1.Malawi formulate national legislation to reject GM maize!
2.Southern Africa: Have GMOs Infiltrated Namibia's Borders?
3.South Africa: protests at Stellenbosch transgenic grapevine experiment
4.Zambia sees organic farming crucial

SAY NO TO GM WINE!

South African campaign groups are calling for everyone to make South Africa's wine industry aware of the dangers from planned field trials of GM grapes. Please click the link below to automatically send an e-mail to SA's wine exporters. It only takes a minute: http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=87&page=1

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1.Malawi formulate national legislation to reject GM maize! [shortened]
By Brenda Zulu Southern Africa Social Forum, 15 October 2006
http://www.oneworldafrica.org/sasf/newsdetails.php?news_id=00000064

Malawi must formulate a national legislation to reject Genetic Modification (GM) maize, until it undertakes a scientific assessment of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) on human health and biodiversity.

Presenting the food aid analysis and its effects at the Southern Africa Social Forum (SASF), Edson Musopole from Action Aid said the decision with regard to the acceptance of GM commodities as part of food aid transactions rests with recipient’s country.

Musopole noted that alternative source of non GM food are usually available in local or non GM maize neighbouring countries.

He said Malawi had more and more become dependent on food aid which also comes in form of GM maize.

Musopole said the Malawian Government needs to develop policies to provide donors with a code of conduct which helps to free food aid from its negative image of being tool for rich countries to get rid of their surplus production.
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2.Southern Africa: Have GMOs Infiltrated Namibia's Borders? [shortened]
Wezi Tjaronda New Era (Windhoek), October 19 2006 http://allafrica.com/stories/200610190625.html

Namibia and four other countries in SADC will know by mid-November whether or not Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) have infiltrated their borders.

The Biotechnology Trust of Zimbabwe (BTZ) is conducting research on the spread of (GMOs) in Namibia, Swaziland, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe to inform policy-makers on the spread of GMOs to enable them to take it into consideration when formulating their Biosafety policies.

At present, only three countries in SADC - namely: South Africa, Zimbabwe and Malawi - have Biosafety policies, yet a number of countries have been recipients of GMOs in the form of seed, food aid and animal feed. The study is considered essential as it will assess the movement of GMOs in the region including inflows, food, seed and animal feed, and will establish environmental and biological potential threats and create awareness on the biological status of the region, thus contributing to the development of a regionally coordinated policy framework on movement, handling and processing of GMOs in the region.

The focus of the research study is to determine the presence or absence of genetically modified maize (BT Maize), cotton (BT Cotton) and soya, but will also cover sorghum, millet and sugar beans.

BTZ Executive Director, Naison Bhunhu, told New Era from Zimbabwe yesterday that the preliminary results of the research study, which started earlier this year, will be released mid-November at a partners' meeting to be held in Windhoek.

The trust has completed an analysis of samples from Zimbabwe and Malawi, and has just collected samples from Namibia as they were held up by the clearance systems from the one country to the other.

In Africa, only South Africa, which has BT maize, BT Cotton and GM soya, has commercialized GMOs. South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Nigeria are leading as far as biotechnology research is concerned.

Nine countries have field trials, 20 are engaged in GMO research and development, and 24 in capacity-building and institutions to conduct research and development, while 27 have ratified the Cartagena protocol which governs the safe use of GMOs.
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3.South Africa: protests at Stellenbosch transgenic grapevine experiment
Groups say contamination risks are unacceptably high
Source: Grape News
http://www.freshplaza.com/2006/17oct/2_za_grape_experiment.htm

As Grape previously reported, the first plantings of genetically modified grapevines into the South African vineyard were announced a few weeks ago by Stellenbosch University's Institute for Wine Biotechnology (IWB). Now the African Centre for Biosafety and Earthlife Africa Ethekwini have called on the government to reject the Institute’s application to conduct its open-air field trials involving genetically modified (GM) vines.

The IWB's Grapevine Biotechnology programme has thus far pursued its research into transgenic grapevine plants only in greenhouses and laboratories, and says it wants to conduct field trials to properly assess performance. The plan is to plant nearly a hectare of the vines on the University’s Welgevallen experimental farm on the outskirts of Stellenbosch.

The protesting groups say that 'the risks of contamination of adjacent fertile grapevine varieties by the GM cultivars are unacceptably high', and that they 'threaten South Africa's lucrative wine export market, especially to the European Union ... where consumers are still reeling from the recent contamination scandal involving illegal GM rice'.

The African Centre for Biosafety says it has assessed the IWB's own risk assessment – which it descibes as 'scanty' – and that it ‘relies heavily on inconclusive, outdated and abandoned biosafety studies conducted in Germany by the Institute for Vine Breeding’. Those field trials of GM grapevines had, it further suggests, not run their full course, because the transgenic vines failed to offer resistance to fungal pests