Why Is the Gates Foundation Funding a GMO Propaganda Campaign at Cornell?

Print Email Share Tweet LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Telegram

A new analysis by U.S. Right to Know published today in The Ecologist documents how millions of dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are being used to run a propaganda campaign out of Cornell University that promotes GMOs and pesticides for the benefit of agrichemical corporations.

The article documents how the Cornell Alliance for Science, launched in 2014 with a $5.6 million Gates Foundation grant, is operating as a PR campaign that promotes genetically engineered crops and foods using the same inaccurate messaging and unscrupulous tactics the agrichemical industry uses to push its agenda for chemically intensive, GMO agriculture.

Findings include:

  • Under the guise of “standing up for science,” the Cornell Alliance for Science routinely makes unscientific statements about GMOs.
  • The Cornell Alliance for Science partners with chemical industry PR operatives to teach “science” to students.
  • The Cornell Alliance for Science offers fellowships for GMO advocates including an ethically questionable journalism fellowship.

Evidence for these claims is described in detail in the article “Why is Cornell University hosting a GMO propaganda campaign?” by Stacy Malkan, co-director of the consumer group U.S. Right to Know.

Earlier this week, the U.K.-based campaign group Global Justice Now released a report making the case that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest charitable foundation in the world, is funding strategies that promote multinational corporate interests at the expense of social and economic justice.

For more information about the Gates Foundation:

Global Justice Now report, January 2016, “Gated Development – is the Gates Foundation always a force for good?”

Guardian, “Are Gates and Rockefeller using their influence to set agenda in poor states?”

Seattle Times, “New Report says Gates Foundation favors businesses, not poor,”

Grain report, November 2014, “How does the Gates Foundation spend its money to feed the world?”

U.S. Right to Know is a nonprofit organization that investigates the risks associated with the corporate food system, and the food industry’s practices and influence on public policy. We promote the free market principle of transparency – in the marketplace and in politics – as crucial to building a better, healthier food system.

 -30-

To top