Group decries adverse effect of GMOs on food security, hazards on people

An Alliance for food sovereignty in Africa, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) have decried the adverse effects of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), on food security/sovereignty and their associated health hazards on people.

They therefore called on the National Assembly to take proactive measures by enacting laws to ban the releases of GMO seeds in Nigeria.

The groups which stated these at a media training on preservation of healthy local foods/seeds and promotion of appropriate and supportive food policies held in Abuja on Wednesday, pointedly said that GMO foods are not safe for consumption.

They linked GMOs to one of the causes of food insecurity in the county, stressing that genetically engineered foods have many health hazards.

In her paper presentation on the challenges facing food system, the Chief Executive Officer BFA Food and Health Group, Dr. Jacqueline Ikeotuonye, challenged all the food regulatory agencies that were promoting the use of GMOs to show Nigerians the scientific evidence or research based test that proved that GMOs were safe for human consumption.

On the health hazards, Ikeotuonye said GMOs corn altered blood biochemistry, damaged organs, and caused potential effects on male fertility.

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She also attributed high rates of cancer, kidney and liver problems to too many intakes of the genetically modified crops produced which people consume.

Explaining further the danger inherent in GMOs, the CEO said, “The artificial insertion of New Genes into the embryonic cells of our basic food crops is inherently disruptive of those cells’ own internal processes of genetic regulations.

“The genetic material (DNA) that is forcibly introduced through genetic engineering is not merely extracted from other living cells, but is generally a wholly artificial construct, including added regulatory and marker sequences from viruses and other organisms.

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“These added components are necessary to overcome living cells’ evolved resistance to unfavourable genetic alterations, and to help identify the minuscule proportion of cells in most experiments that actually express the inserted transgenic traits.

“Partly due to these added components, genetic engineering is associated with very high levels of genome scrambling, disruption, and unusually high mutation rate.

“This is deadlier with far devastating consequences than the consumption of processed foods,” she stated.

Ikeotuonye therefore urged the media to help change the narrative, saying that food and health is everybody’s business, as such, the media must expose the complacency and apathy that allowed the creeping of genetically engineered foods into the system.

She said Africans must look inwards to solve their food system problems and must expand access to other safer and sustainable farming systems like agroecology.

In her own presentation, Mrs. Hauwa Mustapha, while attributing GMOs and Climate Change as the major factors affecting food security and food sovereignty in Nigeria, said that about 800 million people around the globe are living with food insecurity just as 25 million Nigerians suffer from poverty as a result of food insecurity.

Mustapha also listed other causes to include: high cost of fertilizer, poor harvest caused by pests, banditry, cattle encroachment, and poor storage facilities.

Mustapha said farmers need to be engaged, educated, and often given the right information especially in sourcing of their seedlings, adding that Nigeria needs to harness adaptation of farmers to help them take best decisions in the farming system especially as it concerns shifting cultivation.