Kenya's new Permanent Secretary for agriculture, Dr Romano Kiome, is the former executive director of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), which has been involved in a series of controversial GM-crop collaborations with the likes of Monsanto, USAID, the Danforth Center and the Syngenta Foundation.

One of these projects - the Syngenta Foundation's Insect Resistant Maize for Africa (IRMA) project - is being jointly implemented by KARI and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT). CIMMYT's funding for the project comes from Syngenta via its Foundation.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3632

Dr Kiome is on CIMMYT's board.
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PS sees no conflict in his role and directorship in GM food body
Story by GAKUU MATHENGE
The Sunday Nation (Kenya), 01/01/2006
http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=39&newsid=64411

The newly-appointed agriculture Permanent Secretary, Dr Romano Kiome, will not resign his directorship in an international bioresearch NGO with maize crop genetic research interests in Kenya.

The immediate former executive director of Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari) is a board member of the CIMMYT, an American bioresearch organisation involved in genetically modified (GM) crop experiments in Kenya.

Asked by the Sunday Nation if he will resign from the board of International Centre for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT), Dr Kiome said he would only do so if the other trustees felt it was the right thing to do. CIMMYT is funded by American GM research giant, Syngenta.

He said he saw no conflict of interest in his continued membership and his elevated civil service position as Permanent Secretary for Agriculture, the ministry which regulates and grants permits to plant research activities for both local and international organisations.

"My appointment to the CIMMYT board was personal and not institutional. I see no conflict of interest that was not there when I was in Kari. I serve in four international boards appointed in my personal capacity. Where my appointment was to represent the government, I will consult to decide if to resign; in case the appointment is in my personal capacity as in CIMMYT, I intend to remain there so long as the trustees feel I am useful to them," he added.

Any bioresearch activities, including genetic engineering, research permits on food crops and plants are granted by the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (Kephis) on the advice of the National Biosafety Committee.

Kephis, a parastatal in the ministry of Agriculture, sets out the conditions and regulations under which research is to be conducted and supervises compliance. The ministry of Agriculture is effectively the regulatory authority in bioresearch in Kenya.

This year alone, Kephis disbanded two major genetic research projects by Kari and two American bioresearch organisations over non-compliance with procedures.

One of them was a high-profile stem-borer resistant maize variety (Bt transgenic maize) which has been on confined trials at the Kiboko Kari field station.

Indeed, the Agricultural Secretary, Dr Wilson Songa, has in the past come out strongly, warning local scientists against yielding to pressure by international organisations to cut corners and bend rules to secure research permits.

The project was disbanded after project attendants sprayed the trial maize plants with an insecticide (Furadan), effectively killing the project as it couldn't be established if it was Bt gene action or insecticide that had killed the stem borers.

Attempts by Kari and CIMMYT to replant on the same trial plots after "washing" the soil through irrigation to leach the insecticide was rejected by Kephis which ordered establishment of new Furadan-free sites.

The fiasco that has become of the Bt Maize experiments became even more embarrassing having been launched by President Kibaki as he commissioned the new Green House at Kari early in the year.

Kephis also disbanded another collaborative GM research project on cassava between Kari and another American organisation, Dunford Research Centre, for breaching international protocol and failure to conduct environmental impact assessment on non-target species.

Kenya has no biosafety policy.

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