UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Genetically-modified crops, under attack in the West, may provide an answer to cutting malnutrition in poor nations by developing seeds resistant to drought, a new U.N. report says.
Despite somewhat unpredictable results, the report – to be released on Tuesday by the U.N. Development Program -- argues against a blanket rejection of genetically-altered crops, saying they could produce a higher yield in countries with poor soil and where populations are desperate for food.
The so-called "Frankenstein foods" have been put on hold in European countries, and are under attack in the United States and Canada because of fears over potential health and environmental hazards that genetic engineering could produce.
"The current debate in Europe and the United States over genetically modified crops mostly ignores the concerns of the developing world," said the annual 265-page Human Development Report 2001, to be officially released in Mexico City by UNDP.
The successful Western campaign to ban the pesticide DDT, for example, has produced a new breed of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in many tropical countries.
" BALANCED APPROACH"
"Instead of changing the environment to fit the seed, the seed could be changed to drought-resistant crops," said Kate Raworth, co-author of the report, in an interview. "We are calling for a more balanced approach."
Mark Malloch Brown, head of UNDP, pointed to an effort by Japan to develop new varieties of rice in West Africa that have 50 percent higher yields, are more tolerant of drought and richer in protein.
Yet UNDP is cautious, with Raworth saying research into potential health hazards, biosafety measures and labeling has to be part of the technological revolution. Australia, Brazil, Japan and Britain require such labels and 80 percent of the consumers in the United States want them as well.
Harvard Professor Richard Lewontin says it is still impossible to determine the consequences of biotechnology, although the negative consequences have yet to emerge.
However, many studies in the United States are not based on government data but provided "by the very parties who are asking for approval to distribute the new variety in the first place," he warned recently in the New York Review of Books.
