Namibia is working on regulations of the Biosafety Act 2006, which will regulate the import, export and production of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

GMOs are living plants, animals or microbes that have been given new genes or whose genes have been modified to give them new characteristics.

The Biosafety Act was passed and signed in December 2006. It aims to introduce a system and procedures for the regulation of GMOs to provide protection to the conservation, research, development, production, marketing, transport, application and other uses of genetically modified organisms and specific products derived from GMOs. It also aims to promote sustainable use of biological diversity by taking into consideration potential risks to human health and safety, as well as cultural, social and economic considerations.

The Biosafety Focal Point, Dr Martha Kandawa-Schulz, told New Era last week that legal drafter Wally Rautenbach is currently finalising the biosafety regulations to the Biosafety Act and the guidelines to the different sections (on field trials, contained use, general release on the market and transport and transit) have also been drafted. Manuals on the Biosafety Act and on inspection and monitoring have also been completed.

The Act governs the import, export, release into the environment, the contained use, placing on the market, transport or transit have also been drafted.

Namibia is a signatory and a party to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which requires exporters of living genetically, modified organisms to get permission (advanced informed agreement) from importing parties before shipment arrives.

Meanwhile, a simplified version of the Act, the Biosafety Act Manual, has been compiled.

Kandawa-Schulz said the alliance has produced and translated brochures on GM foods, GM crops, biotechnology, GMO testing, training and research at the University of Namibia and Namibia Biotechnology Alliance into six local languages.

The Ministry of Education, responsible for Science and Technology, is the competent authority for Biosafety Act, to which applications will be made. The Minister of Education will determine the date when implementation will begin.

The Research, Science and Technology Act 2004 also provides for the establishment of the Biosafety Council, which will investigate and consider applications for permits to deal with GMOs, as well as selected and determined GMO products.

Kandawa- Schulz said there is need for good infrastructure and raising of awareness on biosafety and biotechnology within the public.

As for Namibia, she said it would be good for the country to do research on its own local crops such as millet and indigenous medicinal plants and produce its own products.

Although Namibia has not yet approved the growing of GM crops, the food processing industry used approved enzymes and additive derived from GM microbes and some GM ingredients such as soya lecithin and maize starches and syrups.

The advantages of biotechnology, a process through which genes are transferred to produce GMO is that one can produce many more crops, although it remains to be seen whether there will be hunger or not.

However, the long-term consequence of planting and consuming GMO products is not very clear to indigenous farmers.

Problems related to contamination of indigenous plants still persist and there is also the fear that the GMO might wipe out existing organisms.

“Although farmers would like to plant some GMOs, many do not want to lose their local varieties. They want to know what will happen in the long-term and whether the safety of the approved GMO will remain the same in years to come. Research is ongoing in this area and several issues and questions will be answered in the immediate future,” she said.

Through traditional biotechnology, communities make bread and porridge with yeast, make compost from dead plant material with fungi and bacteria to return nutrients to the soil and use plants for medicines.

Conventional biotechnology, which is hundreds of years old, is used in selecting and breeding to improve the microbes, plants and animals used for food production, transfer of genes between plants and animals to improve resistance to disease and increase drought tolerance.

With modern biotechnology, however, people can transfer specified and targeted genes from one organism to another without breeding.