A/HRC/16/40 transfer recipients. The programme succeeded in providing nutritional support and a temporary safety net to targeted households that had been overlooked by other emergency schemes and that were coping with the food crisis in the country by resorting to destructive coping strategies (reducing meals, selling livestock and assets). The programme’s success raised the question of whether it could be applied as a cash-based seasonal safety net for vulnerable households that expands or contracts each year according to the severity of the annual hungry season.75 72. Two Indian women, who developed organic farming methods that do not make use of irrigation or chemical fertilizers and pesticides yet still deliver surplus produce, trained women in more than 70 villages to employ this type of farming, as well as working with the Deccan Development Society to help women form women’s sanghams (associations) “that decide their own crops, set up community grain banks that collect surplus produce and sell it at lower than market rates to below-poverty-level members who have no lands, or have not managed to grow enough food.”76 73. Efforts are also being made to distinguish the use of genetically modified organisms from food ensuing from more traditional seeds. Such control empowers individuals to make the ultimate decision about the products they wish to consume. Japan made health testing of genetically modified foods mandatory in April 2001.77 In 2010, the European Commission adopted a directive that allowed States members of the European Union the freedom to decide upon the cultivation, restriction or prohibition of genetically modified organisms on their territory.78 Hundreds of leading food brands and dozens of leading retailers in Europe now offer meat, fish, eggs and dairy produce made without the use of genetically modified feedstuffs.79 74. With regard to toxic food, it is significant that parties to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants agreed to limit the use of harmful chemicals to “environmentally sound” purposes (such as using DDT only for malaria control) and to prevent the production and use of pesticides or industrial chemicals with persistent organic pollutants.80 International networks such as the Pesticide Action Network and the International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network have had a tremendous impact on curtailing the use of chemicals that harm the world’s food supply. 75 Stephen Devereaux, Peter Mvula and Colette Solomon, After the FACT: An Evaluation of Concern Worldwide’s Food and Cash Transfers Project in Three Districts of Malawi, 2006 (Brighton, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, and Lilongwe, Concern Worldwide Malawi, 2006). 76 77 78 79 80 See Keya Acharya, “Good food, Indian-style”, India Together, 19 March 2009. Available from www.indiatogether.org/2009/mar/agr-ddsfood.htm. Deborah B. Whitman, “Genetically modified foods: harmful or helpful?”, ProQuest, April 2000. “GMOs: Member States to be given full responsibility on cultivation in their territories”, Press release IP/10/921, Brussels, 13 July 2010. Available from http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/10/921. GM Free Ireland Network, “Ireland adopts GM-free zone policy”, Press release, 13 October 2009, available from www.gmfreeireland.org/press/GMFI45.pdf. See also www.nongmoproject.org. See www.pops.int/documents/convtext/convtext_en.pdf. 19