argylesock says… This sounds great, doesn’t it? Perhaps it’s great but you’ll recall how I’ve mentioned the Gates Foundation as being a promoter of genetic modification (GM, also called genetic engineering) for crops, leading to support for a new Green Revolution. Those aims are controversial. I keep an open mind about GM for crops and also for livestock. This particular project – about dairy cattle (Bos primigenius) – doesn’t announce any GM but I’d like to know whether or not GM cattle are to be part of this Gates Foundation plan.
Staff of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) visited a field site of the Dairy Genetics East Africa (DGEA) project in June 2011 (photo credit: BMGF/Lee Klejtnot).
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a USD1.3-million grant to researchers at the School of Environmental and Rural Science at the University of New England (UNE), in Australia, headed by John Gibson, who co-ordinates the International Development Activities at the University’s School of Environmental and Rural Sciences. Gibson, who formerly led genetics work at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, and his colleagues will work in close collaboration with teams led by ILRI livestock geneticist Okeyo Mwai, and Ed Rege, another former livestock geneticist from ILRI who is now at PICO-Eastern Africa, a non-profit consultancy organization in Nairobi.
This project could have profound impacts on small-hold farming in East Africa and change the livelihoods of literally millions of family farms.’—John Gibson…
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Science on the Land 