Ghanaians are being misled about the plant breeders' bill!

Feature Article by Food Sovereignty Ghana

The Plant Breeders' Bill currently at the Consideration Stage before our
Parliament is all about the imposition of genetically modified organisms
into our food chain without any form of public awareness and
participation in that decision. Far from simply dealing with the rights
of the plant breeder, the Bill is designed in such a way as to pre-empt
the eventualities of government regulations such as those calling for
the labelling of GM foods, or the banning some of them for the sake of
the environment or the health of Ghanaians.

This is what Clause 23 of the Plant Breeders' Bill is about:

_CLAUSE_ _23: MEASURES REGULATING COMMERCE. _

"_A plant breeder right shall be independent of any measure taken by the
Republic to regulate within Ghana the production, certification and
marketing of material of a variety or the importation or exportation of
the material."_

The Bill seeks to pre-emptively knock out of order, any attempt by the
government to control "_the production, certification and marketing of
material of a variety or the importation or exportation of the
material."_ And the "material of a variety" in question is described in
Clause 20 (6) of the Bill as follows:

_CLAUSE 20 [1] (6):_

"(6) An essentially derived variety may be obtained for example by the
selection of a

(a) natural mutant or induced mutant,

(b) somaclonal variant, or

_(c) variant individual from a plant of the initial variety, back
crossing __OR TRANSFORMATION BY GENETIC ENGINEERING__."_

For more on the specifics of the bill see:_ Plant Breeders' Bill
Protects GMOs | Food Sovereignty Ghana
http://foodsovereigntyghana.org/plant-breeders-bill-protects-gmos/ [2]_

Food Sovereignty Ghana is horrified by the mind-boggling attempts by
people in responsible positions of public trust who are supposed to know
better, to mislead the Ghanaian public and our law-makers that the Plant
Breeders' Bill has nothing to do with GMOs! The Bill has GMOs in the
crossed hairs. The objective is to disable the ability of Ghanaians to
legally challenge anything relating to the GMO imposition.

The Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Mrs. Marietta Brew
Appiah-Oppong, who ought to know better than this, has been a source of
this misleading propaganda to divorce the Plant Breeders' Bill from
GMOs. She is on record to have challenged the FSG linkage of the PBB
with GMOs at our meeting with the Parliamentary sub-committee on
Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs.

It is obvious that there is an orchestrated attempt not only to mislead
Parliament into voting for the Bill, but also to throw dust into the
eyes of the Ghanaian public about the real intent and import of the Bill
vis-à-vis the enabling of the plant breeder to introduce GMOs into our
food chain without any public awareness and participation in that
decision.

As the debate regarding the linkage between the PBB and GMOs raged on,
the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) through Deputy Minister at
MOFA in-charge of Crops, Dr Yakubu Alhassan, joined the fray to publicly
deny pushing a legalisation in support of the introduction of
genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the country.

"It has, therefore, described as untrue, recent discussions by some
institutions, civil society organisations (CSOs) and individuals that
the Plant Breeders Bill, currently before Parliament, was meant to give
legal backing to the production and consumption of GMOs in the country".
See: NO [3]PLANS TO INTRODUCE GMOS INTO GHANA - AGRIC MINISTRY [3]

Also, on December, 19, 2013, the Director-General of the Council for
Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Dr Abdulai Baba Salifu, was
reported by the Ghana News Agency to have even organised a press
conference to claim that "The Plant Breeder's Right Bill before
parliament, is to protect crop variety breeders and has nothing to do
with Genetically Modified (GM) foods as been speculated." See: BREEDERS'
BILL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GMOS – CSIR [4]
http://www.ghananewsagency.org/science/breeders-bill-has-nothing-to-do-with-gmos-csir--68771
[4]

It would have been bad enough as it is, even if it could be argued that
these people in responsible positions such as the Attorney-General,
Director-General of CSIR, and the Deputy Minister for Food and
Agriculture in charge of crops, made these these wild claims simply
because they have not even bothered to read the Bill for themselves
before pronouncing on an issue they have no idea of.

What is even alarming is the fact that these people continued to peddle
their lies even after being publicly corrected by Prof. Walter Sando
Alhassan during the FSG meeting with the Parliamentary sub-committee on
Constitutional, Legal, and Parliamentary Affairs on December 4, 2014.
They continued to stubbornly peddle these lies even after this! There
seems to be a discernible determination on their part to use plain lies
and deceit to push the Plant Breeders' Bill into law.

Considering the far-reaching implications of this Bill on our
sovereignty as a people, our health, as well as the sanity of our
environment, the behaviour of these public officials goes beyond gross
dereliction of duty to a betrayal of public trust and criminal
negligence. It is a sad commentary on the entire Mahama Administration
that these officials are still in post, and not under investigation for
possible conflicts of interest. Monsanto is notorious for bribing their
way in several countries. And such blatant lies from people in
responsible positions must give cause for concern.

The very fact that the Plant Breeders' Bill has gone through First and
Second Reading without expunging the obnoxious clauses from it speaks
volumes of the vulnerability of our branches of government to undue
external influences inimical to Ghana. The Bill is being rushed to
comply with the World Trade Organisation's WTO, Trade and Related
Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS-rules without proper scrutiny. Ghana
does not have to make the plant breeder's right over and above the laws
of Ghana in order to be in compliance.

The level and quality of the debates on the floor of Parliament over the
Bill betrays a lack of information critical in taking these far-reaching
decisions. For instance, most Parliamentarians are even unaware that the
Bill before them is asking them to evacuate their sacred responsibility
to diligently protect the health and safety of Ghanaians. Fewer still
even know that the Bill has anything to do with GMOs. And those who did
know and tried to speak up, were told publicly, and without any
challenge, as trying "to confuse issues of botany with intellectual
property"! See: page 483 of the Hansard, Plant Breeders' Bill, 2013,
Second Reading, 8th November, 2013.

It is under an atmosphere such as this that we call upon Parliament to
defer debate on the Bill and begin to initiate a process of public
consultations regarding the introduction of GMOs into our food chain.
FSG feels very relieved that several civil society groups, workers'
unions, religious bodies, as well as political figures and heads of
stake-holder public institutions have come out openly calling for a
careful look, further public awareness and consultations, before
proceeding. We particularly welcome the counsel by the Catholic Bishops
Conference to the Parliament to "make haste slowly" with the Plant
Breeders' Bill. Meanwhile, our goods are getting rotten in the farms,
our farmers have no security of tenure, our roads are poor and there are
a thousand of things the government can do to ensure food security.
There is no reason to rush with the Plant Breeders' Bill.

For Life, the Environment, and Social Justice!

Ali-Masmadi Jehu-Appiah,
Chairperson, FSG