potato

South Africa’s Agriculture and Research Council (ARC) has announced their intention to apply to the SA government for permission to make GM potatoes commercially available, The potato in question is a Bt potato carrying the antibiotic resistance gene nptII as a marker - the same antibiotic resistance gene that currently holds up the approval procedure of BASF's starch potato Amflora in Europe.
Campaigners from South Africa report that ARC’s GM potato work is funded by USAID and they are afraid that this Bt potato would be used to push GM crops on other African markets, even though many countries in the region have imposed bans or biosafety restrictions on GM food; countries to which at the moment about 90% of South Africa's potato production are exported.
Organisations like the African Centre for Biosafety and BioWatch South Africa therefore call for support and and signatures to stop this approval.

BASF applied for approval for the cultivation of the GM starch potato Amflora, as well as for its use as food and feed. Even though the application does not include any sufficient information to evaluate its environmental and food/feed safety, the EFSA gave a positive opinion.

Scientists in the UK put 16 lines of three different GM potatoes under a range of stress situations and then studied the quantities of two main groups of secondary, toxic metabolites. They found significant differences. An argument why it is necessary to study GM crops under realistic conditions.