Last year, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates gave $US10 million to British scientists to crack a problem he hoped might help solve the looming world food crisis.
Unusually, this time the philanthropy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was met with howls of outrage from left-leaning politicians and environmental groups that previously had welcomed its efforts to eradicate malaria and alleviate global poverty and hunger.
The reason? The Gates Foundation had dared to suggest that if British scientists could transfer the genes that give some root bacteria the ability to produce nitrogen from soil and air into wheat, corn or rice plants, it might help feed the nine billion people who will inhabit the planet by 2050.
Success would potentially allow wheat, rice, corn and other global food staples to be grown in even the poorest soils of Africa, Asia and South America without the need for costly fertilisers, greatly expanding world food production.
But so divisive has the global debate about the merits and safety of using genetically modified crop varieties become that the Gates Foundation's move was met with controversy and derision.
Greenpeace Australia's sustainable agriculture adviser Richard Widows immediately called the donation misplaced. He accused the Gates Foundation of feeding not the world but the profits of its biggest biotech and chemical conglomerates.
Greenpeace also pointed out that in 2010 Bill Gates purchased 500,000 shares in multinational Monsanto -- one of the world's biggest developers and owners of genetically engineered crop patents and seed licences -- and that the investment is now worth $US23m ($21.8m).
"If Mr Gates is serious about feeding the world's poor and helping us establish sustainable farming practices that will heal the environment and provide a future for humanity, he needs to look less towards GM crops and more towards nature," Widows wrote on the Truefood Network website.
On the other side of the coin is Lynas, a leading author on climate change issues, said he had slowly realized it was inconsistent with his reliance on evidence-based science and scientific knowledge to argue that climate change is a reality while simultaneously leading an inherently "anti-science" movement that demonised genetic modification of crops.
Lynas thinks it is time for a strong dose of "international myth-busting" on the GM question. "The plant scientists I know hold their heads in their hands when we talk about this issue because governments and so many people have got their sense of risk so utterly wrong, and are foreclosing a vitally necessary technology." he says.
"The risk today is not that anyone will be harmed by GM food, but that millions will be harmed by not having enough food (to eat) because a vocal minority of people in rich countries want meals to be what they consider natural."
Note EU-Digest: where this plot thickens is that GMO is mainly researched and produced by multi-national chemical corporations like Monsanto and others who certainly can not be considered "straight shooters" when it comes to integrity but very much motivated by profit factors. Indeed this issue needs for more scrutiny before anything final can be said about it. In the meantime Governments and the Public must stay cool and not be swayed by corporate interest groups and corporate PR releases to the media.
Read more: An inconvenient truth | The Australian
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