GM foods not harmful, says NABDA

Genetically Modified foods are neither new nor harmful to the body, the Director General of National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), Professor Lucy Ogbadu, has said.

Ogbadu said modification of plants and animal started about 10,000 years ago, and it was to solve food shortage in the world.

She spoke at a training workshop organised by Open Forum for Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) in Abuja at the weekend.

According to Ogbadu, many antiGMO advocates were apprehensive over genetically modified organisms because they thought its newness meant it would be harmful.

“But biotechnology which gives birth to GMOs is not a new technology, and it is not harmful. Plants and animals have over the years been undergoing changes, improvement in their productions. Basically these changes and improvements are what biotechnology does”, she said.

According to her, GMO is just one of the benefits science opens to humanity and “we can’t afford to reject the benefit.”

The NABDA DG noted that the improvement in farming method witnessed by farmers was made possible by science, and GMO has always been part of it.

But the OFAB coordinator in Nigeria, Dr Rose Gidado cautioned that the country might not get it right in its effort to ensure food security, if it failed to adopt biotechnology fully.

She said there was nothing harmful in GM foods as experts in various fields in medical sciences had deemed it okay.

There have been arguments for and against the adoption of genetically modified organisms in the country.