Headline from Zimbabwe: "GMO food banned ... as nation starves"

Ronald Bailey | May 28, 2009

From The Zimbabwean: 

Zimbabwe’s main consumer rights group, the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ), has started raiding shops and supermarkets found selling Genetically Modified Foods (GMO) on grounds that it is unhealthy...

CCZ which fights for the rights of consumers last week started to inspect and recommend that shops selling GMO foods should be closed.

Reading further into the article, one finds the claim that people are getting sick because they are eating foods past their expiration dates. Could THAT be the problem rather than being made from genetically modified crops? 

Read and weep over whole article here. 

Comments

Mister DNA|5.28.09 @ 5:11PM|#

In other news, Michael F. Jacobson reached for the lotion and Kleenex after reading about this...

|5.28.09 @ 5:15PM|#

Well the irrational luddite wing of the environmentalist movement should be very pleased with this development.

|5.28.09 @ 5:55PM|#

CCZ which fights for the rights of consumers...

Ah yes, the old "fights for the rights of consumers" by taking away their choices.

Or, you can never be truly free until someone else is running your life.

|5.28.09 @ 6:02PM|#

Dying of starvation is environmentally correct.

Wesley Willis|5.28.09 @ 6:21PM|#

I'd rather fight than switch.

Invisible Finger|5.28.09 @ 6:24PM|#

Reducing Africa's carbon footprint, two feet at a time.

|5.28.09 @ 6:34PM|#

Thirty years from now, when everyone realizes that genetic engineering is a necessary technology, like nuclear, the intellectual descendents of people like Tony will be in here arguing that it wasn't environmental activists who made people afraid of GMOs.

Whenever the left is proven wrong, it just rewrites history. They control the history departments in academia.

Farrakhan|5.28.09 @ 6:49PM|#

Hey, at least the white people aren't in charge.

ed|5.28.09 @ 7:06PM|#

Shocking. If only we had a Black President, one with some clout, some empathy...

JB|5.28.09 @ 10:11PM|#

FABA

For Africans, By Africans. Zimbabaland is what you get when you put morons in charge. Now that whitey is long gone, Mugabe has to find new witches to scapegoat.

stuartl|5.28.09 @ 10:36PM|#

From the article: But with over three million of people facing famine, in 2002 the Mugabe government agreed to accept GMO maize from the United States on the condition that it was milled.

So milling removes whatever threat GMO corn might harbor? Quick, someone tell the EU.

LarryA|5.29.09 @ 12:52AM|#

So milling removes whatever threat GMO corn might harbor? Quick, someone tell the EU.

The theory is if it's milled you can't plant it.

|5.29.09 @ 3:20AM|#

Thirty years from now, when everyone realizes that genetic engineering is a necessary technology, like nuclear, the intellectual descendents of people like Tony will be in here arguing that it wasn't environmental activists who made people afraid of GMOs.

This isn't even a big deal...malaria has killed more people in Africa then aids yet the left still gets away with banning DDT.

roy|5.29.09 @ 5:36AM|#

"For Africans, By Africans. Zimbabaland is what you get when you put morons in charge."

Actually it's what happens when you put socialists in charge... same thing happening in Venezuela... Chavez is 10 yrs behind Mugabe, but on the same tried-and-tested path...

roy|5.29.09 @ 5:45AM|#

Mugabe took more than 20 years to completely destroy the country and turn it from Africa's breadbasket into Africa's worse basketcase... (yes, even more than Somalia).

He started off destroying Zim's best industry, moved on from there to gradually suck the lifeblood out of everything else until all that was left was printing money...

Chavez started off nationalizing PDVSA (oil), then kicking out half the engineers, then went after food, newspapers, etc... most recently banks and oil auxiliary co.s... he's only a few steps behind Mugabe... and seems determined to get there.

C. Marin|5.29.09 @ 7:34AM|#

For Africans, By Africans. Zimbabaland is what you get when you put morons in charge."

Actually it's what happens when you put socialists in charge...

Morons . . . Socialists . . . It's all the same thing, man.

stuartl|5.29.09 @ 9:11AM|#

The theory is if it's milled you can't plant it.

So the genes are only bad for humans if they reproduce?

Michael|5.29.09 @ 11:07AM|#

Chavez started off nationalizing PDVSA (oil), then kicking out half the engineers, then went after food, newspapers, etc... most recently banks and oil auxiliary co.s... he's only a few steps behind Mugabe... and seems determined to get there.

Pppffffttt.....whatever. Tell me, does Mugabe have a dick phone? Huh?

Yeah, didn't think so.

http://www.intomobile.com/2009/05/12/venezuelas-hugo-chavez-launches-affordable-penis-phone.html

|5.29.09 @ 11:57AM|#

So the genes are only bad for humans if they reproduce?

The usual line of reasoning is that, since most seeds produced from GM plants will grow into sterile plants to protect the corporation patents, people who plant the seeds may grow plants that pollinate corn plants in nearby pastures, causing them to turn sterile.

Pointing out the fact that sterile plants don't produce pollen often triggers a violent reaction in anti-GM people, so be sure you have 911 on your speeddial.

|5.29.09 @ 2:31PM|#

To be fair, Terminator (sterile) crops were never marketed. The only real concern is that the GM breeds will cross breed with non-GM breeds, rendering them non-marketable in the EU.

Considering that Zimbabwe isn't exporting food right now, this seems pretty retarded, and anyway,it's only a probably because of the moron consumers in the EU who pigheadedly insist that the Africans they buy food from must use primitive agriculture to produce it.

It's like saying "I'm not going to buy food from you unless you grovel in the mud 16 hours a day to produce it. Any labor saving technologies like pesticides and biotech are impermissible. Unless your a fucking serf serving my needs to produce aesthetically pleasing Organic fruit, you can starve."

|5.29.09 @ 2:32PM|#

Er, only a problem because of the moron consumers