THE UN has been delivering genetically modified food as emergency aid for the past seven years, New Scientist has learned. And it has done so without telling the countries concerned. Its admission makes a mockery of African governments' recent efforts to reject GM food aid.

Countries getting GM food aid in the past two years - often in breach of national regulations - include the Philippines, India, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Ecuador, as well as many African countries.

The UN World Food Programme told New Scientist this week that its staff are under no obligation to alert authorities and have made noattempt to distinguish between GM and conventional cereals since 1996, when GM crops first became part of US grain stocks destined for aid. Half of world food aid comes from the US, and a quarter of the nation's maize is genetically modified. "We do business with 83
countries in the world," WFP director James Morris said last week.

The news comes amid allegations that the US is exploiting southern Africa's drought to drum up markets for its large unsold stocks of GM maize and soya. Saliem Fakir, director of the South African branch of the IUCN (World Conservation Union), calls the offer of GM food aid to the region a moral trap. "Africa is just a pawn in the US's attempt to break the European Union's position on GM foods," he says.

The UN estimates that 14 million people in southern Africa will need food aid in the coming months. Zambian president levy Mwanawasaangrily rejected GM food aid as "poison" earlier this month, but has been forced to admit that his citizens have been eating GM aid on and off since the mid-1990s. Zambia's neighbours Zimbabwe and Malawi have now accepted GM maize on condition that it is milled to prevent
farmers planting it in their fields.

The WFP, the world's largest supplier of food aid, uses mostly North American grain. "We think the starving would rather eat GM grain than dirt," said spokesman Trevor Rowe this week. But African governments argue there is plenty of GM-free maize available on world markets that could be supplied as aid.

Independent aid groups are being caught up in the row. Most turn A blind eye to GM cereals in their food aid, says anti-GM campaigner Patrick Mulvany of the Intermediate Technology Development Group in Britain. A recent study found that none has formal policies banning GMcereals.

The WFP says it sees no need to warn about GM material in food aid. It says, "We are just the middle man. If the food meets the nationalstandards of the donors, we accept it."

But Mulvany says that since 1996, most poor countries have made clear in negotiations on international rules for GM trade that they want to be told in advance about GM imports, and many have announced outright bans. "The WFP would have been aware of this. If it was not informing
recipient countries after that, it should be severely criticised."

Though health scares grab local headlines, southern African countries have a real fear that once GM grain is planted it will contaminatedomestic grain fed to livestock destined for European markets.

"African livestock commands a high price because it is organically raised," says Andrew Clegg of the ELI-funded Namibia Human Resources Development Programme. "This market strength will vanish if there is even the slightest suspicion that products can no longer be guaranteed GM-free."

Recent research in Mexico found that GM maize imported from the US to make tortillas has been planted and is now contaminating fields far and wide. So far as New Scientist has been able to establish, no similar tests have been done on maize growing in countries that have mreceived food aid.