Hidden Dangers in Kids Meals: Genetically Engineered Foods could (WILL) spark a R3V0LUT10N!

Why GMO And Organic Can Not Co-Exist: Lateral Gene Transfer

Some of you out there are still not convinced of the danger Monsanto poses to life on Earth.

Unlike global warming/climate change, this is REAL.

Why GMO And Organic Can Not Co-Exist: Lateral Gene Transfer
Sayer Ji, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

One of the most disturbing, though commonly overlooked properties of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is their documented ability to transfer genetic information horizontally into those who consume them.

This process actually occurs quite commonly in nature, especially among bacteria, which do not reproduce sexually and therefore have evolved a number of mechanisms through which to transfer genetic information directly between one another directly. Viruses themselves can essentially be described as 'pieces of genetic information in search of chromosomes,' their very "infectivity" being examples of horizontal gene transfer between species. The whole field of genetic engineering, in fact, would not exist were it not for the science and technology that harnesses and/or co-opts processes of horizontal gene transfer.

Technically speaking, horizontal gene transfer (also known as "lateral gene transfer") is the process by which an organism incorporates genetic material from another organism without being the offspring of that organism. Vertical transfer, on the other hand, occurs when an organism receives genetic material from its ancestor, e.g., its parent or a species from which it has evolved.

Animal research published in 2003 in the journal of Environmental Biosafety Research showed that genetically modified lactic acid bacteria are capable of transferring recombinant genes sequences directly (horizontally) into Enteroccous faecalis, another naturally occurring species of digestive tract bacteria found in humans, as well.

Other animal research on orally ingested foreign DNA not only shows it is capable of transferring to, and/or altering genetic information within, the animal consuming it, but is also capable of affecting the genetics of the fetuses and newborn of pregnant mice who were fed it.

The existence of a free flow of genetic information from food to organism, and then transplacentally, to the organism's future progeny, through horizontal gene transfer, illustrates just how true the age-old phrase "you are what you eat" is -- for better and for worse.

Perhaps more importantly is the revelation that there can be no "peaceful co-existence" between genetically modified foods and authentically natural ones, as the former by definition implies the irreversible transformation of the latter into itself. To state, as Whole Foods recently did, that co-existence is possible between GM and non-GM foods, is like saying pregnancy and virginity can co-exist, under natural circumstances.

I believe it is time to openly identify GM food for what it is. Because genetically modified foods can vectorize the dissemination of recombinant DNA sequences throughout the entire biosphere, as well as anyone who would consume them, they embody a virus-like quality of pathogenicity and could, without exaggeration, be identified as bioweapons of potential mass destruction.

Please visit GreenMedInfo to access their vast database of articles and the latest information in natural health.

11yr Old Birke Baehr Against Monsanto And Genetically Altered Foods - An Inspiration For Us All

Monsanto Ruins Alfalfa!

Thanks, Natural News!

War Over Monsanto Gets Ugly - Truthout

Tuesday 09 November 2010

by: Mike Ludwig, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: IRRI Images, Libertinus)

A delegation of politicians and community activists gathered on August 7 in La Leonesa, a small farm town in Argentina, to hear Dr. Andres Carrasco speak about a study linking a popular herbicide to birth defects in Argentina's agricultural areas.

But the presentation never happened. A mob of about 100 people attacked the delegation before they could reach the local school where the talk was to be held.

Dr. Carrasco and a colleague locked themselves in a car as the mob yelled threats and beat on the vehicle for two hours. One delegate was hit in the spine and has since suffered lower-body paralysis. Another person was treated for blows to the head. A former provincial human rights official was hit in the face and knocked unconscious.

Witnesses said the angry crowd had ties to local officials and agribusiness bosses, and police made little effort to stop the violence, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

Carrasco is a lead embryologist at the University of Buenos Aires Medical School and the Argentinean national research council. His study, first released in 2009 and published in the United States this past summer, shows that glyphosate-based herbicides like Monsanto's popular Roundup formula caused deformations in chicken embryos that resembled the kind of birth defects being reported in areas like La Leonesa, where big agribusinesses depend on glyphosate to treat genetically engineered crops.

