Equador Halts Food Aid Program due to GM content

EFE News Service 18may01

Quito, May 17 - The Ecuadorian government on Thursday suspended a nutritional program that provides food for poor children and mothers sponsored by the United Nation's World Food Program (WFP) due to the possibility that genetically engineered soybeans were among some of the food products' ingredients.

Authorities will not suspend the food deliveries, but they will eliminate two nutrition programs aimed at children because of the possibility of genetically engineered soybeans, Radio Quito reported.

The government will make up the foot shortfall caused by the suspension of the two plans by handing out other products free of any genetically engineered ingredients.

WFP representative in Ecuador Hannah Laufer said that food provided by the two nutritional programs could contain genetically engineered soybeans.

These programs were aimed at children, pregnant women and lactating mothers, with the objective of counteracting the malnutrition and infantile growth deficiency prevalent in Ecuador's poor areas.

Accion Ecologica, one of Ecuador's most prominent environmental organizations, said that 55 percent of the ingredients used in the State's nutrition programs contain genetically engineered products, especially soybeans.

The environmental group said that the consumption of genetically engineered products could cause side effects in humans, including hypersensitive allergies or genetic damage, although no studies to determine the consequences of their use have been performed.