The Gates Foundation’s Ceres2030 Plan Pushes Agenda of Agribusiness

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by Jonathan Latham, PhD

(This article is reprinted from Truthout.)

Whether the challenge is low-yield crops in Africa or low graduation rates in Los Angeles, we listen and learn,” states the website of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (the Gates Foundation). Even though it is the richest and most powerful organization in all of international aid, the Gates Foundation prides itself on listening to small farmers.

Its critics, however, have often accused the Gates Foundation of not living up to this goal. The importance of listening to farmers might seem straightforward — to avoid the risk of giving people what they don’t need. But underneath, much more is going on. More

GMO Golden Rice Offers No Nutritional Benefits Says FDA

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by Allison Wilson, PhD and Jonathan Latham, PhD

The biotech industry and its supporters have promoted GMO Golden Rice for decades as an urgently needed solution to vitamin A deficiency.

But, in a surprising twist, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has concluded its consultation process on Golden Rice by informing its current developers, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), that Golden Rice does not meet the nutritional requirements to make a health claim.

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EU Reapproval of Glyphosate Leaves Environmentalists’ Strategy in Tatters; What Now?

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by Jonathan Latham, PhD
The ecology of Planet Earth is rapidly collapsing under a rising tide of toxic pollution and plastic waste as, in every sector of the economy, natural products and methods are replaced with synthetics. One example, just recently reported, is that in 1974 non-organic wheat production in the UK required 2 sprays per year. In 2014 UK wheat required 20.7 sprays. More

AcresUSA Interview

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ACRES USA. What is your background and what is the Bioscience Resource Project all about?

LATHAM. I am a molecular biologist. I got my PhD in England at the John Innes Institute, which is famous for genetic engineering and modern molecular biology. But my inclination is toward ecology. I wanted to be an ecologist when I was an undergraduate, but my professor told me that if I went into ecology that I would not get a job and I would end up being an accountant. More

Gates Foundation Grants Additional $6.4 million to Cornell’s Controversial Alliance for Science

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In a presentation yesterday at Cornell, Alliance for Science Director, Sarah Evanega, revealed that her organisation had received “a renewed contribution” of $6.4 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Originally endowed with $5.6 million by the Gates Foundation in August 2014, the new grant takes the total Gates contribution to $12 million. More

Have Monsanto and the Biotech Industry Turned Natural Bt Pesticides into GMO “Super toxins”?

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By Jonathan Latham, PhD

Is the supposed safety advantage of GMO crops over conventional chemical pesticides a mirage?

According to biotech lore, the Bt pesticides introduced into many GMO food crops are natural proteins whose toxic activity extends only to narrow groups of insect species. Therefore, says the industry, these pesticides can all be safely eaten, e.g. by humans.

This is not the interpretation we arrived at after our analysis of the documents accompanying the commercial approval of 23 typical Bt-containing GMO crops, however (see Latham et al., 2017, just published in the journal Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews). More

The Biotech Industry Is Taking Over the Regulation of GMOs from the Inside

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by Jonathan Latham, PhD

The British non-profit GMWatch recently revealed the agribusiness takeover of Conabia, the National Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology of Argentina. Conabia is the GMO assessment body of Argentina. According to GMWatch, 26 of 34 its members were either agribusiness company employees or had major conflicts of interest*.

Packing a regulatory agency with conflicted individuals is one way to ensure speedy GMO approvals and Conabia has certainly delivered that. A much more subtle, but ultimately more powerful, way is to bake approval into the structure of the GMO assessment process itself. It is easier than you might think. More

Illegal GE Bacteria Detected in An Animal Feed Supplement

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by Jonathan Latham, PhD and Allison Wilson, PhD

Genetically engineered (GE) bacteria have been found in riboflavin vitamin supplements intended for animal feed use according to newly published EU tests.

Contamination of food grade or animal feed supplements with GE bacteria is illegal in the European Union. In 2014, however, a German enforcement laboratory alerted EU officials to illegal GE bacterial contamination of a riboflavin supplement intended for animal feed. Further tests showed that the illegal contaminating strain was not among those the manufacturer claimed to be using.

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