Zimbabwe urged to change stance on GM crops
This comes as the government has remained rigidly averse to GM crops, commonly known as GMOs, despite genetic engineering making a rapid entry into agriculture in other African countries such as South Africa and Botswana over the past decade.
Eminent Zimbabwean scientist Christopher Chetsanga, who is a member of the African Academy of Sciences, told a Non-Aligned Movement (Nam) Science and Technology technical meeting on industrial biotechnology last week that government's tough anti-GMO policy was not based on any scientific study and therefore erroneous.
"I encourage the government to adopt GMOs. They are the answer to the world's hunger crisis and they are the future of food production everywhere," said the leading biochemist, who is the key speaker at the conference, which brought together the sharpest biotechnology minds from Nam's 121 member states.
"I have been told several times that the ban on GMOs is on health grounds, but I have worked in the United States before in this field and I can safely tell you that US people have been eating GMOs for over 20 years and there are no such health fears."
"Instead, there has been significant interest in making GMO plants more nutritious, to help combat nutritional deficiencies and to help ensure that people are healthy.
"This means that GMOs manipulated in this way could be significantly healthier than their non-GMO counterparts," Chetsanga said.
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