According to the “creation myth” of capitalist patriarchy, rich and powerful men are the “creators”. They can own life through patents and intellectual property. They can tinker with nature’s complex evolution over millennia, and claim their trivial yet destructive acts of gene manipulation “create” life, “create” food, “create” nutrition. In the case of GM bananas it is one rich man, Bill Gates ,financing one Australian scientist ,Dale, who knows one crop,the banana ,to impose inefficient and hazardous GM bananas on millions of people in India and Uganda who have grown hundreds of banana varieties over thousands of years in additional to thousands of other crops.
The real objective is to get access to our rich biodiversity through Biopiracy and control banana production through patents in the country with the highest production and consumption of bananas. Scientists like Dale already hold many patents on banana transformation. Just as Monsanto controls our cotton seed supply through IPRs by adding a toxic gene to cotton, Dale and MNC’s will start owning our banana through patents linked to genetic engineering. In fact that seems to be the main aim of the GMO banana project.
False solutions like genetically engineered bananas are being offered by Bill Gates, who is funding Dr Dale in Queensland University of Technology,Australia, to develop genetically engineered bananas and transfer them to India. In addition our tax money is also funding this project.
Dr Dale does not have a single paper related to iron fortification of bananas .This work has been done by the Bhabha Atomic Research Team.
(Gujulla B Sunil Kumar &Lingam Srinivas&ThumballiRamabhattaGanapathi
Iron Fortification of Banana by the Expression of Soybean Ferritin
Biol Trace Elem Res (2011) 142:232–241 DOI 10.1007/s12011-010-8754-6 )
So the research on GM banana is Indian, the finance comes from India, yet Dr Dale and Bill Gates strut around the world as if their research, their brains and their money is making a Technology transfer of GM bananas possible to India to save Indian Women.
Just as Bt cotton has taken over 95%cotton in India inspite of having failed to increase yields or control pests,GM bananas will take over and destroy our rich biodiversity, even though they will fail to remove iron deficiency.
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