Government reviewing policy on GM food imports

The Sudanese government has guaranteed the World Food Programme (WFP) that all food deliveries will be permitted to enter the country for the next six months, while it conducts a review of its policy on genetically modified (GM) foods. "The government informed us verbally that it will review its policy on GM foods over the next three months," a spokesman for WFP, Robin Lodge, told IRIN on Tuesday. A number of food shipments held up in Port Sudan for over a week due to concerns about GM food were released by Sudanese authorities on Saturday. WFP, which sources and delivers most of Sudan's food aid, received a letter from the Sudanese Standards and Metrology Organization (a government body) in May outlining a ban on imports of GM food. The new regulations stated that a GM-free certificate would be required for food commodities, including grains, pulses and blended foods, entering the country. WFP did not test the food it distributed for its GM content, Lodge said, as there were neither international guidelines calling for such action, nor international agreements on tolerance levels of such foods. "We can't say whether we're giving out GM food or not." However, he said, in a case where a country objected to receiving deliveries of GM food, WFP would guarantee not to supply it. "If we get a directive to stop all deliveries, including airdrops, we can't go ahead with them without their [the authorities] say so." "WFP has never pressed any recipient government to accept GM food," he added. While the food shipments arriving in Port Sudan - which were donated mainly from the US - were being held up, WFP had continued to deliver to other areas in Sudan, he said. Muhammad Dirdeiry, the charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, told IRIN that requests to bring in GM foods to Sudan were being studied. "One idea that we are mooting is to see whether it's possible for the African Union to take a decision [on this issue], which would be an African decision, adopted by all of the African countries." "We will not take a unitary decision," he said. "We are going along with the African consensus on this matter."