Kenyan Mps Back Call to Enact Biosafety Law

Fifteen Kenyan parliamentarians belonging to various Parliamentary Select Committees such as education, science and technology, health, trade, agriculture, environment and natural resources have called for speedy enactment of Biosafety Bill 2007 into law, to give legal backing for biotechnology research and development activities that are on-going in the country.

Speaking during a fact-finding mission to assess the country’s human and technical capacities to undertake biotech research, the MPs urged the Minister for Science and Technology, Dr Noah Wekesa, to table the Bill in Parliament as soon as possible so that it could be debated and passed into law to enable scientist to harness the “immense potential of biotechnology to improve agricultural productivity and industrial development”.

“When the Bill comes to Parliament, we will lobby for its enactment into law,” said Sammy Weya, MP for Alego Usonga Constituency, a cotton growing area. The seeing-is-believing tour, which included  a visit to Bt Cotton (Bollgard II) contained field trials site at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute in Mwea Station, about 150 km north east of the Capital Nairobi, was also attended by government officials, scientists, regulators, farmers, seed traders and the media.

For more information contact Daniel Otunge of the East and Central Africa Biotechnology Information Center at d.otunge@cgiar.org.