Maize imports at the port of Mombasa. Photo/FILE
By KEN OPALA in Johannesburg newsdesk@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Wednesday, August 31 2011 at 22:31
Posted Wednesday, August 31 2011 at 22:31
Three million bags of genetically modified maize were cleared for import from South Africa last year.
The South African Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry says Kenya authorised the import before the department could issue a commodity export permit.
The department then issued export permits for 240,000 tonnes of genetically modified maize for use as a commodity (not for planting), director Peter Thabete told the South Africa parliamentary Committee on GMOs.
The committee is equivalent to Kenya’s parliamentary Committee on Agriculture chaired by Naivasha MP Mututho.
The maize set off a controversy, whose fall-out may have led to staff changes at the Kenya Bureau of Standards.
The agency’s chief executive, Mr Joseph Koskey, was sent packing, a move he later blamed on his firmness against the importation of “bad maize”.
Kenya, which is seeking to fill a shortage of four million bags to feed the nation, recently allowed GM imports.
One in every 10 Kenyans faces starvation but some politicians say they doubt the safety of the GM imports.
The country is currently experimenting in disease-resistant maize, cotton, cassava, cucumber, water melon and sweet potato.
Some of these experiments are in the hands of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute.
Even as leaders debate GM, in South Africa, 58 per cent of the maize seed sold there in 2009 was genetically modified, according to the Johannesburg-based African Centre for Biosafety.
About 2.1 million hectares are under GM crop in South Africa, which has a maize surplus of 13 million bags. A bag of maize sells for the equivalent of Sh1,000 in contrast to Kenya’s Sh3,500.
The African Centre for Biosafety says South Africa exported 300,000 tonnes of GM food to the region, of which 280,000 came to Kenya. It says Kenyans have been eating GM food for the past three years.
Other reports indicate Kenya’s food imports from South Africa was Sh5.5 billion in 2008, a bill that went up four-fold, to Sh23.6 billion last year.
GM medicine
Some of Kenya’s pharmaceutical products are manufactured from GMOs, such as insulin used to stem diabetes.
To accommodate markets that prefer non-GM or conventional commodities, there are separate production, storage and shipping guidelines, says Mr Thabete.
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