The deformations resulted from much lower doses of herbicide than those commonly found on crops, according to the study.

Biotech chemical giant Monsanto patented glyphosate under the trade name Roundup in the 1970's. The billion-dollar product is a main source of Monsanto's revenue and one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. One Monsanto blogger recently wrote that decades of success has made the Roundup brand name and glyphosate "interchangeable similar to the case of facial tissue and the brand name Kleenex."

Carrasco's report was largely ignored in the mainstream American media, but gained international attention among those opposed to genetically modified (GM) crops like Monstano's Roundup Ready crops, which are genetically engineered to tolerate the glyphosate-based herbicides.

The report is not the first to show that glyphosate herbicides like Roundup are more dangerous than government regulators and Monsanto have claimed, and Carrasco is not the first scientist to face intimidation after challenging the biotech industry, although he is the first to be threatened with violence.

Nevertheless, his report made an impact: journalists covered the results, environmentalists petitioned Argentina's high court to ban glyphosate and the government of the Argentinean province of Chaco began studying an eerie increase in birth defects and child cancer near the soy and rice fields sprayed with thousands of gallons of herbicide.

According to a spring 2010 report released by the Chaco government, an increase in birth defects and child cancer cases coincided with years of agricultural expansion and increased herbicide use in the province. The number of child cancer cases in La Leonesa, the small town where Carrasco and the other concerned citizens were attacked, has tripled from 2000 to 2009 and the number of birth defects in the province nearly quadrupled during that time, according to the report.

The report acknowledges that some local agribusinesses were unlawfully spraying herbicides too close to residential populations, but the Chaco study soon caught the attention of researchers across the world.

In September, an international coalition of scientists released a report citing the attack in La Leonesa and human tragedy in Chaco as proof that Roundup and genetically engineered soy crops are dangerous and unsustainable. The report  provides a conclusive rebuttal to the industry's claims that spraying mutant crops with chemicals is the best way to feed the world. It's just another chapter in an information war that has raged for more than a decade, pitting independent scientists and embattled whistleblowers against the world's biggest biotech and petrochemical corporations.

Roundup and Monsanto 

Monsanto has gained much of its international notoriety - or infamy, depending on whom you talk to - through its Roundup Ready line of crops that are genetically modified (GM) to be immune to the herbicide. To use the herbicide to combat weeds, farmers must buy patented Monsanto GM seeds with the genetic herbicide tolerant trait. Roundup herbicide is then sprayed to kill unwanted weeds, but the patented GM crops are spared.

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The Roundup Ready crop system was first made available in 1996. Since 2000, the percentage of Roundup Ready corn grown in the United States has exploded from 7 to 70 percent and now 93 percent of the soybeans grown in the US are GM, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Roundup accounts for about 40 percent of Monsanto's annual revenues and is sprayed on about 12 million acres of American farmland each year. In April, Monsanto announced the completion of a $200 million expansion of its glyphosate production facility in Louisiana.

Monsanto's Roundup Ready patent runs out in 2014, and the Justice Department began an antitrust investigation of Monsanto this year as its petrochemical competitors like DuPont clamor for a piece of the action. Monsanto has proven its tenacity in such disputes in the past; it forged new legal territory in the past decade, suing small farmers who saved Roundup Ready seeds or simply grew crops infected with GM traits after the patented Monsanto gene drifted and multiplied in their fields.

Superweeds

Monsanto's domination of domestic agriculture has had a startling side effect in the fields: the rise of new glyphosate resistant weeds commonly called "superweeds." Like the GM corn and soy, these weeds have bred themselves to tolerate Roundup and are invading farms across the country.

Monsanto shocked investors and environmentalists in October by announcing a new program that offers millions of dollars in rebates to farmers who combine Roundup with more herbicides manufactured by the company's competitors to combat the glyphosate-resistant weeds threatening GM crops across the country.

