STATEMENT ON ISSUE OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD BY SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON THE RIGHT TO FOOD

12 November 2002



Following the press release published on 11 November 2002 by Ambassador Sichan Siv, Representative of the United States to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, Jean Ziegler, Special Rapporteur of the Commission of Human Rights on the right to food, made the following statement for the record:
"The Special Rapporteur has no doubt of the grave and immediate threat posed by famine for more than 14 million inhabitants of southern Africa, nor of the generosity of the Government of the United States in donating to the World Food Programme essential provisions for the organization's emergency response.
"The Special Rapporteur nonetheless has publicly expressed his reservations about the massive use of genetically modified food.
"His concerns are motivated by three factors:
"1. Genetically modified organisms can pose dangers in the medium and long term for human beings and for public health. On this question, the international scientific community is deeply divided.
"On the question of the massive use over wide territory of genetically modified organisms, the principle of precaution should take precedence. A number of European and developing countries, as well as the vast majority of non-governmental organizations and rural movements (Via Campesina, MST of Brazil, Federation paysanne of France, etc.) continue to oppose the introduction of such organisms into the food chain.
"2. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 815 million people are currently seriously and chronically undernourished. But as FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf has said, there are sufficient supplies of non-modified food to feed this population.
The argument that genetically modified produce is indispensable for conquering malnutrition and hunger is not convincing.
"3. The massive use of genetically modified organisms risks making rural users of such food dependent on multinational corporations which produce and sell such food.
"Instead of taking seeds from the last harvest and using them to plant the coming harvest, as has been done traditionally, the peasant must buy from a multinational corporation, at a price dictated by that corporation, the seeds for subsequent crops.
"Also, among the 1.2 billion persons in the world suffering from extreme poverty, according to the statistics of the World Bank, 75 per cent are subsistence farmers, their wives and their children. The extensive use of genetically modified organisms risks aggravating their misery.
"In publicly stating his reservations, the Special Rapporteur has not in any way violated his mandate, as contended by the representative of the United States. On the contrary, he has fully assumed it."



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