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"id": 201691,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Sambu",
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"speaker": {
"id": 137,
"legal_name": "Alfred B. Wekesa Sambu",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to support this Bill on Biosafety. This is a timely Bill which will become an Act of Parliament. We tend to fear because of not understanding what really is involved in scientific development. There are certain efforts that have been made in the scientific world in breeding, agronomy and many other fields that are beneficial, without really being harmful as such. In other developed countries, you will find animals that have been bred in such a way that, if they are for beef production, for example, cattle are reared within months. A cow takes a very little time to grow from a calf to a state where it is slaughtered. People are using those foods. We have not seen any serious nationwide harmful effects in those countries. It is time we educated our people and trained our scientists properly. We should then spread that information, so that we do not exploit the lack of knowledge of the people to cause fear. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my colleague, Mr. Muite, just referred to the Ruiru 11. We spent a lot of money! In fact, Ruiru 11 coffee is not even genetically modified. But through breeding, we were able to get Ruiru 11. It is a coffee variety that is not susceptible to Coffee Berry Disease (CBD) and does not require spraying with fungicides and other things. But because we did not retain our scientists, it went to the country that was mentioned early. Those people are now benefiting, although we are the ones who developed that plant. That is why it was called Ruiru 11. October 3, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 4335 As my other colleagues have said, when this Bill becomes an Act, the Ministry, as headed by our colleague, Dr. Wekesa, should allocate more resources. It should train more people and promote that biotechnology. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to thank the Government for re-opening Rift Valley Textiles (Rivatex). It closed down because of mismanagement. It also closed down due to the expensive cotton that was being imported. That is because cotton which is not genetically modified--- The lint is the one which is weaved into cloth. The cotton we were growing here - I cannot remember the name now because as an agricultural scientist, I dealt with it many years back. But we were not able to develop higher yielding varieties with better quality lint. Therefore, we were left behind. Our mills had to start importing cotton. We started by importing cotton from other neighbouring countries. Finally, we ended up importing the readymade cloth. We ended up closing our own industries. So, I thank the Government for re-opening Rivatex. I understand that, His Excellency the President will commission it tomorrow. I thank the Government for that. But we should develop high yielding varieties of cotton that will produce high quality lint. It should produce much more lint so that farmers in cotton producing areas--- There are many of them! Western Kenya used to have--- Malava-Malakisi, for example, had a big co-operative society in the colonial days, up to the late 70s and early 80s. It was one of the biggest co-operative societies handling cotton. They were producing the cotton lint. They were also pressing the cotton seed into edible oil. They also produced oil for other uses. They were able to sustain our factories then with the supply of cotton lint. But because we did not engage our scientists in producing better varieties- -- Of course, there were other problems! Some of our co-operative societies were mismanaged. Farmers were not being paid. But if we had better varieties, private farmers or people doing it directly would have been able to take over and produce cotton. So, the Government should immediately direct its efforts to cotton farming, particularly,---"
}