The mere presence of superweeds and the fact that Monsanto is now paying farmers to spray additional chemicals that are more toxic than Roundup, is evidence of a complete regulatory breakdown, according to watchdog group Center for Food Safety (CFS).

In his September 30 testimony to Congress on superweeds, CFS senior policy analyst William Freese said that the USDA regulates GM crops and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates herbicides, but there is no regulation of the combined system.

"And it is the system - the invariable use of glyphosate made possible and fostered by glyphosate-resistant seeds, for instance - that is responsible for the growing epidemic of glyphosate-resistant (GR) weeds," Freese said in his testimony. "This is clearly demonstrated by the near complete absence of GR weeds for the first 20 plus years of glyphosate's use and the explosion of weed resistance in the decade since the widespread adoption of Roundup Ready crop systems."

Debate Gets Ugly

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, has long been considered less toxic than other herbicides. The EPA considers glyphosate a non-carcinogen for humans and a chemical of relatively low toxicity.

Monsanto took the EPA's initial evaluation and ran with it, and in 1996, the state of New York filed a lawsuit against Monsanto over an advertising campaign that claimed Roundup to be as safe as table salt.

In recent years, teams of independent scientists like Carrasco's have come forward with studies showing that Roundup and glyphosate is more toxic than the regulators will admit. For years, Roundup critics charged that the "inert" ingredients like surfactants and solvents in Roundup and other glyphosate herbicides make the products more toxic to people and the environment.

Carrasco's report, on the other hand, showed that glyphosate itself caused malformations in embryos similar to those found in humans who live in agricultural areas dominated by genetically engineered crops. The report establishes that the toxic "inert" ingredients made it easier for the glyphosate to invade cells and cause damage.

But Carrasco is not the first scientist to identify this relationship between glyphosate and Roundup's "inert" ingredients.

Jeffrey Smith, GM critic and author of the books "Seeds of Deception" and "Genetic Roulette," told Truthout that many scientists have been verbally threatened and denied tenure for publishing studies critical of Roundup and GM crops.

"The attack [on Carrasco] is the latest in a series of attempts to silence those who have discovered problems with Roundup," Smith said.

Smith rattled off a list of scientists from Russia, Britain, the US, and beyond who have faced some kind of intimidation after going public with research on problems with GM foods and chemical products, including researcher Arpad Pusztai, who was famously relieved from his long-time position at a prominent Scottish research center in 1998 shortly after making public comments on potential problems with GM.

Smith is currently working with an international effort to support Gilles-Eric Seralini, a scientist at the University of Caen in France.

In 2009, Seralini and his team released a study showing that four different Roundup formulations diluted below suggested agricultural levels killed human placenta, umbilical chord and embryo cells.

"This clearly confirms that the [inert ingredients] in Roundup formulations are not inert," Seralini's team wrote. "Moreover, the proprietary mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death around residual levels to be expected, especially in food and feed derived from [Roundup-treated] crops."

Carrasco cited Seralini's work in his groundbreaking study on glyphosate and birth defects.

Monsanto responded by calling Seralini's research "political" and argued that the conditions of the study did not reflect real life conditions. One Monsanto blogger even compared a key "inert" ingredient identified by Seralini's study to household soap.

Seralini and his team took on Monsanto again last year with a counteranalysis of lab data provided by Monsanto on the effects of three GM corn strains on lab rats. Seralini obtained the data after a German court ordered Monsanto to hand it over for review. Seralini's team discovered that the original study poorly constructed and the results reported by Monsanto were misleading.

Seralini had basically refuted Monsanto's ability to formally prove its GM products to be safe and that didn't sit well with his peers who supported the industry.

Pro-GM scientists in France, including Seralini's former colleague Marc Fellous of the French Association of Plant Biotechnology (AFBV), have since made public statements questioning Seralini's credibility and calling him a "merchant of fear," according to Seralini's supporters in the European scientific community.

Smith said that the intimidation of scientists conducting independent research, whether coming from the industry or its researchers, sends a dangerous message to other scientists.

"There is an attitude that, if you dare do research in the field, then you are threatening your work and credibility," Smith said.

