Originally published July 1 2013
Monsanto-funded 'World Food Prize' awarded to Monsanto in ridiculously corrupt PR stunt
by Jonathan Benson, staff writer
(NaturalNews) What a surprise! Among this year's winners of the international World Food Prize, which claims to recognize the achievements of individuals who have "advanced human development," is none other than a Monsanto executive. The World Food Prize, which is heavily funded by the biotechnology industry, has once again shown preference to this corrupt industry by awarding three biotech pioneers esteemed laud and corresponding cash prizes as part of a ridiculous public relations stunt designed to foment support for genetically-modified (GM) crops and crop technologies.
As reported by The New York Times (NYT), one of the co-recipients of this year's 2013 World Food Prize is Robert Fraley, Monsanto's Chief Technology Officer. Fraley is said to have helped develop some of the earliest methods of splicing foreign genetic materials into crops. One of the "founding fathers" of GMOs, Fraley is joined by two other "Frankenscientists" in receiving the award, Syngenta's Mary-Dell Chilton and biotech enthusiast Marc Van Mantagu.
Biotechnology industry financially backs bogus World Food Prize
However, as revered as it may be to a select few, the World Food Prize is more of a publicity stunt than it is an honest recognition of individuals who have advanced food technology. As openly reported by the NYT, Monsanto is a major financial donor to the World Food Prize Foundation, having donated millions of dollars over the years to its preservation. The biotechnology industry in general, as a matter of fact, holds heavy influence in determining the recipients of the World Food Prize.
"The World Food Prize has been criticized in the past for favoring industrial agriculture," writes Andrew Pollack for the NYT. "The foundation that administers the prize has received contributions from companies, including a $5 million pledge from Monsanto in 2008."
In other words, the biotechnology industry sends over millions of dollars every year to fund the World Food Prize, which every year is given right back to the biotechnology industry as an achievement award. It is about as legitimate as the pharmaceutical industry shelling out millions of dollars to purchase approval from corrupt politicians and regulators for its deadly drugs, except that some people actually believe the World Food Prize is unbiased and respectable.
World Food Prize recipient admits phony award is covert attempt to increase GMO acceptance
So what is the real purpose of the World Food Prize? As admitted by one of its 2013 recipients, Mark Van Montagu from Ghent University in Belgium, the hope is that acceptance of GMOs will increase as a result of the biotechnology industry's publicity boost. The mindless "sheeple" are expected to see GMOs through new eyes because of the award, which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize for agriculture.
"(I hope) that this recognition will pave the way for Europe to embrace the benefits of this technology, an essential condition for global acceptance of transgenic plants," Montagu is quoted as saying recently.
So there you have it, folks. The goal of the prize is to steamroll acceptance of GMOs in Europe, where they are currently rejected by a large cross-section of the population. If these biotech overlords can simply convince Europeans to accept GMOs as some kind of "next generation" technology for feeding the planet, then the purpose of the World Food Prize will have been achieved.
"The World Food Prize is a scam," says George Naylor, a farmer and former president of the Family Farm Coalition. "The notion that the World Food Prize promotes is that the world's food problem is shortage of food and that we need to produce more food to feed hungry people. Then they jump to corporate inputs - GMOs, pesticides, fertilizers and big processing companies - and it's just totally wrong."
Sources for this article include:
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.worldfoodprize.org/en/laureates/2013_laureates/
http://rt.com/usa/world-food-prize-monsanto-executive-971/
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