Food Sovereignty Ghana, recently published a press release outlining its concerns with a recent action of USAID that will likely deceive citizens of the developing world. This organization of Ghanaian activists reveals that USAID’s workshop, “International Biosafety Short Course for Policy and Decision Makers in Ghana and Nigeria,” which was offered at the end of July, had nothing to do with safety, and everything to do with lobbying regulators to disregard biosafety protocols and relax risk assessment standards with regards to the use of GMOs.
Food Sovereignty Ghana claims that the USAID is working on behalf of “Monsanto and its friends in the Agro Chemical industry” to implement standards such as “Substantial Equivalence” and “Generally Recognized As Safe” (GRAS), which will enable the corporate takeover of agriculture in the developing world, just as has happened in the US.
AGRA Watch, like Food Sovereignty Ghana, believes that the Cartagena Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity must not be ignored and that public awareness and participation, risk assessment and management, and the socioeconomic impacts of GMOs must continue to inform policies regarding the use of GMOs.