As for Carrasco, the attack in La Leonesa did not keep him from speaking out. In September, just one month after being confronted by an angry mob, Carrasco was a featured speaker at the GMO-Free Europe conference.

Carrasco did not respond to a request for an interview.

Carrasco has his work cut out for him. On October 13, just days before initiating the plan to pay American farmers to use more herbicides, Monsanto announced that two more GM crops were approved in Argentina, according to a press release. Like the US, large Latin American countries like Argentina and Brazil are key growth markets for Monsanto.

This is the challenge facing Carrasco, Seralini, and others who use science to hold the biotech industry accountable for its push for control over the future of agriculture. Their stories show that taking on powerful financial interests of massive global corporations can be a difficult - and even dangerous - task: a war of information between those in search of profit and those in search of truth.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
 
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Mike Ludwig is a Truthout Fellow.

Dear Tiffany (Thanks to Exposing Monsanto!)

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This material is approved by the FDA for use in food packaging. But we've gone well beyond legal requirements to uphold our commitment to your safety. We hired Pure Strategies, an independent scientific consulting firm, to develop a list of potentially dangerous additives like BPA, phthalates, carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxins and endocrine disruptors, and we signed a contract that prohibits our supplier from using them. We also routinely test the plastic to ensure compliance.

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To find out more about our new multipack cups made from plants, please read our FAQs and watch our videos at Stonyfield.com/madefromplants.Thanks for sharing your thoughts about polystyrene and for encouraging us on our search for something better. Your opinions of our products and the ways we do business mean everything to us. We hope you'll use this $2.00 coupon toward the purchase of a Stonyfield yogurt multipack. It's good through November 15th.

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The folks at Stonyfield

Petition Against Gates Foundation Monsanto Investment

• Target: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• Sponsored by: Gregory Hilbert and Sustainability Education Network

WHEREAS Monsanto's corporate practices and products are infamous for their destructive impact on the health of mankind and the sustainability of all life on earth, and
WHEREAS the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation represents that it's mission is to serve the health needs of mankind,
WE THE UNDERSIGNED do hereby petition the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to immediately divest itself of its investment of $27 million in Monsanto stock and hereafter cease support of any and all programs associated with Monsanto products

