A JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC WRITING VOLUME 8

is unfair to ask them to either accept GMO food or starve.
Accepting GMOs as food aid is a threat to African peoples’
beliefs about food safety, even if those beliefs are a result of
European influence. Donating cash aid instead of in-kind aid
may not chip away at the mountains of surplus corn in the U.S.
or open up a new market for GMOs, but it is arguably more
manageable for the United States to accept this concession than
it is for Africa to wait for food while they starve.
Some experts argue that Africa was ultimately at fault for
their own hunger because they folded to the E.U.’s wishes.
Gerald D. Coleman, a Catholic clergyman and advocate
of GMOs, argues in his article “Is Genetic Engineering the
Answer to World Hunger?” that: “It was a moral disgrace that
in 2002 African governments gave in to [GMO] opponents
and returned to the World Food Program tons of [GMO]
corn simply because it was produced by U.S. biotechnology.” 8
Coleman’s assertion is misguided.
The Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa explained, “the
rejection is not intended to demean those who had donated
it, rather it was done to protect the long-term interest of the
Zambian people and the environment.” 9 Regardless of whether
the U.S. or the E.U. is right about GMO food safety, it is a
secondary issue to the more important economic relationships
between Europe and Africa. After the 2002 crisis had subsided,
Zambia started exporting non-GMO food, allowing its
economy to begin the recovery process. 10 If GMO seeds had
entered the Zambian agricultural sector through food aid,
they would not have been able to export GMO-free food.
Obviously, it was the right decision for Zambia to reject GMO
aid. The U.S. must begin providing cash donations for food aid
instead of in-kind aid while the debate over GMOs plays out in
the developed world; or the U.S. must cultivate and separately
store non-GMO food for emergencies.
The United States eventually offered to mill the GMO
corn for the African countries, yet Zambia still refused to accept
it. Zambia claimed that “any health problems that might arise
from eating GMOs would be too costly to address.” 11 The
reasoning was that Zambian people consume much more
corn than Americans do, suggesting that there is no scientific
evidence to prove that a diet consisting of such an amount
of GMO corn is safe. 12 In fact, many experts do claim that
GMOs are unsafe to eat. One oft-cited study was conducted by
Arpad Pusztai for the Rowett Research Institute. Pusztai found
that GMO potatoes sometimes caused internal organ mis-
8 Gerald D. Coleman, “Is Genetic Engineering the Answer to World
Hunger?,” America, February 2005, 17.
9 Lieberman and Gray, “GMOs and the Developing World: A
Precautionary Interpretation of Biotechnology,” 404.
10 Ibid, 404.
11 Clapp, “The Political Economy of Food Aid in an Era of Agricultural
Biotechnology,” 472.
12 Clapp, “The Political Economy of Food Aid in an Era of Agricultural
Biotechnology,” 473.
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development and weakened the immune systems of laboratory
rats. 13 Proponents of biotechnology argue that Americans have
been eating GMOs without incident, and that there is no nonrefutable
proof that GMOs are unsafe. 14 Norman Borlaug, the
1970 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and biotechnology advocate,
argues that “To date, there is no reliable scientific information
to substantiate claims that transgenic crops are inherently
hazardous.” 15 However, there is no conclusive evidence that
transgenic crops are inherently safe, according to a large section
of the scientific community. Notably, most studies conducted
on GMOs are funded by private institutions in developed
nations. Asking Africa to accept GMOs into their diets and
their economies is asking them to accept a product that their
scientists have not been able to test with the same vigor as the
developed nations. This problem did not escape Zambia. In
response to the GMO aid that the U.S. offered, Zambia sent a
small group of their scientists to study the issue. They traveled
to the U.S., South Africa, and Europe, and concluded that
GMOs should not be accepted. 16 The scientists determined
that accepting the aid could endanger biodiversity in local
corn varieties; that introduction of GMOs into Zambia could
threaten the European export market; and that the U.S.’s
claims of GMO safety were inconclusive, particularly regarding
“toxicity, allergenicity and antibiotic resistance.” 17 Even if
GMOs would be perfectly safe to consume, Zambia did not
cave to the E.U.’s precautionary stance. They did their own
research and decided the risk was too high. The U.S. must
respect the fact that African countries have the right to adopt
the precautionary principle.
Beyond the issues of trade relations and human safety lies
the threat of purposeful cultivation of GMOs in Africa. The
typical small farmer in Africa cannot afford the licensing fees
and expensive GMO seeds on a regular basis. This is proved
time and time again by the fact that they so often need food aid
because of crop failure. They certainly do not have the money
to consistently renew licensing agreements or purchase GMO
seeds. For example, several African farmers who purchased
expensive GMO cotton seeds with the intention of increasing
their production went into debt because the GMO yields
13 Mae-Wan Ho et al., GMO Free: Exposing the Hazards of Biotechnology
to Ensure the Integrity of Our Food Supply, (Ridgefield, Connecticut:
Vital Health Publications, 2004), 22 and Roberto Verzola, “Genetically
Engineered Foods Have Health Risks”, in Genetically Engineered Foods,
ed. Nancy Harris (San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 2004), 38.
14 Florence Wambugu, “Why Africa Needs Agricultural Biotech,” Nature
400. (1999): 15 and Norman Borlaug, “The Second Green Revolution,”
in Agriculture, Human Security, and Peace: A Crossroad in African
Development, ed. M.Taeb and A.H. Zakri (West Lafayette, Indiana:
Purdue University Press, 2008), 150.
15 Borlaug, “The Second Green Revolution,” 150.
16 Clapp, “The Political Economy of Food Aid in an Era of Agricultural
Biotechnology,” 479 and Zerbe, “Feeding the Famine? American Food
Aid and the GMO Debate in Southern Africa,” 599.
17 Zerbe, “Feeding the Famine? American Food Aid and the GMO Debate
in Southern Africa,” 599-600.