SAFeAGE
Chairman's Report March 2006 – February 2007.
Introduction.
How
time flies! Ten years have passed since the passing of the GMO Act, the Act that
supposedly regulates the agricultural and other releases of GMOs. Many of us
have hardly taken a moment’s breath in the fight against the contamination of
our food and others have opted to play a less prominent role than they have in
the past. It has been an interesting decade for those who have been involved.
As
an organisation this was another challenging year. Due to funding kindly
provided by HIVOS in June 2006, we started serious work on our campaigns.
Through the work of the national co-ordinator and a core team of volunteers and
networkers, we started outreach initially on the leaders of faith groups,
showing DVD’s, attending as many conferences and events as we could, doing
talks. Thousands of people were reached and we started an unstoppably rising
tide of consumers who are concerned by the implications that GMOs have on our
food security and our food safety.
The
Safe Food list started with the research done by Prof Chris Viljoen of the
University of the Free State. A legal brief was obtained regarding the
constraints of the current legal framework that has been put in place by vested
interests which undermines citizens rights to meaningful labelling and
identification of GM foods. Still, through
our members and volunteers, we have undertaken significant amounts of research
on the status quo of our food. While some contamination has occurred there are
still many basic foodstuffs that remain clear of genetically altered
ingredients. The result of our research regarding the legal advice is that
SAFeAGE will look to start a ‘GM Conscious’ or GM Aware’ food list because
the law states that we cannot ‘label’ a product GM Free due to the inherent
implication that other foods of its kind contain GM. Also to list products on a
SAFeAGE website which is clearly anti-GMO, amounts to the same thing and we
could stand to be sued for loss of business. These problems aside we decided to
look into the creation of an appropriately named brand for food that we can list
on our previously named “GM Free Food List”.
This will come into full swing in 2008.
We
have had offers of testing of foodstuffs that we will embark upon shortly and
will share the results of these with the public.
The
second successful aspect of this campaign, that of the labelling campaign,
started progressing incrementally. We have been working toward securing a
critical mass of consumers – both individuals and organisations – calling
for labelling of products containing greater than 0.9% GM as ‘contains GM’.
Mandates secured from their petitions would later enable us to approach
retailers and food producers and demand that GM foods be labelled.
We
have had one major success with this campaign and this is the withdrawal of
recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH, rBST, BST) from use on the majority of
our dairy herds in South Africa. This is due primarily to the work of SAFAGE
members on this campaign. All major dairies have pledged and advertised their
dairy produce as being free of this hormone and while one or two smaller
producers may still use this highly questionable substance on their livestock it
is a tiny proportion of the whole. Interviews have found no single user
admitting to using this substance and this is now clearly indicated in labelling
across the nation.
As
stated above our membership has grown to make us one of the largest single
networks on any consumer issue in South Africa. We thank them for their support
and dedication to demand food free of GM contamination. The faith-based
community has played a major role in networking this issue and we look forward
to building this relationship. We also have had member’s sign on from our many
outreach campaigns. We pledge to continue to support their demands and to make
their wishes clear to the producers of our food supply in South Africa.
Chair
November
2007
Annual Report 06-07
F