Below are some media and research articles about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) along with a Clarification of IBFAN’s funding policy.
Don’t reduce the global poor to potential consumers
By treating health care as a commodity, Gates Foundation holds back progress toward universal coverage
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/3/dont-reduce-the-global-poor-to-potential-consumers.html
Revealed: Gates Foundation’s $1.4bn in fossil fuel investments
Analysis of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s most recent tax filing reveals huge investments in the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/19/gates-foundation-has-14bn-in-fossil-fuels-investments-guardian-analysisDo sign the petition enclosed in this article and also perhaps add a note calling on Gates to end investments and partnerships with Nestlé (see below).
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CLICK HERE Anna Birn HJ229—FIN_Nov1_2014
Philanthrocapitalism, past and present: The Rockefeller Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the setting(s) of the international/ global health agenda.
Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Hypothesis 2014, 12(1): e8, doi:10.5779/hypothesis. v12i1.229.
While the Gates Foundation, perhaps responding to criticism, pulled out of many of its direct pharmaceutical holdings in 2009185, its vested interest in the pharmaceutical industry remains through BMGF mega-donor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway holdings (in which 50% of the Gates Foundation endowment is invested) in Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi- Aventis, and other pharmaceutical companies184. The immediate past president of the BMGF’s global health program, Dr. Tachi Yamada, was formerly an executive and board member of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline186, and his successor, Dr. Trevor Mundel, was a senior executive at Novartis AG from 2003 until 2011187. Several other senior BMGF executives hail from GlaxoSmithKline and Merck188,189. Gates Foundation initiatives (in health, agriculture, and other areas) may well benefit these corporations in addition to Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Monsanto, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, and other companies in which the Gates Foundation, Berkshire Hathaway, and Gates family members are major shareholders184,190.____________________________________
Gates Foundation Ditches McDonald’s, Coca-Cola in Fourth Quarter – CLICK HERE The Gates Foundation Asset Trust, which manages the investments for the $42.3 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, liquidated its positions of McDonald’s Corp., Coca-Cola Co. and Exxon Mobil Corp. in the fourth quarter.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-17/gates-foundation-ditches-mcdonald-s-coca-cola-in-fourth-quarter
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Gates partnership with Nestle
http://www.nestle.com/media/newsandfeatures/global-good-partnership-east-african-farmers
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Corporate stock investments of the Gates Foundation and Berkshire Hathaway
Here is Chart showing the web of links and corporate stock investments of the Gates Foundation and Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffet) in 2010.
Here is the an article about the Historical controversy about the politics of philanthropy and supporting Information of the Full Corporate Stock Investment Listings filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (Form 13-HR), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and Berkshire Hathaway Holdings, June 30th, 2010 Berkshire Hathaway is listed as having investments worth 164,585,000 in Nestle. These are
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Clarification on IBFAN’s funding policy
This clarification was necessitated when our Global Council, on behalf of IBFAN, had to take a strategic decision whether or not and under what conditions IBFAN should participate in two new initiatives by UNICEF and WHO, WHO NetCode, and the UNICEF Breastfeeding Advocacy Initiative, both receiving funding from the BMGF, which has direct links and gets its returns from the baby food industry and also engages with entities such as the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition(GAIN) that create situations of risk of conflicts of Interest in infant and young child feeding.
As the mandate of these agencies is in line with IBFAN’s, it has been our tradition over decades to work with these UN agencies to promote, protect and support breastfeeding. The two initiatives, according to our assessment, present an opportunity to advance this collaboration and thus to advance our work. However, we want and need to make it clear that IBFAN is opposed to the Market led approaches to infant and young child nutrition and feeding promoted by the BMGF funded entities such as GAIN and Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN). While IBFAN collaborates in joint endeavours with UNICEF and WHO it does not receive any funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
IBFAN Statement on Gates Funding
Statement of International Baby Food Action Network final
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Click Here for a Gates Timeline (up to 2011) by Jamie Love of Knowledge Ecology International. (KEIonline)
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/mar/25/heat-resistant-bean-climate-change-cgiar
…...The article on the above link promotes CGIAR’s elite ‘heat-tolerant’ bean seed varieties – a potential rich harvest for corporates’ Climate Smart Agriculture. At the end of the article was a report (pasted below) of something quite different: A demonstration outside the BMGF offices in London, calling for investment to support farmers’ biodiverse multi-variety, multi-crop ecological production that can adapt to changing weather patterns while providing balanced nutritious foods. In these systems farmers freely share seeds (across communities, countries and continents) to enhance their resilient systems.
