Appeal against GMO maize seed decision

THE African Centre for Biodiversity has lodged an appeal in the North Gauteng High Court to overturn decisions of the genetically modified organism authority, the GMO Appeal Board and Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Senzeni Zokwana to commercialise Monsanto’s genetically modified drought-tolerant maize seed.

The appeal raises a number of alleged irregularities with the decision-making processes, which ACB argues flout South Africa’s constitution and laws prescribing administrative justice and procedural fairness.

The ACB is alleging the rubberstamping of Monsanto’s claims that its patented GM DT trait confers drought tolerance. The ACB, however, says a single gene does not confer efficacious drought tolerance and is yet another risky and novel gene introduced into the staple food of millions of people in South Africa in the name of corporate profits.

The ACB and various organisations and members of the public have since 2008, resisted Monsanto’s claimed benefits of drought tolerance.

ACB spokesperson Siyabonga Mthembu said: “The appeal is but only one small example of the push back by social movements against corporate power and abuse.

“These movements have long since been contesting the hegemony of large-scale commercial farming and corporate agri-business, which has deepened structural inequalities, caused environmental damage and eroded farmers’ sovereignty.”

Mthembu said farmers and small producers on the continent are resisting Monsanto-like constructed seed systems that oblige them to use patented seed and criminalise their rights to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed.

“These small producers are building alternative food systems that are diverse, resilient, autonomous and socially just.

“However, these efforts are not being supported by the state, but undermined by the stranglehold of the dominant technological platforms based on patented innovations, seed traits and agrochemicals,” Mthembu said.

“Africans are demanding the end of corporate-controlled systems that seek profits from nature and undervalue human effort.

“Africans are demanding the space to work out solutions built on people power through smallholder farmers, unions, farmworkers, consumers and mass-based organisations.”