A letter from our friends at the ACB. For their direct contact details please see the end of the letter. Let us support them in their efforts to make and keep our food safe and GM free!

Dear Consumer,

For the past four years, the ACB has been submitting a number of products for testing to ascertain their GM content as well as to gauge the extent to which food producers are responding to all your wonderful consumer activism and pressure. This year the ACB re-tested 4 popular maize milled products as well as 16 baby and breakfast cereals.

The African Centre for Biosaftery tested for GM ingredients in our staple foods in SA and their findings were disturbing to say the least. We encourage everyone to ask questions and demand answers from companies manufacturing the products we use every day as South Africans. We have the right to know what is in our food!

Permits for the cultivation of GM maize, soya and cotton have been granted in South Africa.

In 2013 it was estimated that 86.6% of South Africa’s maize production was GM. There is no segregation of GM and non-GM maize in storage resulting in comingling and an absence of non-GM maize on the market.

The ACB’s tests for GM in staple foods found the following:

 From our friends at the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB):

The South African government took the deeply controversial decision to permit the genetic modification (GM) of our staple food, maize, in 1997. Three years later they also approved the cultivation of GM soya.
South African consumers have lobbied extensively for the labelling of GM food ever since, while the biotech and food industry have fought aggressively to keep consumers in the dark.

The Consumer Protection Act (CPA) of 2008 requires the mandatory labelling of GM foodstuffs and food producers were lawfully bound to start labelling from October 2011 after regulations to the Act came into force.