A chicken breeding farm in Africa
Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is spreading through the African continent like the plague with more than 750 locations in sub-Saharan Africa alone. It is
commandeering huge industrial chicken farms to supply a growing African middle-class market for KFC products. Soy is a main ingredient in processed chicken
feed due to its high protein content. To help small farmers get in on the game, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $8 million in 2010 to
TechnoServe, a nonprofit partner of Cargill, the world’s largest soy producer and a global poultry corporation.
A January 10, 2014 article in Mother Jones –
“How Bill Gates Is Helping KFC Take Over Africa”
−− explains that a primary market for Africa’s soybean growers will be the KFC supply chain. By giving money to TechnoServe, the Gates Foundation is
helping to convert small farms and local diets in Africa to a factory-farm economy featuring industrially-raised chickens fed industrially-produced
soybeans. Despite a professed commitment to nutrition and ethical investing, in 2012 the Gates Foundation gave nearly a million dollars to Yum Brands, the
parent company of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC.
See
The Gates Foundation's Hypocritical Investments.
To grow, KFC and other fast food chains require a steady supply of chickens conforming to their model of producing abnormally large, fast-growing birds who
are fed a mash made of corn, soybeans, fishmeal and rendered animal remains that are typically loaded with pathogens. Mother Jones reports that
both the Gates Foundation and the U.S. government are funding companies to build “value chains” – business relationships that link small
farmers in Africa to “sellers of agricultural inputs like fertilizer on one side, and big buyers of corn and soy on the other. Those buyers turn
these commodities into feed, and then sell it to large chicken wholesalers who are staking their future growth on supplying KFC's African expansion.”
This Gates Foundation investment activity contradicts Bill Gates’s website post Bill Gates: Food Is Ripe for Innovation, where he wrote in 2013:
“There’s plenty of protein and necessary amino acids in plants, including the world’s four major commodity crops – rice, maize,
wheat and soy. The problem is that instead of feeding these crops to people, we’re feeding most of them to livestock. Fortunately, there are
thousands of plant proteins in the world, and many of them have yet to be explored for use in the production of meat alternatives.”
Gates writes enthusiastically: “But what makes them [meat alternatives] really interesting is their taste. Food scientists are now creating meat
alternatives that truly taste like — and have the same ‘mouth feel’ — as their nature-made counterparts. . . . Companies like
Beyond Meat, Hampton Creek Foods and Lyrical are doing some amazing things. . . .
“I tasted Beyond Meat’s chicken alternative, for example, and honestly couldn’t tell it from real chicken. Beyond Eggs, an egg
alternative from Hampton Creek Foods, does away with the high cholesterol content of real eggs. Lyrical has drastically reduced fat in its non-dairy
cheeses. . . .
“All this innovation could be great news for people concerned about health problems related to overconsumption of fat, salt and cholesterol.
It’s important too in light of the environmental impacts of large-scale meat and dairy production, with livestock estimated to produce nearly 51% of the world’s greenhouse gases. But the
new, future food is crucial for the developing world, where people often do not get enough protein. This is partly due to heavy reliance on animals as the
primary source.” -- Bill Gates
What Can I Do?
Please contact the Gates Foundation. Urge Bill and Melinda Gates to uphold the Gates Foundation’s commitment to plant-based agriculture and nutrition
and to honor its claim not to invest in “companies whose profit model is centrally tied to corporate activity that they find egregious.” KFC,
Burger King, Walmart and other companies the Gates Foundation Trust is supporting fit the definition of EGREGIOUS. These companies mistreat workers. They
treat chickens and other animals abominably. They devastate the African and South American rainforests and contribute to exorbitant health care costs,
eating disorders and poor nutrition throughout the world. The Gates Foundation should not contribute to the global expansion of industrialized chicken
farming. Growing soybeans to be fed to tens of billions of chickens for 7 billion people to eat is vastly more wasteful and environmentally destructive
than growing soybeans for people to eat directly in the form of vegan food products. Request a response to your concerns.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
500 Fifth Avenue North
Seattle, WA 98109
Phone: 206-709-3100
feedback@gatesfoundation.org
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