Bill Gates’ Human Experimentation With GM Bananas in Africa Condemned by Scientists

My Note: One flies 7,000 miles away to kill a lion, the other travels in quest for reducing the population of Africa. They come to Africa with their dollars and euros thinking they can buy power by taking advantage of Africa’s poverty, and manipulating people to help them control unsuspecting humans and animals. Disgusting!

At least 124 food and outreach organizations, as well as 26 individual scientists, have signed onto a letter sent to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation protesting ongoing human trials of genetically modified (GM), beta-carotene-enriched bananas intended for Africa.

The GM bananas, which never underwent animal trials, have been administered to 12 students attending Iowa State University (ISU), presumably without full disclosure as to the many unknown risks involved.

According to the letter, the trials are taking place under the guidance of Dr. Wendy White, an associate professor of food science and human nutrition. Funding for the trials came from a grant issued by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“We, the undersigned, representing diverse constituencies from across Africa and the world, working towards food sovereignty, are strongly opposed to the human feeding trials taking place at the Iowa State University involving the so called genetically modified (GM) ‘super banana,’” reads the letter.

Gates Foundation funded creation of GM “Matooke” bananas in Australia

Prior to landing in Iowa, the transgenic bananas were spawned at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, also with funding from the Gates Foundation. The goal all along has been to eventually force these “frankenfruits” on Uganda and other countries in East Africa.

But there is still no evidence that the GM Matooke bananas are safe. Most independent research to date suggests that GMOs can induce allergies, trigger autoimmune disorders and even cause cancer, especially after many years of consumption.

“Numerous health problems increased after GMOs were introduced in 1996,” explains the Institute for Responsible Technology.

“The percentage of Americans with three or more chronic illnesses jumped from 7% to 13% in just 9 years; food allergies skyrocketed, and disorders such as autism, reproductive disorders, digestive problems, and others are on the rise.”

GM bananas unnaturally produce added substance for human consumption

Another major concern with the Gates Foundation’s GM bananas is that they are a functional food designed for complete human consumption. They are substantially different from GM corn and soy, for instance, which contain modified traits and aren’t consumed directly.

“Unlike current GM crops in commercial production where agronomic traits have been altered, scientists have spliced genes into the GM banana to produce substances for humans to digest (extra beta carotene),” explains the letter.

“The GM banana is a whole different ballgame, raising serious concerns about the risks to African communities who would be expected to consume it. Production of vitamin A in the body is complex and not fully understood.”

GM bananas aren’t safe and weren’t created to help Africans

If addressing vitamin A deficiency is really Bill Gates’ concern in all this, then he would be actively encouraging Africans to consume a more diverse array of foods already native to their country that are rich in vitamin A, including sweet potatoes and other natural varieties of carotene-rich bananas.

Instead, he is pushing for an untested banana with altered vitamin A levels to be forced on rural Africans who already have access to all the naturally vitamin A-rich foods they could possibly want. The real goal may have to do with Gates’ other admitted agenda to greatly reduce the world’s population.

“Great strides have been made in the Philippines, another target country for vitamin enhanced GM crops, through government programs that supply supplements and improve access to vitamin A rich foods, to overcome Vitamin A deficiencies,” adds the letter.

“Ironically, the promotion of a GM food staple high in Vitamin A, risks perpetuating monolithic diets, the very causes of Vitamin A deficiency in the first place.”

The full letter is available here:

AFSAfrica.org

__

Behind the Mask of Altruism: Monsanto and The Gates Foundation in Africa

Since 2006, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to the tune of almost $420 million. Activists from Zimbabwe,Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and Ethiopia recently attended the US-Africa Food Sovereignty Strategy Summit in Seattle to argue that the Foundation’s strategy for agriculture in Africa is a flawed attempt to impose industrial agriculture at the expense of more ecologically sound approaches.

Daniel Maingi works with small farmers in Kenya and belongs to the organization Growth Partners for Africa. The Seattle Times reported him as saying that while the goal of helping African farmers is laudable, the ‘green revolution’ approach is based on Western-style agriculture, with its reliance on fertilizer, weed killers and single crops, such as corn [1].

Maingi was born on a farm in eastern Kenya and studied agriculture from a young age. He remembers a time when his family would grow and eat a diversity of crops, such as mung beans, green grams, pigeon peas, and a variety of fruits now considered ‘wild’.

The Seattle Globalist reported him as saying:

“In the morning, you make porridge from maize and send the kids to school. For lunch, boiled maize and a few green beans. In the evening, ugali, [a staple dough-like maize dish, served with meat]… [today] it’s a monoculture diet, being driven by the food system – it’s an injustice.” [2]

As much of Africa is so dry, it’s not suited for thirsty crops, and heavy use of fertilizer kills worms and microbes important for soil health. Maingi argued that the model of farming in the West is not appropriate for farming in most ofAfrica and that the West should invest in indigenous knowledge and agro-ecology.

Growth Partners Africa works with farmers to enrich the soil with manure and other organic material, to use less water and to grow a variety of crops, including some that would be considered weeds on an industrial farm. For Maingi, food sovereignty in Africa means reverting back to a way of farming and eating that pre-dates major investment from the West.

