The Agricultural Sovereignty Ghana , a social movement has urged Ghanaians to rise and reject the Plant Breeders Bill, in its current form saying the bill when passed, would impoverish the local plant breeder as well as collapse institutions undertaking research into plant breeding.
In an interview with Rite news, the Programmes Officer of Agricultural Sovereignty Ghana, Mr. Duke Taggoe has said that though parliament has suspended debate on the bill, the government was said to have appended its signature to African Regional Intellectual Property Organizer Act in Arusha, Tanzania on July 6 where the plant Variety Protection Act was considered.
According to him, the Hon. Speaker of parliament Rt. Peter Doe Adjaho has called for a broad consultation from the Researchers, Farmer Base Organizations and the bio-safety committee to make sure that passing the plant breeder bill will not bring controversy and also have bad implications on our health as far as the GMO Seed is concern.
He said that information reaching their end indicates that some officials from Ghana has travel to Tanzania to pass the Plant Breeders Bill there which will also serve as an agreement that Ghana as a country will also accept the commercialization of the GMO seeds.
According to him, something like that may happened there but Agricultural Sovereignty Ghana will collaborate with Ghanaians to reject the plant Breeders Bill as far as human Right is concern in the country.
Mr. Taggoe noted that some government officials, businessmen and some parliament are working secretly to enforce this plant breeders bill, but it will not succeed because introducing these GMO seeds will affect the farmers and the local breeders in the country.
He explained that basically the ordinary peasant farmer cannot afford to buy these seeds because we are going to import it from outside the country, adding that it also has bad implications on our health, according to research.
Source: ritefmonline.org
