Dar rules out biotech penalty repeal


The government has ruled out a review and repeal of a legal clause that holds everyone liable to punitive sanction – from developers, financiers and other partners, down to the last sales outlet, should anything go wrong in the development and utilisation of agricultural biotechnology.

Dr Julius Ningu

In an interview with the ‘Daily News’ in Dar es Salaam, the Director of Environment in the Vice-President’s Office, Dr Julius Ningu, said the president has decided not to review the law.

He added, however, that the government has given a go-ahead to scientists to go ahead with research into the safety of biotechnology before any further step is taken. “We want local researchers to do research into safety of the crops.

So, if researchers do those trials, then we are sure of their safety. The researchers can do their research and determine that safety,” he said. He explained that as a government, they have met and decided that researchers in public institutions, including the Commission for Science and Technology, among others, were their employees and hence they were accountable for any research finding they make.

According to him, the Attorney General has said that the clause should not be removed,” he said. The decision, not to amend some of the critical clauses is a blow to scientists who have always argued that scientific inquiry must take its course because the government needs to make its policy decision on ‘sound scientific evidence.’

Commenting on the development in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday, the Principal Research Officer of the Mikocheni Agriculture Research Institute (MARI), Dr Alois Kullaya, said there were still fears among local scientists regarding the existing legal framework as to whether they can take on the task into biotech or not.

Dr Kullaya, who is also Coordinator for Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), initiative noted that local scientists say that the ‘strict liability clause’ in the country’s regulatory framework “is so prohibitive that even Tanzanian experiments involving regional biotech programmes have had to be done on foreign soil.”


Tanzania is currently implementing a regional collaborative project known as Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), aimed at developing drought-resistant maize varieties along with Kenya and Uganda in East Africa, as well as Mozambique and South Africa within the SADC region.

But further progress beyond ‘mock trials’ at an experimental farm at Makutopora in Dodoma has been held back pending current consultations that could pave the way for the partners, Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation, the Nairobi-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) and others, to proceed to the next steps that could lead to Tanzania’s first commercial GM maize, possibly by 2017 as earlier envisaged.

The defining moment for Tanzania had come at a consultative meeting held on September 13, 2010, bringingtogether the country’s decision-makers and top lawyers from the Vice- President’s Office (VPO), Ministries of Agriculture, Food Security and Co-operatives; Communication, Science and Technology; Livestock Development and Fisheries and other stakeholders, to discuss the implications of the 2009 Bio-safety Regulations.

At issue were three clauses that ‘appeared’ to hinder effective research and development in GM technology in Tanzania, namely, the Precautionary Principle; Strict Liability and a Requirement for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) at the level of doing any research in agricultural biotechnology.

In particular, the ‘Strict Liability’ clause states that “a person who imports, arranges transit, makes use of, releases or places on the market a GMO or product of a GMO shall be strictly liable for any harm caused by such a GMO or product of a GMO” and that ‘the harm shall be compensated.’

By ORTON KIISHWEKO, Tanzania Daily News

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