SEKEM Group 3, Belbeis Desert Road 11777 Cairo Egypt PO Box 2834 El Horreya, Heliopolis Tel: +20 (2) 6564124 Fax:+20 (2) 6564123 regina.hanel@sekem.com www.sekem.com Managing Director: Helmy Abouleish
SEKEM Group, 3, Belbeis Desert Road, 11777 Cairo
Cairo, 26 June 2013
The Wrong Signal at the Wrong Time: SEKEM Condemns the Awarding of Monsanto with this year’s “World Food Prize” The SEKEM Initiative has reacted with disbelief to the announcement that in 2013 three multinational companies shall receive the “World Food Prize”, a group that includes Monsanto, a leading producer of genetically modified organisms (GMO). The SEKEM Initiative has signed and fully supports the statement of the global NGOs “World Future Council” and of the “Right Livelihood Award Foundation” (“Alternative Nobel Prize”) that has been published today in “The Huffington Post”: “In honouring the seed biotechnology industry, this year’s World Food Prize — often considered the Nobel Prize for food and agriculture — betrays the award’s own mandate to emphasize “the importance of a nutritious and sustainable food supply for all people.” In the view of SEKEM, the decision to honour Monsanto with the “World Food Prize 2013” also blatantly ignores the will of many people who are stepping up against the commercialisation of agriculture, the disenfranchising of farmers in developing countries, and the cultivation of GMOs. “Recognizing a GMO-company with an important international prize while the overwhelming majority of consumers in the European Union have just openly rejected GMOs on their farms and in their supermarkets is a very questionable step”, says Helmy Abouleish, CEO of the SEKEM Group of companies. “In the industrialised countries, we throw away about 30% of the food we purchase. Food shortages have mostly political causes. We do not need GMOs to solve them.” SEKEM has been working for a sustainable agriculture in harmony with nature for 35 years and is convinced that organic and specifically bio-dynamic farming remains the only way to feed the world without irreparably damaging our common natural environment. Together with a reform of the global trade system towards greater transparency and an equitable recognition of producers in the global South, organic agriculture is the best solution because it helps protect our soils, strengthen small-holder agriculture, and promote a diverse cultural landscape with resilient, healthy biodiversity. “The reaction of many people against GMOs show that they wish for political decisionmakers to rise to the challenge and reform the way we cultivate our food in a sustainable and equitable way – not by awarding big multinational corporations”, Helmy Abouleish adds. It is the opinion of SEKEM, that giving the “2013 World Food Prize” to companies like Monsanto sends the wrong signal at the wrong time as it promotes and intensive, onesided type of agriculture as a “one-size-fits-all”-approach to solving global food problems. It advocates the overexploitation of natural and human resources through an agriculture that unfairly favours large-scale commercialised farming and through the patenting of GMOs threatens the livelihoods of countless farmers in the developing world. The declaration by the Prize Winners: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frances-moorelappe-and-anna-lappe/choice-of-monsanto-betray_b_3499045.html
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Background: SEKEM – A Community for Sustainable Development The SEKEM-Group of companies is a part of the SEKEM Initiative founded in 1977 by Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish to strengthen sustainable development in Egypt by producing, processing, and marketing organic and bio-dynamic foodstuffs, textiles, and phyto-pharmaceuticals in Egypt, the Arab World, and on international markets. SEKEM has been widely praised as an “Egyptian organic pioneer” and has received the 2003 Right Livelihood Award (“Alternative Nobel Prize”) as a „Business Model for the 21thCentury” and an “economy of love”. With part of their profits the SEKEM companies co-finance the social and cultural activities of the SEKEM Development Foundation that runs, among others, several schools, a medical centre, an academy of applied sciences, and other institutions in Egypt. To receive SEKEM’s monthly newsletter via email, please visit http://news.sekem.net Reprint free of charge, copy requested. Please contact us anytime for any inquiries and further information: SEKEM Gruppe & SEKEM Europe GmbH Hr. Bijan Kafi Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit Gotzkowskystr. 15 10555 Berlin bijan.kafi@sekem.info +49 (30) 22410288 www.sekem.com
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