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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation are aggressively funding development of genetically modified bananas, aka GMO bananas, to fight third world hunger and malnutrition.
In Australia, an iron and vitamin rich version of the humble fruit has already been created and plans are underway to share this technology with India.
Other GMO strains are resistant to deadly fungal infection. The biotech industry says GMO bananas are needed to “save” the fruit from possible extinction.
GM Bananas for Anemia?
Professor James Dale of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) says iron deficiency anemia is a major cause of maternal death during childbirth in India.
“The reason that we’re targeting iron is that much of the Indian population has a high level of iron-deficiency anemia because many of them are vegetarians and it’s very difficult from a vegetarian diet to get enough iron.”
The four year agreement between QUT and India’s Department of Biotechnology is an extension of the Australian research backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
This new strategy which uses genetic modification of staple crops like GM bananas to overcome micronutrient deficiency is in response to the failure of other approaches such as supplements and food fortification which local populations have typically resisted.
India is the largest producer of bananas in the world with basically all of them consumed on a local level. Therefore, it seems probable that the cheap, targeted strategy of artificially creating an iron rich GM banana and then distributing these plants to poor and subsistence farmers will be effective.
GM Bananas Pushed in Uganda
The Australian team headed by Professor Dale is also developing an artificially nutrient dense GM banana high in beta carotene for Ugandan farmers. Uganda grows 10 million tons of bananas each year, the largest in the world second only to India.
Bananas are everything in Uganda where they are consumed for breakfast, lunch and dinner. There is even a local beer made from bananas.
In recent years, disease and blight have affected about 30% of Uganda’s annual banana harvest. Scientists at the The National Banana Research Program, an arm of the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO) funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, feel that genetic modification of bananas is the only way to solve the problem as traditional methods such as selective breeding and hybridization have apparently failed.
Professor Wilberforce Tushemereirwe at The National Banana Research Program says that the majority of Ugandans are skeptical of GM foods although 95% of Ugandan farmers are willing to grown them.
GM crops are currently illegal in Uganda but despite this, confined field trials of GM bananas are already underway due to the special license The National Banana Research Program has which permits them to grow genetically modified organisms for research purposes only.
Opposition to GMO Bananas due to Safety Concerns
Strong local opposition to GM foods threaten the outcome of the GM banana project says Professor Tushemereirwe. He says that “voices against the scientific approach we are employing are threatening the opportunity”.
Proving that the GMO banana and products made from it like banana flour are safe is key to overcoming barriers to the marketplace.
This seems a difficult hurdle given the serious health implications of other GM crops.
One notable example is the worrisome problem of umbilical cord deformities in pregnant women consuming GM soy as warned by Ibu Robin Lim, 2011 CNN Hero of the Year.
References
India Goes Bananas for GM Fruit
Genetic Modification Used to Fight Uganda’s Banana Blight
The Only Way to Save Your Beloved Bananas Might Be Genetic Engineering
They will also destroy the world. I don’t know where they think that will leave them.
Highly dangerous GM foods are a curse on the world’s innocents. Along with vaccinations and flu shots filled with deadly poisons, pesticides, and highly poisonous fluoride added to our drinking/shower water, etc. it is clear that ruling elites are determined to destroy our health.
Exactly, and they will always claim it’s for the betterment of Mankind, etc and pat themselves on the back while the people consuming these GM foods become more and more sick. And those of us who are able to see the truth and refuse to consume them are branded as uninformed fools. Oh really??
It is sickening that the “elite” have no conscience about what they do to the poor in order to fund themselves. It is hard for me to understand this kind of “evil” done in the name of “good”… Ever seen “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”? In the end, the horrors of what one human does to another will touch everyone, even those who think themselves immune. Keep telling your friends and family how horrible GMO’s are and maybe there will not be enough “cover” to hide this atrocity. God made it perfect; man thinks he can improve on that?
I’ve hit the point in my “real food” journey that my friends and colleagues think I’m a nut for ordering grass fed beef online and insist that the right nutrition is better than going to the pharmacy every day for pills so when I see articles like this it’s so frustrating.
So much of the population, in the US and elsewhere will just willingly buy whatever the government sells them.
I’m hoping that our voices continue to swell and be heard or I fear that the next generation will find it next to impossible to avoid GMO foods.
