First, Feed the Starving

Thirteen million people are facing a famine in southern Africa, a condition stoked by decades of bad government and by a drought more severe than any other afflicting the region since 1992. No matter the cause, these millions need food.

Seventy-five thousand tons of corn, beans and a soy blend for malnourished children are on the high seas now, heading from U.S. grain reserves to Africa’s eastern coast. An additional 190,000 tons are ready to go, according to Andrew Natsios, who directs the Bush administration’s international humanitarian assistance programs. By December, U.S. aid to the region is expected to amount to about half of what the World Food Program estimates is required.

Whether a mouthful will actually reach the hungriest is an open question. Leaders in three countries--Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique--say they may not accept U.S. aid because it contains genetically modified corn. The leaders fear that if their citizens plant the biotech grain, it could cross-contaminate other crops, making them unacceptable to the European Union.

This year, the EU voted in favor of an outright ban on the importation of all food that the importing country could not prove to be free of genetically modified ingredients. However, the ban, widely denounced as costly and impractical, won’t become law unless it passes a further vote.

The African leaders are not in a position to refuse donations from the United States, which provides about 70% of food aid to southern Africa. They should see that the clear, short-term health needs of their peoples outweigh fuzzier, long-term economic concerns.

European leaders are also exacerbating the problem by promoting vague fears of so-called Frankenfoods. The European leaders, as well as officials of the World Health Organization, should distinguish between the legitimate concern that biotech foods might alter the ecosystem (last week, for example, Ohio State University researchers released a study showing that such foods encouraged the growth of pesticide-resistant weeds) and the bogus, unproved assertion that biotech foods somehow harm humans.

Finally, the Bush administration’s Natsios, who plans to leave Friday for a tour of famine-ravaged southern Africa, should consider the obvious: shipping nonbiotech grains to the three nations most worried about them.

This is possible because some U.S. grain suppliers already have procedures in place to segregate biotech crops from nonbiotech crops. All sides can then settle the Frankenfood issues later.

There’s no reason why the famine in southern Africa has to turn into a humanitarian disaster. There’s food to feed the hungry if self-righteous politics would just get out of the way.