For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Genetic Engineering page and our Millions Against Monsanto page.

Frances Moore Lappé and Vandana Shiva, noted figures in the food sovereignty movement, added their voices to the chorus blasting the 2013 World Food Prize going to GMO scientists with the biotechnology giants Monsanto and Syngenta.

The GMO scientists’ work contributes to hunger and ecological devastation while not advancing nutrition, said the two Right Livelihood Laureates, also Councillors on the World Future Council, and noted the irony of Monsanto being awarded at a time of rising worldwide opposition to the seed giant.

Lappé and Shiva’s remarks echo those of the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance, which stated that the prize going to the biotech giants “sends precisely the wrong message about sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty.”

“Never mind that Monsanto is a sponsor of the prize (and that the list of other backers reads like a who’s who of big ag and big food), or that we never get to know the names of either the nominees or the nominators,” New York Times’ Mark Bittman noted.

Still, the GMO work by the winning scientists “betrays the mandate of the very World Food Prize,” explains Lappé, “which is all about focus on the importance of nutritious food and food for all, whereas GMO seeds, their design and the way they are spread to the world has nothing to do with better nutrition.”

“In fact, to take advantage of these seeds, small farmers who are among the hungriest people in the world, have to take out loans to buy the costly products that are required—the seeds, the fertilizers… and the pesticides that are required” for the GMO seeds.

“So in fact the honorees … are actually contributing the problems that keep us locked… in hundreds of millions of people in a world where there is plenty of food,” concluded Lappe.