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.