For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Genetic Engineering page and our Millions Against Monsanto page.

Even if you aren’t opposed to genetically modified crops (with all this information, how couldn’t you be) and even if you like Bill Gates and his ventures (but with all this information, how could you), this latest should be enough to get you perturbed. And if you are anti-GMO and knowledgeable of the shady and questionable ways of the Gates Foundation, this latest story out of Africa will truly make your blood boil.

According to a recent statement from the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB), failed GM corn from Monsanto is now being pushed on African countries with help from the Gates Foundation. This maize, known as MON810, has been grown in South Africa for 15 years, where it “failed miserably”. But so as not to call the seed a complete waste, Monsanto and Bill Gates are now pushing it into countries like Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya-countries that need agricultural help.

“Monsanto got the science completely wrong on this one. Independent biosafety scientists have discovered that the inheritance of resistance in African stem borers is a dominant, not recessive, trait as erroneously assumed,” explained the Director of the ACB Miriam Mayet. “Hence the insect resistance management strategies that Monsanto developed, and accepted by our regulators, based on these erroneous assumptions, were utterly ineffective.”

What this means, simply, is that pests in South Africa developed a massive resistance to the chemicals in the corn, annihilating the one prominent argument
for GM crops, that it is resistant to insects. The corn was such a disaster that Monsanto willingly compensated farmers for the pesticides they had to spray on their crops to further fight the insects. Compensation from Monsanto? Weird.