Public Health minister Beth Mugo subsequently directed all Public Health Officers at all ports of entry and all other government regulators to enforce the ban on importation of Genetically Modified Foods in the country.
This she says was following the decision made by the cabinet to ban the importation of GMO foods into the country due to inadequate research done on GMOs and scientific evidence provided to prove the safety of the foods until such a time that the country will certify that they have no negative impacts on the health of consumers.
“Consequently, the government has decided that until such an informed policy decision is made, all GMO food imports are completely banned. All relevant government agencies have according been instructed to immediately comply with this directive and enforce the ban on importation of all GMO foods.”
She urged stakeholders to verify the custom entry documents of food consignments to ascertain that their GMO certificate.
“The protection of the consumer and assurance to the public on the safety of food is extremely important in making decisions about food importation, distribution and consumption. Where there is apprehension and uncertainty with regard to the safety of food products, precautionary measure to protect the health of the people must be undertaken.”
She threatened legal action against those who do not comply with the directive.
“I am therefore, calling upon all stakeholders and government regulators involved in importation of GMO foods to take note of this directive that no importation of GMO foods will be allowed into the country until further advice by the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation.”
After public outcry when the nation’s former Peru’s President — pro-GMO Alan Garcia — opened the door to GMOs and failed to action requests from the public to ban them, the new President, Ollanta Humala, has signed a GMO ban into law.
Peru’s Congress announced overwhelmingly approved a 10-year moratorium on imports of genetically modified organisms in order to safeguard the country’s biodiversity.
The measure bars GMOs – including seeds, livestock, and fish – from being imported for cultivation or to be raised locally.
Exceptions include the use of GMO products for research purposes in a closed environment, but those will be closely monitored, the legislature’s official news service said.
The bill, approved, now went to President Ollanta Humala to be signed into law. Humala, who has been in power since late July, has repeatedly said he opposes GM programs.
According to the Agriculture Ministry, Peru is one of the world’s leading exporters of organic food, including coffee and cocoa, with $3 billion a year in revenues and 40,000 certified producers.
Congress approved a similar 10-year moratorium in June, but outgoing president Alan Garcia, who was seen as being favorable to GM, did not ratify the ban.
There was friction over GM in the previous government’s ministries of agriculture and environment.
The head of Peru’s Consumer Agency, Jaime Delgado, said the moratorium is long enough to learn from scientific studies that will emerge on the effects of GMO products.
The country’s leading group representing farmers and ranchers, the National Agrarian Convention, said that by this measure Peru “defends its biodiversity, its agriculture, its gastronomy and its health.” —capitalfm.co.ke
More and more countries are looking to protect their natural biodiversity and increase their economic resilience by avoiding GMO crops.
I’d like to remind readers of a simple fact — that we don’t need GMOs! It’s well recognized that natural plant breeding techniques (which have been utilized by growers for millennia) produce improved, climate-specific varieties of plants much faster, and at almost no expense. This is in stark contrast to GMO laboratory work, which takes millions of dollars of research and many years of development — only to create a single strain, which is then expected to perform equally well (but they don’t) regardless of locale and regional conditions (so long as you use their recommended, costly chemicals, that is). GMOs are purely a ’solution’ looking for a problem — and all for the pure financial self-interest of bio-copyright claimants (nature privatisers), who are taking the aggregated work of farmers over the course of agricultural history, and making it their own.
Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.
The Nebraska study suggested that two factors are at work. First, it takes time to modify a plant and, while this is being done, better conventional ones are being developed. This is acknowledged even by the fervently pro-GM US Department of Agriculture, which has admitted that the time lag could lead to a “decrease” in yields.
But the fact that GM crops did worse than their near-identical non-GM counterparts suggest that a second factor is also at work, and that the very process of modification depresses productivity. The new Kansas study both confirms this and suggests how it is happening.
Source:
www.permaculturenews.org
