Tell Congress not to force genetically engineered crops on other countries as a condition of receiving aid

Please contact your senator today and forward this by e-mail to friends.
Co-sponsors of this bill include Sen. Mark Begich (D, AK), Sen. Robert Casey (D, PA), Sen. Susan Collins (R, ME), Sen. Richard Durbin (D, ME), Sen. Thomas Harkin (D, IA), and Sen. John Kerry (D, MA). If you live in one of the districts served by these senators, it is important that they hear from you. Please cut and paste this information into a personal letter to your senator.

The Global Food Security Act (SB 384) represents the biggest change in focus for U.S. agricultural aid since the original “Green Revolution” introduced genetically modified seeds and pesticides to poor farmers in the global south beginning in the 1950s and 1960s.

SB 384 sailed through committee last month based on Gates Foundation-funded Monsanto-friendly research. With heavy agribusiness support, the Global Food Security Act could easily pass.

While this bill has many positive aspects, the biotech research provisions must be stripped out if we want to avoid yet another expensive failed “Green Revolution.”

This attachment to SB 384 is a stealth giveaway to agribusiness in the name of feeding the world’s poor. And it will destroy the ability of poor farmers to feed themselves throughout the global south.

While the bill recognizes the desperate need to increase funding for agricultural development and food security, it also requires that foreign agricultural development aid include investment in genetically engineered (GE) crops.

Most developing countries, especially in Africa, do not currently allow genetically engineered crops (GMOs) to be commercially grown. Biotech companies are aggressively selling their genetically engineered crops as a solution to world hunger. Studies prove that the genetically engineered crops now on the market have not increased yield potential nor have they improved nutrition. Most GE crops are engineered to survive spraying with chemical weedkillers. These chemical-dependent GE crops reduce labor costs for large growers.

India has experienced dramatic increases in farmer suicides caused by indebtedness for GMO seeds and chemicals. If millions of poor farmers throughout Africa are forced to participate in such a poison-pill food aid program, they will be forced off their land in favor of large-scale farming for export of food, fiber, and fuel to the international market, leaving even more Africans in abject poverty and dependent upon U.S. GMO corn and soybean handouts.

Food aid and development assistance should not be a pre-condition for accepting unwanted and ineffective genetically engineered crops. Tell Congress to keep genetic engineering out of any food aid and agricultural research legislation.

Please urge your Senator to strip the biotech provision from SB384 so that it no longer requires research on genetically engineered crops.

http://www.change.org/foodfirst/actions/view/no_tax_dollars_for_genetic_...

Thank you for participating. Please ask your friends and family to join in sending this urgent message to your senator and representative.
For more information about SB 384, go to Policy Brief No 18: Why the Global Food Security Act Will Fail to Curb Hunger at http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2412