Mereja.Forum

[Zmeselo]

ATTENTION

Research by Sheba - PushStart: @ShebaPushStart

Did you know “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation” and other groups are funding research into new teff varieties, in Ethiopia?

Did you also know that information is surfacing, that these new strains of genetically modified Teff

1. Are suspected to cause cancer
2. Will wipe out the over 6000 natural variety of Teff, that grows organically in Ethiopia
3. Teff production is being pushed to be monopolized by MNCs (multi-national corps) which will in no doubt destroy the agricultural sector and impoverish farmers, while making the nation dependent on these modified crops!!

They are calling it: Tougher Teff

What else will you do to us, Prime Minister Abiy? Is that your calling and mission to eliminate the people, the land, the history, the churches, the mosques, the culture? What else have you sold to your masters?

Read some of the research from article below!!

https://www.semafor.com/article/01/26/2 ... ght-hunger

Researchers are attempting to genetically modify teff — an ancient crop that feeds more than 150 million people in Ethiopia and other parts of Africa — to make the spindly, fragile grass shorter and more climate-resilient.

With Africa now at the “centre of the global hunger crisis” and increasingly reliant on food imports due to climate change and conflict, according to the Financial Times, diversifying crops away from a handful of Western staples has become a more urgent mission.

They are calling it Tougher Teff and growing genetically modified crops that will destroy the natural varieties that exist, bring cancer and destroy the economy of Agriculture in Ethiopia.

While war and calamity is our central focus, Ethiopia is being compromised in multiple ways at all angles. In the name of Food Security and Food Resilience Abiy Ahmed's government has compromised the safety of the entire nation by allowing The Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation to tamper with the daily bread of 120 plus million Ethiopians.

Do your own research! This is not a suspicion, it is underway. They are growing crops of Teff in Idaho.

Once in Ethiopia, it is unclear if the gene-edited teff would be subject to the Ethiopian Biosafety Proclamation or if it would avoid biosafety regulation as it has in the US. Different countries approach genome editing, differently. For instance, while the US applies more lenient oversight to gene-editing, the European Union treats the technology as a subset of genetic modification and subjects it to the same stringent safety obligations.

https://africanarguments.org/2023/05/ge ... ited-teff/

Where gene editing has already been deployed, it has often had worrying unexpected effects. Scientists investigating the use of these new techniques have warned of “genetic havoc”, as they’ve discovered unintended damage to DNA and found genetically-edited cells to be prone to seeding cancerous tumours.

A 49 Million Dollar Grant has been awarded in March of 2024 for the work to continue on Genetically Modified Teff

With the collaboration of the Danforth Center and the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute, the program to address loss of yields as they frame it continues without measurable scrutiny.

The US regulations on this are extremely lax, as previously reported and my own research on the EIAR shows that there are many issues with lack of regulation as well as expertise and resource capacity. What is frightening is that this institute has 22 research locations spread across the country, at the present.

What aspects of this “research” have been implemented, thus far? Does the field research described in some of these journals include planting these crops in various farms across the country and introducing/incentivizing impoverished farmers to grow and consume these crops? Is there a monitoring system in place? Have any of the products of these experiments been put out in the market? Why isn’t there more transparency to the public about the development of such products amidst warnings of unregulated research and reports of detrimental impacts on health, agricultural productivity and the environment?

These are my questions and should be the questions of all concerned. https://danforthcenter.org/news/danfort ... lar-grant/…



The Genetic Modification of Teff is not a myth or some future based experiment, so please take this seriously!!

Local Genome Editing Project on Tef Varieties has officially “kicked off” in a half day event in Addis, this month (March 2024)

Please look at link and following information for key individuals and organizations involved in this project.



This is Donald J MacKenzie, the executive director of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center @DanforthCenter who have championed the genome editing project of Teff in Ethiopia at their research plants and greenhouses in the US after US Agriculture regulations were bypassed for the programs to develop. They have now kicked off the implementation of this research in Ethiopia with the partnership of the Ethiopian Institute of Agriculture Research (EIAR) and consignment of the Ethiopian Environment Authority and launched Get Up Gene Editing of Teff for Uplifting Productivity.

What have Ethiopian Farmers been told about these mutated crops??

What are you doing to our people?

Continues....

