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{
    "id": 1184285,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1184285/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 320,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nyando, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Jared Okello",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " The time keeper, kindly give me those two minutes. I was taken aback this afternoon after listening to the Members of National Assembly and the Senate from the Rift Valley castigating their own Government for importing a food consignment. So, if people from Rift Valley can make that noise in a Government that they were dancing to just two months ago, what else does it mean if the Government is not eating its own children? Or how do we put it? The GMO debate, as I said, has become discordant. You hear from scientists who are totally against it. Other scientists are for the GMO, but trivialising the GMO food to buttress the point that instead of people dying hungry, you would rather give them something that will kill them slowly. That does not make sense to me. If our scientists have been part and parcel of a discussion that has passed a poor verdict on GMO, then as a country we have to go slow. If the intention of the western world is to push it into the African market, and you have 350 million people in the United States of America but you are only coming to target 50 million people in Kenya, that does not make sense to me. You look at the element of transportation alone, all the way from the USA and overseas to Kenya, it does not make sense to me. Therefore, any discussion around GMO now when our farmers are also subjected to some kind of ill-treatment, should stop. The Departmental Committee on Agriculture and Livestock, which I believe will be receiving this report, will carry out some background checks. The committee needs to move with speed to put this matter to rest. I listened to Waziri – the Cabinet Secretary for Trade, Investment and Industry - and I have heard people castigating him when he said: “In any event, when you live in Kenya, there are many agents of death and, therefore, adding GMO food is not so bad.” In itself, the Government has acknowledged that it is not a bad thing. Why force through our throats something that is already bad and has been declared so by the Government? We need to look at this thing comprehensively. I was very happy yesterday when I was listening to the former Prime Minister of the Republic of Kenya, Rt. Hon. Raila Amollo Odinga, putting this Government on notice that this is not the right way to go. We have to apply brakes where necessary, avoid GMO as much as we can and let us protect our indigenous seeds and our farmers at the same time. I thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker."
}