Kenya ‘aware that maize was GMO’

Kenyan officials knew that a consignment of maize from South Africa was genetically modified before it was dispatched, a biotechnology expert has said.

Prof Wynand van der Walt, a member of the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa) panel of experts on biotechnology, said an independent investigation he conducted revealed that the exporter complied with the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety that require exporters to declare a product’s status and get the consent of the importer before releasing it.

Prof van der Walt, a South African, said the exporter wrote to government officials informing them that the maize was genetically modified and they accepted it.

One of the conditions, however, was that the maize had to be milled quickly to eliminate chances of being planted in the country.

Prof van der Walt said genetically modified organisms had not been proved to be unsafe.

Low rates

He was speaking in Nairobi on Monday on the sidelines of a workshop on draft biotechnology and biosafety policies and guidelines for Comesa.

Controversy is raging over the 40,000 tonnes of maize lying at Mombasa port with government officials denying that it is genetically modified.

“We found traces of contamination but at extremely low rates that would not endanger the environment,” Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (Kephis) managing director James Onsando said last week.

“The threshold of contamination is about five per cent, which is safe,” he said.

However, the parliamentary committee on agriculture and a lobby group disagreed.

The Kenya Biodiversity Coalition, a group of civil organisations, insists that the maize is genetically modified.

The group’s director, Mr Josephat Ngonyo, said the importation of GM maize was a deliberate violation of the biosafety protocol by the government as no approval had been given for the environmental release of GMOs in Kenya.

Documents from the South African Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries department also show that the maize is genetically modified.

House committee on agriculture chairman John Mututho said three million bags of GM maize were in the country.