[Zmeselo]

This is Dr Chilot Yirga, Deputy Director General of EIAR - Ethiopian Institute of Agriculture Research which is the research and deployment partner of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and recipient of the $4.9 Million Grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the implementation of #GETUP


This is Dr Dejene Girma, Director of Ag-Biotech research at EIAR


Getu Duguma, PHD, is a senior research scientist at the Danforth Center and key contributor in many articles and publications from the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center who has been engaged in the genetic editing research from the early stages.

These are the individuals on the top leadership of this initiative that is being deployed in Ethiopia after experimentation without regulations in the US.

They have 22 centers in the country. Where are these locations?? What is being told to farmers? How are they being regulated?



EIAR Centers in Ethiopia are spread across almost all regions with a cluster in Oromia Region which contains half or 11/22 of the sub centers spread across the country. There are 4 in the Amhara region, 1 in Southern Afar, 2 in Benishangul Gemuz, 1 in Gambela, 1 in the SNNP, 1 in SWEP and 1 in Sidama regions. Listing of the sub centers below

Sub Centers (22)

° Abobo
◦ Abole
◦ Goge
◦ Saree
•Ambo
◦ Ginchi
•Chero
◦ Meiso
•Debre Markos
◦ Mertulemariam
◦ Erob Gebeya
◦ Selalle
•Fogera
◦ Debre Tabor
•Holetta
◦ Adaberga
◦ Ginchi
•Jimma
◦ Gera
◦ Metu
◦ Haru
◦ Mugi
◦ Agaro
•Melkasa
◦ Arsi Negelle
•Wendo Genet
◦ Hawasa
◦ Awada
◦ Wenago
•Wolkite
◦ Yefergeeye
◦ Tatees
◦ Jembero


Let’s talk about, Regulations.

Ethiopia was known to be on the frontlines, for pushing back against GMOs and MNC domination in the food sector. Dr Tewelde GebreEgziabher who was head of the Ethiopian Environmental Protection Agency made remarkable contributions to this fight for Ethiopia, Africa and the Global south. Another major influential figure in this space was, Dr Melaku Worede.

So one of the questions I had about this is, what happened to our fierce stance against this unregulated practice and exploitation of MNCs that was argued to propel food insecurity unlike its promise of the opposite?

The following should give some insight.

As you might have guessed, the current governments food sustainability policy and PR surrounding the green legacy along with recent awards by the FAO have raised eyebrows and drawn criticism, especially since the reality on the ground is famine, warnings of massive food insecurity due to war, conflict, displacements and natural disasters such as the droughts in Oromia - Borena (2022) and in other regions. This has exponentially increased the volume of food aid into the country and much has been published about that.

But what of regulations? Well the linked 2020 article expressed the delight of the US government at Ethiopias approval of GMO crops, after many years of pushback. With the change of policy from a beacon nation in the resistance to genetically engineered crops and allowance of MNCs to take advantage of this new market, the damage has already began. https://ethiopiaobserver.com/2020/04/17 ... rove-gmos/…

If they don't want to regulate genetic engineering, one must ask why?

Dr Tewelde GebreEgziabher, 2001

This is a MUST read for all interested to understand the history of the arguments against GMO crops by genuine scientists, who led the charge in resisting the political and corporate agendas regarding food security

It shows that the fight was never about being anti-science or technophobia but about food sovereignty and international protocols for safeguarding against deregulated, imports of potentially dangerous products that were fiercely promoted by the US and other super powers whose governments motivated by corporate interest groups.

Not to mention the ability of MNCs and external governments would have, from escaping any culpability after the fact.

Should a genetically engineered variety go wrong and escape into the environment, Canada can start over again and develop a new variety--forgetting about all the varieties it has contaminated and destroyed. But if that were to happen in Ethiopia, the native gene pool--including wild relatives of crop plants--could be polluted. Such mistakes could never be undone.

https://sierraclub.org/sierra/2001-4-ju ... inst-grain…


In 2022, Dejene Girma of the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research (EIAR) published an important piece on

The Emergence of Products of New Breeding Techniques and Challenges to Ethiopia’s Biosafety Regulatory Regime.

