Filmed by: Other Voices, Other Choices
The Gates Foundation’s Ceres2030 Plan Pushes Agenda of Agribusiness
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
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.
EU Reapproval of Glyphosate Leaves Environmentalists’ Strategy in Tatters; What Now?
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
Gates Foundation Hired PR Firm to Manipulate UN Over Gene Drives
by Jonathan Latham, PhD
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation this year paid a PR firm called Emerging Ag $1.6 million to recruit a covert coalition of academics to manipulate a UN decision-making process over gene drives, according to emails obtained through Freedom of Information requests.More
AcresUSA Interview
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
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
BFA Soil & Nutrition Conference 2017 Stockbridge, MA, Nov 29-30
I am giving my first workshop on DNA and Life!
Title: What is Life? A workshop. More
Have Monsanto and the Biotech Industry Turned Natural Bt Pesticides into GMO “Super toxins”?
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
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