Regarding your involvement with Monsanto and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa:
We – the concerned people who have signed this petition – are aware that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are, via your sponsorship of Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and your economic cooperation with Monsanto, planning to spread chemical agriculture and genetically modified organisms into the precarious societies and nature of Africa.
Although we assume that your Foundation is supporting this technology in order to alleviate hunger and poverty in Africa, we must respectfullydisagree with your approach, which we find reductionist, purely focusing on technological fixes and economic profit making. This is a limited approach, which we believe cannot give sustainable results. If your Foundation aims to be part of solving global hunger and poverty, we find it necessary that you embrace a holistic approach, hence including in your program concern for women, poor people, and nature.
In the following we would like to explain in detail why we oppose your approach:
While women represent half the global population, one-third of the labor force, and do two-thirds of all working hours, they receive only one-tenth of the world income, and own less than one percent of world property. Owing to this inequality, data show that 70 percent of all absolute poor people are women.
Thus, poverty is a gender related problem. It derives from subordination of women in most societies.
Laws, institutions, social rules, and cultural traditions have throughout history dominated the African women and limited their access to productive resources and markets. Women are also not enjoying much government and donor assistance, and in many places they cannot own land. In spite of these obstacles women are producing 80 percent of the continents food. They are also the main actors in the informal markets from which poor people survive. Due to their prominent role in food production women depend on nature. This relationship has given many Southern women a unique knowledge about their environment. It is an organic and sustainable relation benefitting both: nature helps women to feed their families while women ensure that nature remains healthy and reproductive. This knowledge is diverse, depending on the context, and it has been transmitted from one generation to the next. When the North introduced chemical agriculture and production of cash crop for the formal market, they marginalized women’s food production. The natural resources from which women lived were directed towards cash crop production. This caused scarcity of land for women’s food production resulting in hunger and poverty of women and their children, and degradation of natural resources. Moreover, the purely technological approach from mechanical scientists, dismissed women’s organic agricultural knowledge, which has sustained traditional people and nature for thousands of years.
The “Green Revolution” or chemical agriculture consequently did not benefit women, poor people, and nature. Its mono culture, chemical fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide, its hybrid seeds and extreme water use via irrigation have had tremendous negative side effects for society and nature. This has been researched by various respected scientists. One is Dr. Vandana Shiva who analyzed the “Green Revolution” in India and published her results in the 1989 book “Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development”.
The dangers of spreading chemicals in nature were also highlighted in the now famous classic book, “Silent Spring”, written by the late American marine biologist Rachel Carson. There is ample additional evidence, which points to chemical agriculture’s inability to sustainably increase yields, while the method oppositely is polluting nature and people: The artificial technologies have caused serious imbalances to the natural eco-system. Chemicals have tainted soils, poisoned ground water, endangered fish, birds, and other animals. Chemicals have indiscriminately killed insects including those that are supportive to healthy plant development, like bees and worms. Chemicals have caused mineral imbalance in soils, which is draining their health and nutrition. Irrigation has introduced too much water into soils causing siltation and salinisation, making soils salty and muddy and hence unfit for agricultural production.
In addition, chemical agriculture has overused water resources and caused alarming shortage of clean water globally. Hence, introduction of the proposed “Green Revolution” will eventually render the precarious African soils infertile; it will dry out Africa’s scarce water sources, and destroy valuable traditional agricultural knowledge.
Agricultural chemicals also make people sick. Many of the toxics enter the human body where they remain in the tissues, because the immune system cannot dispose of them. Some of the chemicals are causing cancer or birth defects, and contributing to numerous health problems. In addition, people are often unaware of how to handle the dangerous chemicals they are using. Due to inadequate technical knowledge pesticide and herbicide kill 10-40,000 people annually in the South. With all these painful side effects carried by society and nature one should at least expect that chemical agriculture could boost crop production, however that is not the case.
Although chemical agriculture initially increased yields, this improvement quickly diminished, and scientists say that the yield now is lower compared to organic farming. The decrease relates to exhaustion in soil nutrition and increased pest attacks. The persistent use of pesticide has caused pests to mutate, developing resistant strains of pest. This increased invasion of pests can cause crop losses of up to 30 percent. Since the chemicals also have killed the pests’ natural predators the mutated pests will require ever more deadly chemicals causing a never ending vicious circle, like drug addiction. Consequently, introduction of chemical agriculture has not led to food security; instead it has caused severe side effects, hence we must doubt the benefit from using chemicals in nature.
