Latest Resources
4 June 2013
Tiger Brand snubs consumers on GM Purity baby food concerns
Baby FoodTiger Brands has snubbed South African consumers who petitioned the company about high levels of genetically modified (GM) maize found in Tiger Brand’s Purity baby food products. In April 2013 GMO watchdog organisation, the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB), sent two Purity products to an independent GMO testing laboratory to test for the presence […]
4 December 2012
ACB Comments on National Strategy on Agroecology
The Department of Agriculture is in the process of developing a Strategy for Agroecology for South Africa, with the aim of achieving “an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable agro-ecology sector that contributes towards poverty alleviation, job creation, food security, economic development, climate change mitigation and adaptation”. It is not clear where the drive for this […]
10 September 2012
GMOs have made no impact on food security in South Africa in fourteen years. ACB responds to DA p...
On the 5th of September 2012 James Wilmot, Democratic Alliance MP and Shadow Minister of Trade and Industry, issued a press release claiming that poor consumers cannot benefit from the “cost savings offered by GMOs” because genetically modified (GM) foods cannot be labelled. He claimed that labelling could not be implemented without a testing facility […]
9 January 2012
ACB comments on biofuels mandatory blending
The African Centre for Biodiversity hereby lodges its objections and comments to the draft regulations regarding the mandatory blending of biofuels with petrol and diesel. Read here.
8 December 2010
Competition Commission rejects Pioneer Hi Bred seed takeover
Media Advisory from the African Centre for Biosafety Johannesburg, 8th December 2010. The African Centre for Biosafety applauds the decision of the Competition Commission not to approve the take-over of Pannar Seed, South Africa’s largest seed company, by the multinational corporation and seed giant, Pioneer Hi-Bred, a subsidiary of the DuPont chemical company. The ACB […]
3 December 2010
Deep concern: Patel’S New Growth Path (NGP) supports Green Revolution for smallholder farme...
Dear friends and colleagues, The ACB is deeply disturbed and disappointed that Minister Patel’s NGP has not embraced new thinking on agriculture policy which requires breaking from a wholly inequitable and ecologically unsustainable chemical-dependent system. The NGP lacks vision as it has missed an important moment to move South Africa towards systems that reconnect food […]
3 September 2010
EIA regulations and GMOs in South Africa
The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) has done considerable work with regard to the need for environmental impact assessments of GMOs and the limitations of current legislation. This work can be found on the ACB’s website. We have perused the new Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Regulations, regulating procedures and criteria for conducting EIAs as set […]
28 January 2010
Marketing of GE potatoes in South Africa imminent: African farmers face loss of markets and consu...
South Africa’s Agricultural Research Council (ARC) has developed a GE-insect resistant potato (SpuntaG2, which is a Bt potato) with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This potato now awaits safety assessment and general release approval from the national authorities. Read here.
5 December 2009
JENNIFER THOMSON’S GM Virus Resistant Maize
During 2007, researchers from the University of Cape Town (UCT), particularly Professor Jennifer Thompson, in collaboration with Pannar seed South Africa, announced that they had developed transgene-derived resistance to the pathogen Maize-Streak-Virus (MSV). They also claimed to have developed the first maize with transgenic MSV resistance, heralding the first all-African produced genetically modified crop plant.[i] […]