There's much resistance to overcome,
however. In the fall of 2006, Friends of the Earth publicly asked
governments in the hungry African countries of Ghana and Sierra Leone
to recall American food aid that contained genetically modified rice.
Four years earlier, when southern Africa was tormented by famine, the U.S. offered 540,000 tons of genetically modified grain.
Though the World Health Organization estimated that nearly 14
million Africans, including 2.3 million children under 5, were at risk
of starvation, leaders in the region rejected the food.
One, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, called it "poison."
In this nation, according to the
Biotechnology Industry Organization, corn production increased by 33%
from 1996, the first year a biotech variety was commercially planted,
to 2007; soybean yields increased during that same time by 16%.
Americans daily eat 1 billion servings
of food containing genetically modified ingredients. About 60% of food
found in grocery stores is made from engineered crops. The number of
acres sown with biotech plants has passed 280 million in 23 countries
by 12 million farmers — 90% of whom are resource-poor farmers in
developing nations, says the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
Yet not a single death or sickness can be blamed on biotech foods.