Biosciences promises foods with inbuilt therapeutic value

By Daniel Otunge
October 16, 2007

NAIROBI - Parliament today has a historic opportunity to vote and pass into law the Biosafety Bill 2007 to enable Kenya, like other countries, to gain from opportunities presented by modern biotechnology.

As poor and nutrition-deficient country, we need to produce more high-value foods using all available technologies including organic, conventional and biotechnological methods to cushion our people against hunger and diseases.

Although there are some dissenting voices regarding the use of modern biotechnology to produce food, it is important for our legislators to understand that biotechnology is not alien to the food sector; indeed, its applications in agriculture have formed a major part of the field since time immemorial. The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, for instance, demonstrated the immense power of manipulating genes for food production.

Innovations in biotechnology have led to availability of a wide range of services and applications related to food production, processing and marketing that we stand to benefit if we can put biosafety laws in place.

Kenya needs biosafety laws to join the ranks of Philippines, India, China, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa that have started reaping the benefits after putting in place legal and institutional structures to exploit fruits of modern biotechnology.

If we wish to industrialize as stated in the Vision 2030, we must be ready to embrace new technologies that would enable us to realize our dreams. The promise of biotechnology, for instance, has to be pursued and utilized to push and strengthen our sustainable development agenda.

On its part, the government has put in place a favorable National Biotechnology Development Policy. However, this must be backed up by biosafety law that creates structures to steward biotechnology research and development, education and public awareness creation.

The health of populations depends largely on the quality and quantity of what they eat. Through modern biotechnology, we have a chance to determine in advance food safety, their health effects--both preventive and therapeutic. This is critical particularly in poor countries like Kenya where large portions of the population are either under or malnourished and cannot afford hospital bills.

Current forms of biotechnologies have created opportunities for addressing nutritional concerns. Due to modern biotechnology, countries that have adopted it are enjoying more varieties of functional foodstuffs. These are foods with therapeutic properties.

With functional foodstuffs we can save the lives of more than 250 million children less than five years older who are exposed to the risk of vitamin-A deficiency in developing countries. Even more tragic is the fact that about 500,000 of them go blind annually and 2 million die from this deficiency every year.

Why should our children suffer while we have the means to address the problem? For example, modern biotechnology has led to substantial innovations in the production of foods with medicinal qualities popularly known as nutriceuticals but they are currently only enjoyed by consumers in developed countries.

For instance, bioscientists are using modern biotechnology to facilitate development of vegetable oils modified to increase their content in unsaturated fatty acids (oleic acid) and to decrease that of unhealthy saturated ones.

What is more, through genetic engineering, food processors can be assured of steady supply of crops with guaranteed agronomic and medicinal potentials, something conventional breeding methods may not achieve easily.

Biotechnology allows for faster breeding of crops with inbuilt nutritive value or biofortification, as part of an integrated food-systems approach to reducing malnutrition by addressing the root causes of micronutrient deficiencies in a scientifically feasible and cost-effective way.

This is a sustainable way to enable the poor in rural and urban areas to improve nutrition and health of their households. Scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, for example, are working on Golden Rice fortified with beta-carotene for more protein content.

Other crops targeted by the researchers worldwide include beans, cassava, sweet potatoes, wheat, maize, cowpea, bananas, barley, groundnuts, lentils, millet, pigeon-peas, potatoes, sorghum and yams. The aim is to increase their minerals and protein contents to fight deficiencies among the poor.

Kenya cannot afford to miss on all these, and the best way forward is to ensure that the right laws are in place to back up the work of scientists.

The writer, who is the chairman of MESHA is a Communications Officer with ISAAA AfriCenter.