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Africa: Subsaharan
U.N.: Angola's Decision May Disrupt Aid
2004-03-30
A surprise decision by Angola to reject genetically modified food aid threatens to disrupt distributions to hundreds of thousands of people - many of them newly returned after the country's two-decade civil war - the U.N. food agency said Monday. The decision, announced by Angola's Council of Ministers on March 17, comes at a time when the World Food Program is already battling funding shortfalls for its program in the oil-rich southern African country.
The Zeropeans strike again!
Piss on 'em. They don't like genetically modified food, they must prefer no food. Dumbasses.
U.N. officials are currently in discussions with Angolan authorities to determine the implications for a 19,000-ton shipment of U.S. corn that had been earmarked for the country. If there is no clarity by Wednesday, the United States could redirect the corn to another country, officials said.
There's lots of bum countries standing around with their hands out. Angola's not doing us a favor.
Angola, a nation of about 14 million people, was ruined by the war pitting the government against UNITA rebels. Up to a half-million Angolans fled their country before it ended in 2002. The fighting also drove some 4 million people from their homes. Some 3.8 million have now returned to their rural homes, but about 1.5 million remain on the dole charity cases dependent on food aid, according to WFP figures.
But at least their starving people won't be tainted by GM food.
Despite pressing needs, Angola is struggling to compete for funds with other bum aid-dependent countries. Donors have privately questioned the government's commitment to resolving humanitarian problems in a country where one in every four dollars in oil earnings is unaccounted for, according to anti-corruption activists.
Only one in four? Somebody's head in the Oil Ministry is going to roll.
Details of the ban, which does not apply to milled grain, remain unclear, and the decision has not yet been officially implemented. But it could have major implications for Angola, which receives up to 77 percent of its food aid from the United States. American biotech companies have been at the forefront of promoting genetically modified food, or GMOs, which can be made to resist insects or disease. African countries such as Zambia and Zimbabwe have also rejected biotech food aid.
Bob-land's also starving. Wotta bunch of sooper geniuses.
Posted by:Steve White

#8  If we take all the free food away the Angolans may be forced to use more of their resources for growing food and less of of their resources for buying weapons to kill each other.

As for the corn, maybe we can package all of it into boxes of 20 ears a piece and send it to individual NK citizens. Does anyone have a North Korean phonebook that is recent - you know current since the last large scale purge?
Posted by: Super Hose   2004-03-30 10:00:34 PM  

#7  I say we take our Maize back from France, it's not exactly native.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-03-30 3:38:56 PM  

#6  We can shake our heads and laugh, but it's a big issue. The EU countries have threatened to cut off all agricultural trade with any African country that allows GM food, especially unmilled food, into their lands. The EU folks are afraid that the goods African countries ship to them (whatever they can squeeze through the high tariffs and other barriers) would be contaminated. The trade threat is potent since agriculture is one of the few things an African country without oil, gold or diamonds can offer to make money.

I saw elsewhere that the French are finally considered how to implement GM agriculture in their country, decades after banning it. Apparently they see money to be made so now it's okay. Hypocrites.
Posted by: Steve White   2004-03-30 3:15:51 PM  

#5  Riverdog, what do you have against hogs, man? Feeding them vegans????
Posted by: Old Patriot   2004-03-30 12:29:27 PM  

#4  Screw it. "You want the corn, here it is. You don't want it, have fun."
Posted by: mojo   2004-03-30 10:44:09 AM  

#3  hmmm.. vegan-fed hogs...
or they could skip a step and enjoy some long pig.
Posted by: Dishman   2004-03-30 2:15:16 AM  

#2  I racked my tiny brain trying to divine just what it is that these dependent African nations will get from the enviro-whackos who hold sway over them. Advice on how to save the trees that they must cut for fuel because they're too dumb and corrupt to have energy supply systems? Advice on how to save the fish and wild food animals that they must eat just to stay alive? Advice on how to rotate crops in areas where only one crop has ever been cultivated? Advice on how to live with their neighbors when all their neighbors want to do is slice them to pieces with machetes?

I could go on, but you get the picture. These anti-genetic modification idiots are just the same people who took DDT away from the Africans just when they had learned to use it to save millions. If the Africans had any smarts at all, they would invite all the envirowhackos to a big parley, then take out their machetes and convert the lot of them to hog feed.
Posted by: Rivrdog   2004-03-30 1:25:26 AM  

#1  "...a time when the World Food Program is already battling funding shortfalls for its program in the oil-rich southern African country."

Food shortages AND oil rich, all in the same country. Hmm. How d'you spose that happens? Guess it gives the NGOs something to do...
Posted by: Hyper   2004-03-30 12:26:42 AM  

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