Genetically modified organisms (GMO) are an expansion of the “Green Revolution”. Genetic engineering of the seed has made it ecologically incomplete so that it cannot produce alone. It will need help from purchased fertilizer and pesticide. This will increase the need for chemicals in agriculture hence escalating the above mentioned negative side-effects for society and nature. Due to the modification technique used in the laboratory, the GMO foods cause additional health threats.
Research on animals has shown that GMO food combined with their chemicals are causing liver and kidney damage, reproductive dysfunction, sterility, increased infant mortality, food allergies, asthma, and autoimmune diseases, while also having negative effects in heart, adrenal, spleen, and blood cells.
Genetically engineered seeds have been modified in such a way that they cannot reproduce. This is an economic advantage for the corporations because it requires the farmer to buy new seeds for every planting season, together with the necessary chemicals. Making the seed sterile means that farmers can no longer replant their own seeds from previous harvests. They must buy new seeds every season, which puts an end to their ability to develop new crops. This is devastating in the South where farmers grow 80 percent of their crops from saved seeds. When poor farmers cannot store and trade seed, their agricultural production become dependent on expensive seed and chemical implements from agri-businesses. As a result, only those farmers who can afford it will have food, the rest will be marginalized. Modification of seeds has allowed patenting. In this way the agri-businesses maintain a monopoly on resources for food production. Because of this market monopoly GMO seeds and their chemicals are expensive. This has led poor farmers into debt and poverty. You can hardly be unaware of the thousands of crop farmers who have committed suicides in India, due to bankruptcy caused by Monsanto’s monopoly on agricultural technology.
In addition, the GMO crops are eradicating traditional crops. Nature does not operate in neatly separated boxes, thus cross pollination takes place between the GMO plant and traditional crops, which makes the latter sterile. This is disastrous for sustainable food production because it is the traditional crops that have given local people food security for thousands of years keeping both nature and people healthy. In this way, corporations have taken over plant breeding, which is creating the classical conditions for hunger and famine. History has shown that whenever ownership of resources for food production are concentrated in a few hands and the market is in charge of distributing the agricultural products, then we have the foundation for food insecurity. Consequently, hunger and poverty began when modern chemical agriculture entered the South. The shift from an ecological process of sustainable food production, to a technological process of non-renewable production has reduced biological diversity in agriculture; it has increased farmer’s dependency on expensive patented products; and it has created non-sustainability in agriculture, which will lead to hunger and poverty in the South.
There is yet another reason why GMO cannot eradicate world hunger: although the industry has declared that it will feed the world, the promise has proven empty. Experiments show that GM seeds do not increase crop yields radically; they are also not promising for adapting to climate change. According to the report “Failure to Yield” from July 2009 made by Union of Concerned Scientists, GMOs have, despite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, failed significantly to increase US crop yields. It therefore does not make sense to support genetic engineering at the expense of technologies that have proven to substantially increase yields, especially in many developing countries. In addition, recent studies have shown that organic and similar farming methods that minimize the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers can more than double crop yields at little cost to poor farmers in developing regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa.
The senior scientist, Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman concludes that, “If we are going to make headway in combating hunger due to overpopulation and climate change, we will need to increase crop yields; traditional breeding outperforms genetic engineering hands down.”
Research from the Rodale Institute supports these findings. They have an ongoing revolutionary research project that started in 1981 called Farm System Trial (FST) on organic farming. Their research has found that crop yields from organic and chemical farms are similar in years of average precipitation.
However, organic farm yields are higher during droughts and floods, due to stronger root systems in organic plants, and better moisture retention in the soil, which prevents runoff and erosion. The data moreover showed that organic production requires 30 percent less energy than chemical production when growing corn and soybeans; that organic farms create jobs because labor inputs are 15 percent higher; and that the net economic return for organic crops is equal to or higher than that for chemically produced crops because the costs are lower. In addition, organic farming is psychologically and socially supportive because it is labor intensive and community oriented.
The most surprising FST finding of all has been that when soil is cultivated organically its carbon content increases, which contributes to reducing global warming. The carbon increase is so high that if all the cultivated land in the world were farmed organically it would immediately reduce our climate crisis significantly. Organic farming can pull, on an annual basis, thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide per acre right out of the air and keep it in the soil, adding to its carbon stores year after year. Physicist Amory Lovins supports this finding. In his estimates increasing the carbon content of the world’s depleted soils at reasonable rates would absorb about as much carbon as all human activity emits. Conversely, soil farmed by using chemical methods has very little ability to keep or build vital supplies of carbon in the soil. It is oppositely causing global warming. Its nitrogen-based fertilizers are releasing the green house gas nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. Hence, switching to organic food production is the single most critical action we can take right now to stop our climate crisis.
