RE: BBC NEWS | Africa | Famine-hit Zambia rejects GM food aid

[Jack_Earley@RL.GOV]

Let's see. As I recall, there are about 1.2M orphans in Zambia due to AIDS.

So risky activities are okay if they're known to result in injury, but GM

food is not okay, because they think it might somehow result in injury.

Somethin' wrong with this picture.



Jack Earley

Radiological Engineer





-----Original Message-----

From: Stewart Farber [mailto:farbersa@optonline.net]

Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 1:35 PM

To: Radsafe

Subject: BBC NEWS | Africa | Famine-hit Zambia rejects GM food aid





Radsafe:

For those interested in foolish applications of risk aversion and a

perverted sense of applying the 

"precautionary principle" to a fear of genetically modified foods [similar

to radiophobia among many], 

see the link below to Zambia refusing food aid to help millions of its

citizens facing starvation. As Alf 

once quipped:

"Dogma, dogma, dog manure"



Once again, politics and fear trumps science and common sense.



Stewart Farber, MS Public Health



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2371675.stm



>From the BBC Story:

Tuesday, 29 October, 2002, 12:36 GMT 

Famine-hit Zambia rejects GM food aid





Some 14 million are at risk of famine across the region



The Zambian Government has finally decided not to accept a donation of

genetically- modified food for 

nearly three million of its people facing famine.



The decision was taken after the Zambian Government despatched a team of

scientists around the world to 

study the potential effects of importing GM crops. 



The food aid was initially offered by the international community to Zambia

and five other Southern 

African countries, but President Levy Mwanawasa referred to the food as

"poison". 



"In view of the current scientific uncertainty surrounding the issue...

government has decided to base 

its decision not to accept GM foods in Zambia on the precautionary

principle," Agriculture Minister 

Mundia Sikatana said. 





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