By Stephen Obidike
The Arise News jingle was playing in the background while I was heading to the bathroom when I heard the word Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) and National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control mentioned by one of the Arise News Anchors. I ran back like the north pole of a magnet seeking the south pole. I was excited because they were going to discuss GMO foods in relation to human consumption referencing the statement made by the NAFDAC Director General a few days ago. Their panel was made up of Professor Abdullahi Mustapha who is the Director General of National Biotechnology Development Agency; Dr Oyeleye who is Veterinarian, an Expert in Public Health, Agriculture, food safety and the Environment; and an African farmer, Mr Mogaji who is the CEO of Farm Credit. I quickly curled up in the sofa hoping to be entertained.
Turned out all three panelists were all pro GMO for different reasons. The farmer’s interest was that the GMO will give him more crops, more yield and more profit. He was not particularly against or for GMO and will eat GMO foods. Prof Mustapha was saying that his agency has scientists that conduct researches on the crops, and they have not found anything wrong with GMO crops. Dr Oyeleye to my surprise thinks that most of the things being said about GMO products were more in the realm of conjecture rather than reality. He further suggested that the information from NAFDAC’s DG, Prof Adeyeye, was more of misinformation. That made me sit up and got me more interested.
I quickly pulled my laptop but just for a minute I set it down so I can finish the programme. Immediately at the end of the programme, I pulled my laptop back opened PubMed to look at recent publications on GMO products and there were a lot of them. Any reasonable academic knows that if you wish to do robust research, you want to be looking at papers published in the last three to four years and that was what I went for. It took me less than a minute to find interesting papers published about the safety of GMO products. I decided to go through a few of them.
In Jan 2024 Abrams et al published the paper on Use of GMO containing food products in Children in the American Academy of Peadiatrics.
(Abrams SA, Albin JL, Landrigan PJ; COMMITTEE ON NUTRITION; COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH AND CLIMATE CHANGE. Use of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO)-Containing Food Products in Children. Pediatrics. 2024 Jan 1;153(1):e2023064774. doi: 10.1542/peds. 2023-064774. PMID: 38073334.)
In the paper they highlighted that the World Health Organisation (WHO) noted that Glyphosate a herbicide widely used in making GMO is a probable human carcinogen and measurable quantities of Glyphosate has been detected in GMO foods. WHO advised parents to seek more plant-based food than ultra-processed food.
I decided to look further. It was not difficult to find another article. In their article Graham Brooks and Peter Barfoot in their article published in 2020 still highlighted the presence of Glyphosate in GMO foods.
( Brookes G, Barfoot P. Environmental impacts of genetically modified (GM) crop use 1996-2018: impacts on pesticide use and carbon emissions. GM Crops Food. 2020 Oct 1;11(4):215-241. doi: 10.1080/21645698.2020.1773198. PMID: 32706316; PMCID: PMC7518756.).
I was not done. I took another look and there was another article right in front of me. This was published in July 2021 by Teferra TF.
(Teferra TF. Should we still worry about the safety of GMO foods? Why and why not? A review. Food Sci Nutr. 2021 Jul 27;9(9):5324-5331. doi: 10.1002/fsn3.2499. PMID: 34532037; PMCID: PMC8441473.)
The author highlighted that there are uncertainties regarding GMO crops especially Corn and Soy on food safety and environmental sustainability.
Invariably, there are significant reason to be concerned about GMO food and crops both for the human consumption, food safety and the environment. I felt I have had enough but before I closed my laptop, I decided to look for any research published by or attributed to the National Biotechnology Development Agency, but I found none. I drew a conclusion in my head that the panel may have misinformed Nigerians – not Prof Adeyeye, the DG of NAFDAC. I think I may have to draw the attention of the Arise News crew to this misinformation given to vulnerable Nigerians by their panel. The interview was aired by Arise News on 1st July 2024.
Dr Stephen Onyebuchi Obidike is an Emergency Physician writing from the UK.
