The Sunday News
GOVERNMENT and the bio-technology industry have been urged to carry out a thorough scientific research to determine whether genetically modified organisms (GMOs) should be adopted to counter the effects of climate change and depleting food security in the country.
The call comes at a time when Zimbabwe’s food security continues to be threatened by perennial droughts, high production and input costs and low yields.
Food and Nutrition Council assistant officer, Mrs Tatenda Mafunga-Mudiwa, challenged relevant authorities to carry out a research on whether there were benefits that could be realised through the adoption of the GMOs technology.
She said the issue of GMOs remained a contentious one in Zimbabwe.
“There is no research that has been done to determine whether GMOs are good or bad hence there is a need for more research to be done,” Mrs Mafunga-Mudiwa said.
She said Zimbabwe was battling with a food crisis which needed to be dealt with as a matter of urgency as this was causing stunting with statistics showing that 27 percent of children under the age of five experience stunted growth.
Crop Breeding Institute research officer, Mr Marco Mare, said GMOs had remained a debatable issue in the country.
He told Sunday Business that many people did not have enough knowledge on how the GMOs system operates and from the breeding perspective; there was nothing wrong with GMOs if done properly.
“In any organism, there is something called a gene. A gene is part of the body which carries a trait, for example early maturity trait which is carried in a gene. So when we want to transfer early maturity into a certain plant of interest, we transfer the gene that carries that trait into that plant of interest,” said Mr Mare, a breeder by profession.
He said GMOs become dangerous when genes from unrelated species are crossed.
“For GMOs to be of benefit or danger, depends on two things. Firstly, it is the mechanism which is used to modify the gene. Because of the new technology, one can transfer a gene from a dog and put it in a plant. One can also transfer a gene from fish and put it into a potato but when you look at these things, they are not in the same family and are not related.
“Under such circumstances, the gene tries to create space for itself to settle and during that process normally it silences or suppresses other important genes in that plant such that when you want to use it, it now has negative effects on people who consume it,” said Mr Mare.
He revealed that when genes of the same species were crossed no challenges are posed.
Mr Mare said, with effects of climate change already being felt, there was a need for the country to decide whether it should do away with the conventional methods of farming and adopt the GMOs.
“Due to this climate change effect, people are dying of hunger simply because the varieties that we are planting are not tolerant to the climate. Under such circumstances, they can adopt GMOs than maybe die of hunger,” said the official.
Another agro-biodiversity expert, Mr James Matara, said the Government should adopt the GMOs assistance in order to counter the challenges caused by climate change.
“If there is proper monitoring of GMOs they can be beneficial as they can result in increased crop yields and reduced pesticide use,” he said.
He added that adopting GMOs reduced soil-damaging tillage and the use of toxic herbicides.
The expert said South Africa’s food security had vastly improved after adopting GMOs.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Zimbabwe needs about 2,2 million tonnes of maize each year for both human and animal consumption.
The country is forced to spend millions of dollars importing maize from neighbouring countries such as Zambia to boost the dwindling reserves.
However, bio-technology expert Miss Rose Mathe was of the opinion that GMO foods were a risk to human health.
“According to a research that has been done, GMOs use technology that is not the same with natural breeding methods and against that background, can pose health risk to people who eat them,” she said.
She said GMOs were not a solution to the effects of climate change and that these GMOs could disturb the ecosystem.
“The GMOs disturb the ecosystem and pose challenges to the environment and reduce biodiversity,” Miss Mathe said.
Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union (ZCFU) president, Mr Wonder Chabikwa, said, as farmers they would continue using the conventional methods of farming until there was enough evidence that they were not harmful to human beings.
“If the researchers prove beyond reasonable doubt that there is nothing harmful on these GMOs as farmers we are willing to grow them. For now we don’t want to make money from growing food that is poisonous,” said Mr Chabikwa.