This, too, may be trying to fix one issue and open up a Pandora’s Box of other problems, like loss of biodiversity and health issues from other problems with the GMO plants. Marfa, they are already using GMO plants here in the US, which is why they are fighting so hard to keep from having to label them! Did you see where Monsanto now plans to sue the state of Vermont if they follow through on a bill to label any GMO’s? It really makes you wonder why they’re so afraid of us knowing. I can only assume because they know there are risks. And because knowledge is power, and they don’t want to give up one iota of power in controlling the world’s food supply.
It is sneaky and underhanded to go after the 3rd world countries and the poor under the guise of helping them. If they’d put those billions of research dollars into direct aid, the problems would probably already be dealt with and over. If it had gone to educate the people, to help them improve their dietary diversity with healthy food, they wouldn’t need to have a crop that in the long run is bound to cost them far more than their economy can support. Look what Monsanto did to the rice farmers in India; they lost countless varieties of rice, and were supposed to continue purchasing their seed grain from Monsanto, and the chemicals it would then have to be treated with as well. At least for a while, I believe it was rice farmers in India who had the highest suicide rate in the world! They couldn’t afford to do it Monsanto’s way and were under contract so they couldn’t return to the old way (plus the soil was probably ruined by the chemicals).
We need to continue to resist big ag’s push to indoctrinate the world with their “we know better than Mother Nature” attitude.
Ya’ll are missing the big point of GMO’s. They weren’t designed to feed the world, as much as Bill Gates and Monsanto et al would like you to believe. GMO’s are a way of controlling the population because they will make people sick. Once people get sick, where do they usually go? To a doctor or a hospital. MORE profit to the wrong end of the spectrum because that entire medical industrial complex makes money. The doctor, the hospital workers, the phrma people who make countless pills for our ills, and eventually the undertaker who is also a part of the system, although not often mentioned. Toss in the insurance companies who make money every single month from premiums and pay out very little when someone dies, and you’ve just about finished the equation.
In order to finish it, however, would take me several long sheets of paper, but you can do it in your head: Start with Bill Gates et al, (the investors) in Monsanto R&D; then take Monsanto buying (read: basically stealing) the land from Uganda for their projects, because you know they aren’t going to pay a fair market price; this benefits the oil companies and the communications companies (all those plane rides and phone calls to settle things) – – – and just keep putting together all the little pieces of the puzzle and it’s amazing to follow. It’s like watching dominoes fall because one small piece leads to another small piece. From the realtors to the supermarkets, every teeny little thing involves money. In the end, the only people who don’t benefit are the growers and the eaters.
How do african doctors and african hospitals make more money when poor people show up ill with no insurance?
This made me LOL…the majority of Ugandans are skeptical of GM foods although 95% of Ugandan farmers are willing to grow them.
They Ugandan’s know that if they don’t grow them someone else will – for the $$$$. No one needs money more than the Ugandan population and the Indian population. They’d grow trees bearing prozac pills if they thought it would make them money. The trouble is, the Ugandan government is so corrupt that most of the money earned by these farmers ends up in the coffers of the already rich government. Ain’t that a kicker?
This made me LOL…
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I don’t know why people seem to think they need to help the poor of other countries by introducing horrible things, supposedly to benefit them! God help those people. Do NOT eat the bananas!
They can’t get support here in the US to use genetically modified plants, so they bribe the govt and USE the poor as an excuse…scary!!!
Its very sneaky of Big Ag to carry out its research through exploitation of “third world” countries. The iron content of the bananas could probably be increased by adding iron to the soil, which is why their deficient to begin with.
Bill Gates, et al, seem intent on knocking off the majority of the population in one form or another (he’s a huge benefactor to the vaccine funding and the R&D ofother drugs which are being designed to control the population growth). When he’s not helping fund ways to knock us off, he’s intent on demoting those who are left to serfdom. WHY is the upper crust is so intent on doing this sort of thing? BigAG is intent on promoting GM foods as superior to what mother nature provides, and yet they want to keep their GMO foods unlabeled and secret? Why? If they’re so good for humanity why aren’t they labeling these foods in big, bright neon letters in the supermarkets? You know the answer and so do I. Hopefully, so do lots of other people.
Yes and they can’t get the support in the Western world to do their research so they go to places like Uganda and India to get it done.
It is no secret how they get the support, as everything is for sale in those parts of the world, where bribing government officials is business as usual.
There are all kinds of things they can put in the GMO foods. Somehow I do not think it is for the benefit of people. Natures foods are a million times better, and what we are meant to eat.