GM-Maize-Report

industries in South Africa and GM labellingremains unenforced.During this period, acting as a consumerwatchdog, the ACB has submitted severalmaize based food items for GMO testing,all of which recorded very high levels of GMcontent. The revelation that several popularbrands of baby food were packed with GMmaize and soya proved particularly damaging,forcing some of the largest food processorson the market, including Nestle and, after aninitial period of intransigence, Tiger Brands, topledge to go GM free. However, the major foodcompanies have so far refused to countenancea GM free alternative for maize meal, the staplefood of millions of South Africans, includingfamilies for which branded GM-free baby foodsand formulas remain a prohibitively expensiveluxury.With this in mind, the ACB decided to focusin its latest round of GM testing exclusivelyon the most popular brands of maize mealin South Africa. The results indicate what wehad long suspected, that the South Africanmaize value chain is completely saturatedwith GM, robbing millions of South Africansof the freedom to choose what to eat. In sucha scenario, a labelling system does nothing toalleviate this; it is like the sham election whereeverybody knows the winner before the firstballot is even cast.Maize meal brandImpala Maize mealAce super maize mealNyala super maize mealWhite Star super maizemealPremier Course Braai PapWoolworths super maizemealIwisa super maize mealGM content66% GM maize78% GM maize87% GM maize72% GM maize55% GM maize79% GM maize81% GM maizeThis briefing will go on to show how these,and other companies operating the length andbreadth of the maize supply chain, emergedlargely from the mining boom of the latenineteenth century and firmly establishedthemselves under the apartheid government.During and after the transition to democracythey have been unleashed on unsuspectingSouth African consumers as fully-fledgedmodern agri-business companies who continueto dominate the milling sector, have fixedthe price of bread and maize meal, and haveworked in concert with the biotech industry tostifle the GM food labelling laws.Last but not least, this model of industrialagriculture is being punted as the meansto deliver millions of Africans from povertyand hunger. This briefiing illustrates that thecurrent system is doing neither, but merelyperpetuating centuries old inequalities thathave wracked the continent.EXECUTIVESUMMARYMaize, literally translated as ‘that whichsustains life’ by the Aztecs and Incas, is saidto have first been domesticated some 7,000years ago in central Mexico. It was introducedto Africa some 500 years ago, though itwould take another 200 years to becomefirmly established in southern Africa. Onceestablished in what is now South Africa, maize(the word itself is thought to derive fromthe Portuguese milho) was widely used as avegetable crop to alleviate hunger during thelong cropping seasons for sorghum, which wasthe staple at the time.The status of maize in South Africa wouldchange forever with the discovery ofdiamonds at Kimberly in 1867, and gold on theWitwatersrand in 1886, metamorphasisingmaize into the grain that fed the thousandsof migrant miners who flocked to the mineralfields from all over the sub-continent. Thisnewly urbanising population began toconsume maize as ‘mealie’ flour, rather than inits milky stage porridge, as had been the normup until then. New varieties of maize seed,‘dents’, were imported from America, which,in addition to out-yielding the traditional flintvarieties, produced a soft starch, favouredby the new mechanised techniques beingemployed by the milling industry.GM Maize: Lessons for Africa 5