Health Organisation and the European Union have said that no GM products currently on the market pose a health hazard, Berthiaume told a briefing.
On Monday, the WFP said it had fed milled U.S. maize, which could include GM supplies, to refugees in Zambia last week, despite a Zambian government ban on GM food aid. A WFP spokesman said the one-off move had been done in consultation with authorities.
Milling stops farmers planting whole cobs and averts the risk of contaminating local GM-free crop strains.
The Lusaka government decided to ban gene-altered food aid after Zambian scientists concluded that insufficient evidence was available to demonstrate its safety.
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