Mariam Mayet of the African Centre for Biosafety in South Africa says that many countries are subsidizing farmers to buy fertilizer as part of the chemical-industrial model of agriculture, but that takes money away from public crop-breeding programmes that provide improved seeds to farmers at low cost.

Seattle Times quoted her:

“It’s a system designed to benefit agribusinesses and not small-scale farmers.”

She added that so many institutions, from African governments to the World Bank, have ‘embraced’ the ‘green revolution’ that alternative farming methods are getting short shrift.

Elizabeth Mpofu, of La Via Campesina, grows a variety of crops in Zimbabwe. During a recent drought, neighbours who relied on chemical fertilizer lost most of their crops. She reaped a bounty of sorghum, corn, and millet using what are called agro-ecological methods: natural pest control, organic fertilizer, and locally adapted crops.

Anna Goren of The Seattle Globalist reported that panelists at the Summit discussed the loss of traditional diets and ways of life and were also concerned about the increased reliance on expensive inputs and the dramatic drop in price of crops. This has resulted in poverty for the small farmer.

Goren quoted Daniel Maingi:

“What the World Bank has done, the International Monetary fund, what AGRA and Bill Gates are doing, it’s actually pretty wrong. The farmer himself should not be starving”.

He added that what AGRA is doing is “out of sync with the natural process” by bringing in imported seeds, which are not adapted to the land and require excessive fertilizer and pesticides.

Maingi has every right to be concerned. While small farms produce most of the world’s food, recent reports show they face being displaced from their land and are experiencing unnecessary hardship [3,4].

AGRA is part of a global trend that is being driven by big agritech that seeks to eradicate the small farmer and undermine local economies and food sovereignty by subjecting countries to the vagaries of rigged global markets [5,6].

Giant agritech corporations like Monsanto with their patented seeds and associated chemical inputs are working to ensure a shift away from diversified agriculture that guarantees balanced local food production, the protection of people’s livelihoods and environmental sustainability.

Small farmers are being displaced and are struggling to preserve their indigenous seeds and traditional knowledge of farming systems. Agritech corporations are being allowed to shape government policy by being granted a strategic role in trade negotiations [7].

They are increasingly setting the policy/knowledge framework by being allowed to fund and determine the nature of research carried out in public universities and institutes [8]. They continue to propagate the myth that they have the answer to global hunger and poverty, despite evidence that they do not [9,10].

The Gates Foundation, Monsanto and Western governments are placing African agriculture it in the hands of big agritech for private profit and strategic control under the pretext of helping the poor [11].

Of course there is another major concern pertaining to the motives of the Gates Foundation and Monsanto in Africa and elsewhere; that of depopulation via vaccines and/or genetically modified organisms [12,13].

These two entities are not just linked together through their involvement in AGRA. Bill Gates has substantial shares in Monsanto [14]. With Monsanto’s active backing from the US State Department [15] and the Gates Foundation’s links with USAID [16], together they comprise a formidable geopolitical strategic force.

Given that the Gates Foundation is about to be hauled through the Indian legal system for its vaccination programme in that country [17] and Monsanto has a decades’ long track record of deception and criminality [18], it is important for everyone (not least the mainstream corporate media) to question why agriculture is being handed over to such entities.

“… take capitalism and business out of farming in Africa. The West should invest in indigenous knowledge and agro-ecology, education and infrastructure and stand in solidarity with the food sovereignty movement.” Daniel Maingi, Growth Partners for Africa.

Source

__

Study: GM Foods Are Bad

It seem as if those who are vehemently opposed to genetically modified (GM) food aren’t crazy after all.

To be sure, a recently published research paper claims the intake of GM-based food can lead to substantial organ disruptions in rats and mice.

According to Natural News, the paper – which is based on 19 separate studies – concludes the disruptions occur primarily in the liver and kidney.

“[However], other organs may be affected too, such as the heart and spleen, or blood cells,” the paper states.

Perhaps the most damning blurb from the six-author paper is the results section which describes the overall results of the study.

“Several convergent data appear to indicate liver and kidney problems as end points of GMO diet effects in the above-mentioned experiments. This was confirmed by our meta-analysis of all the in vivo studies published, which revealed that the kidneys were particularly affected, concentrating 43.5% of all disrupted parameters in males, whereas the liver was more specifically disrupted in females (30.8% of all disrupted parameters).”

One the biggest problems the paper illustrates is that of the 19 GMO feed studies they analyzed, only two were 90 days in length. These were non-GMO industry studies, meaning, the GMO industry exploits studies that go on for less than 90 days – sometimes only a month long – to determine whether a GMO food is safe for consumption.

The authors also point that 90 days in a scientific setting is not even enough time to realistically determine if GMOs are safe to use as animal food. And if scientists are saying that about the current GMO safety studies from the industry, then there is no way the GMO industry could possibly know if their animal feed is toxic or not.

Yet the GMO soybean and corn used in the trials “constitute 83% of the commercialized GMOs” that are currently consumed by billions of people. It may be debatable whether or not GMOs are safe for the consumption of living animals, but it is clear that the concerns anti-GMO activists have harbored for the last decade are legitimate.

 

Source: NaturalNews.Com

 

____________________________________________