“Earlier in the week, protestors gathered outside the London office of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to demonstrate against a meeting they said would promote corporate interests in Africa’s seed sector.
Dangling a cage full of seeds in front of passersby, they yelled, “Come and free the seeds!” before smashing open the cage, which they said symbolised the corporate takeover of Africa’s seed markets.
As seeds spilled on to the pavement, the meeting, hosted by the Gates Foundation and the US Agency for International Development (USAid), promoted production and distribution in Africa’s seed sector. The attendees were listed as key donor organisations, private seed companies and agricultural research centres, but did not include any groups representing farmers, according to a leaked document seen by the Guardian.
The Gates Foundation and USAid have said they are working to improve food security in the world’s poorest countries. USAid’s flagship programme, the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, has been criticised for requiring African governments to change laws and policies in favour of businesses.
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Gates foundation spends bulk of agriculture grants in rich countriesAfrican NGOs received just 4% of Bill Gates’s money for agriculture work, with 75% for US organisations, report says
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/nov/04/bill-melinda-gates-foundation-grants-usa-uk-africa
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Media release: Golden Rice is unnecessary and dangerous
STOP Golden Rice Alliance | 10 March 2015 | Other publications
http://www.grain.org/article/entries/5177-media-release-golden-rice-is-unnecessary-and-dangerous
Here is a previous Blog Posting on BMGF from July 2014
Baby Milk Action’s readers will be aware of our concerns about the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) – both of which are part funded by the foundation set up by the software giant, Bill Gates.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is now a significant player in development programmes and a major funder of WHO. But it is far from a passive donor, with an assured place on the governing structures of many global health partnerships it is in a key position to influence health and research agendas and public health priorities.[i]
As Jamie Love, the director of Knowledge Ecology International, says “…while few would say his philanthropy is too much of a good thing, there are clearly significant consequences and indeed also risks in such an enormous concentration of power. The fairly rapid demise of public sector policy-making in key areas of public health, and the reliance upon the Gates family and its staff, creates an impoverished debate over public health priorities, and leads to unchallenged policy changes in others.” [ii]
In relation to infant and young child health, the BMGF’s emphasis on technological solutions, new medical technologies and the public private partnership model is especially problematic, and can be seen in tendency of GAIN and SUN to focus on product solutions to hunger.
Media sponsorship
The Foundation’s funding of education and media outlets such as the BBC, National Public Radio and the Guardian is also of concern, given the importance corporations place on influencing the information environment and ‘issues framing’. [iii]
This is a question “not only of ‘policy’ capture but of capturing a wide range of arenas of debate and decision making either because these are seen as intrinsically important or because they are useful for activities in other arenas.” [iv]
The Guardian now runs discussion pages and debates sponsored by a range or corporations and foundations. In June 2013 – just before the G8 meeting in London, the Guardian ran a webinar entitled The role of business in scaling up nutrition sponsored by DSM, the world’s largest manufacturer of ingredients in formulas.[v] Fokko Wientjes, director of the DSM-WFP partnership, said “surely it’s a good thing to have DSM involved in the debate seeing as they are responsible, as a manufacturer of nutritional supplements, for ensuring the children consuming their products get the required nutrients. We’ll never get anywhere if the organisations who make these products and have the financial clout to make a difference are locked out of these discussions – they have a vested interest in making products that address the issue as it will help them increase their profits.”
[i] The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s grant-making programme for global health, The Lancet, Volume 373, Issue 9675, Pages 1645 – 1653, 9 May 2009 http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60571-7/fulltext
[ii] Microsoft, Gates Foundation Timeline, http://keionline.org/microsoft-timeline
[iii] http://keionline.org/microsoft-timeline http://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/guardian-launches-global-development-site
[iv] Corporate strategy, corporate capture: Food and alcohol industry lobbying and public health, David Miller and Claire Harkins, 2010 30: 564 Critical Social Policy University of Strathclyde, http://csp.sagepub.com/content/30/4/564 [v] The role of business in scaling up nutrition – live discussion Panel of experts. 6 June, 2013 to discuss how business can help address the impacts of undernutrition http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/business-scaling-up-nutrition-live-discussion