Ethiopian Review

Addis Ababa — Aiming to save the nation from the adverse effects of genetically modified organisms (GMO), a new Proclamation on Bio-Safety was approved by parliament last week.

Drafted by the Federal Environmental Protection Authority (FEPA), this landmark legislation, which various environmental groups and local consumer associations have been calling for, contains various regulations aimed at protecting human and animal health, and biological diversity, by managing and even totally avoiding GMO threats.

The draft bill was among agenda items, but was never discussed in the first meeting of the Environment Council. The council’s membership includes ministers, regional presidents and a civil society representative, Negusu Aklilu, Director of the Forum for the Environment (FfE).

“We had finished our part preparing the bill based on the international bio-safety law, with local characteristics,” Teweldeberhan Gebregziabhere (PhD) head of FEPA commented to Capital back in December last year.

The Council, which was founded two years ago, and held its first meeting on April 23 last year under the chairmanship of Deputy Prime Minister Addisu Legesse finally approved the draft bill and sent it to cabinet which endorsed it and passed it onto parliament. Parliament unanimously approved the bill last Tuesday in the final general session of the year.

Empowered by the new legislation, FEPA will shortly establish a National Bio-Safety Clearing House that will keep detailed records of experts that specialise in modified organisms in order to monitor their activities. The clearing house will also determine a list of modified organisms that have been rejected or approved for import and export and make the information available.

The unauthorised importation of GMO foods was a concern for various groups, such as the Eco Consumer Association which advocated for a ban for quite some time.

“We are hearing reports of genetically modified teff. There are groups waiting for the opportunity to dump their products,” Gebremedhin Birega, Director of Eco had cautioned participants of last year’s FfE annual conference.

The pioneer in GMO research in the United States uses what is called substantial equivalence regulation. International publications explain the approach as a liberal one which looks into whether GM foods have similar health and nutritional characteristics with a natural food type provided that they are safe to use.

The precautionary principle is a more popular approach for many countries, including those in the European Union.

“If an action might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action,” the approach’s rationale is explained in one publication.

Accordingly, the principle states there is a responsibility to intervene and protect the public from exposure to harm where scientific investigation discovers a plausible risk in suspected GMO cases.

Experts who studied the latest Ethiopian regulations say the regulators clearly sympathised with the latter approach. The new law says any transit, import and production should be done only with a written consent granted by FEPA. Violation of various stipulation included in the legislation could mean a prison term of up to 15 years.

- By Kirubel Tadesse | Capital Ethiopia