Consequently, organic farming is a relevant, ecological, and holistic technology that would alleviate hunger and poverty. Organic farms are small and owner operated. Farmers sell their products at local markets with a short distance from the farm to the table, saving energy, packing, and at the same time maintaining the food fresh and healthy. Finally, organic farming is successful and efficient. An agroecological project involving 730,000 farm households across Africa resulted in yield improvements of between 50-100 percent. In addition, it decreased production costs while increasing cash incomes up to as much as ten times. Thus, organic farming raises production, gives ecological and social benefits, and it empower farmers, most of whom are women.
In order to give a holistic understanding, it is important to add that hunger is not caused by global food shortage. According to Frances Moore Lappé and her colleagues at the Institute for Food and Development Policy in USA, the reasons for hunger are political. According to her book from 1986, “World Hunger: Twelve Myths” there is enough food supply for all in our world. Increase of food supply has, in the last fifty years, kept ahead of population growth in every region of the world, except Africa. Research also shows that there is no direct relationship between the prevalence of hunger and a country’s population size. Moreover, 78 percent of all malnourished children in the South live in countries with food surpluses. Many of these countries export more agricultural goods than they import. The root causes of hunger are consequently unrelated to food production. Poverty, inequality, and lack of access to food and land are the primary causes of famine. People are hungry because the economic and political elite control the means of producing and distributing food. Thus, world hunger is not a problem that can be solved by chemical technology and GMO; it comes from lack of democracy and economic equality.
If we do not address the root causes - which relate to domination - hunger and poverty will continue no matter which technology we apply. We consequently do not need a “Green Revolution” in Africa. Organic farming methods are more likely to support women, poor people, and nature, and to keep women and poor people in control of productive resources. Therefore, if we should hope to alleviate hunger and poverty control over resources for food production need to return into the hands of the food producers, most of whom are women. They must be empowered to grow their own food by choosing their own technology and using their own knowledge.
This should be supported rather than subordinated.
Conclusively if your Foundation would support women’s organic agriculture it would have the following positive, systemic ripple and trickle-down effects: increase agricultural production, ensure food sustainability, eradicate hunger and thus poverty, improve health of women and children hence reducing child mortality, diminish women’s reproduction thus putting a halt to global population expansion, reduce global warming hence arresting climate change, increase human productivity, make people independent and content, which is boosting social cohesion leading to limitation in crime and violence, sustain a healthy nature with fertile soils and clean waters, which will be supporting life of people and animals, empower women, leading to gender equality, freedom, and democracy. In conclusion, a holistic approach to food production will bring about sustainability and an overall increase in the quality of life for women, poor people, and nature. If the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would follow this path, you would place your names in the history books as people who truly made a difference in our world.
Oppositely if your Foundation supports AGRA’s and Monsanto’s chemical agriculture and GMO, you may not be part of the solution to hunger and poverty. Your Foundation may oppositely become yet another dominant institution, which is subordinating women and poor people, while exploiting nature by controlling people’s productive resources preventing them from becoming self-sufficient. Since the technology Monsanto is promoting has proven to be dangerous to society and nature, supporting Monsanto economically means that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation indirectly and hopefully unintentionally may harm Africa’s precious people and priceless nature. We therefore urge you to reconsider your support to AGRA and Monsanto, and instead follow a holistic and sustainable strategy for hunger and poverty alleviation.
A holistic development strategy includes not only quantitative economic and technical issues; it needs to integrate concerns for a quality of life for society and nature. History has shown that formal markets, economic growth, and chemical agriculture have failed to alleviate hunger and poverty; we therefore need to try alternative strategies. I would enjoy sharing such an alternative perception with your Foundation.
At the beginning of next year the University Press of America will be publishing my book, “Ecofeminism: Towards Integrating the Concerns of Women, Poor people, and Nature into Development”, which is based on my Masters Degree dissertation obtained at University of South Africa. The book presents a complex critique of the present reductionist, purely economic oriented development strategy.
It is showing that a holistic perception of reality is more likely to end the global crises of poverty, violence, natural destruction, and human rights abuses. As soon as the book is out from print, I will, via the publisher, forward the book to you as a gift. I sincerely hope that the content of the book in some ways will inspire your ongoing work with global hunger and poverty alleviation in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Yours Respectfully,
On behalf of the petition sponsor
Sustainability Education Network, USA, Gregory Hilbert and Suzanne Sparling, CoFounders
And all those who have signed this petition
Mrs. Jytte Nhanenge C.P. 258, Chimoio, Mozambique;  BA Development Studies and Philosophy, Hons BA Philosophy, MA Development Studies

URL: Petition Against Gates Foundation Monsanto Investment