In it, he explains the various challenges with regulations of genetically edited crops across the globe. The introduction of regulations for these new tech produced synthetic crops in some countries including India and studies and amendments of existing bio safety laws in some African countries like South Africa and Nigeria to control introduction of such crops, that are different from traditional GMOs. More significantly, he highlights the 2018 laws that deregulates some GMOs which have paved the road for new synthetic crops like the genetically-edited dwarf Teff crops developed by the Donald Danforth Center in the US, where gene edited crops are classified as non-GMO and therefore bypass regulation. In fact they are cleared.

The long and short of it is, Ethiopia has deregulated GMOs in 2018 upon the arrival of the new administration, Ethiopia has no laws in place regarding these significantly different versions which cannot be traced, Ethiopia does not have the capacity to research these new tech gene products and thus has to deal with them like conventional GMOs, which by law require the research data and regulatory approval from the exporting nation, which in this case is the US, where such regulations don’t exist.

Considering this was from 2022, I’ll look more into whether or not the laws have been amended since then considering now in 2024, the program to launch genetically edited Teff crops has now been launched.

Ethiopia has not yet determined, whether genome editing will be evaluated differently or treated the same as GMOs under its Biosafety Law. However, amid the fast-evolving nature of breeding technologies, it is time for Ethiopia to start the scientific discussion necessary for crafting guidelines on stacked trait products and products of new breeding techniques such as gene editing be it for research and/or environmental release.

https://ajol.info/index.php/ejas/articl ... 573/215810…

End!

[Agazi General]

ZIS IS BEYOND TERRIFYING

[Zmeselo]

Yemens Ansrallah/Houthis report US bombed immigrant detention center in Saada killing 68 Africans. These had to be Ethiopians fleeing the US backed AbiyGangster regime's war against the Ethiopian people. Run away to get slaughtered by the US in Yemen? Not a word of protest by Abiy and his henchmen of the cold blooded slaughter of his own people?

___________________

AFRICOM BOSS: U.S. NEEDS MORE
INFLUENCE IN AFRICA!

“They will pay one of us, to kill one of us, just to say it was one of us" - these words (widely attributed to civil-rights activist Malcolm X) were recalled by many after the attempted character assassination of Burkina Faso’s president by the head of US Africa Command (AFRICOM) during a recent Senate hearing. It’s not the first time General Michael E. Langley’s Senate performance has caught our eye. In this video, he argues that our continent is part of NATO’s ‘southern flank,’ and that Russia is trying to ‘capture’ it.

He made the sweeping statements in March last year while justifying America’s military presence in the region. But can he seriously present the US as the protector of African interests in the Maghreb?

It was not Russia that destroyed Libya, one of the wealthiest countries on the continent. Nor was Russia behind a string of coups and assassinations across Africa.

However, there is one thing the four-star general is honest about - his own country’s interests. Langley happily admits: 'We need to be able to maintain access and influence across the Maghreb, from Morocco all the way to Libya.'

America is clearly shaken by the anti-colonial wave passing through the Sahel. But it makes us wonder: if he’s saying this openly, what is the US planning behind closed doors?

What do his words mean, especially in the context of Burkina Faso being a target for AFRICOM?

[Hazega/Tsazega.]

Informative as always, Welcome Back Brother Zmeselo!! Respect to you and to the other real Deki-Eri!!

Also to those Ethios that respect & are true friends of Eri.

Article made me think that i haven't seen a 25lb bag of organic labeled Teff and what if the brands grown overseas are vio-engineered or altered from farming methods & agro-chemicals? Usually got the Maskal brand 25lb bag that says non-GMO but without an organic label how reliable is that? Some would say go to Ethio shops but i don't know which distributors are trust worthy ever since the scandals of decade ago, some interested in quick buck over quality for customers.

All farmers of world and in particular Africa Ethio farmers and Eri should rush to save/multiply the seeds of all the natural varieties and get organic labels...sure there are some/many already doing this but should encourage 90%+ to focus on that. Otherwise the corporate agro industry will steal the natural/organic seeds for their select markets while dumping subsidized/cheaper GMO/bio-engineered varieties for the masses. Sad how best producing farmers in the world, US depleted their soils with gmo crops and lost nutritional value.

Gates and other eugenics minded multi-Billionaires push the false narrative of over population when the real culprit is western styled wasteful consumption/production/packaging (non-regenerative overconsumption)...many alternative technologies & mass recycling would help but easier for corporations to deplete resources for quick profit rather than invest in longterm replenishing ecosystems.

Article reminded me of this lady from decades ago leading drive to save world/India natural seeds.