On World Food Day 2003, Plaid Cymru the Party of Wales European Leader Jill Evans MEP calls on people to join the International Alliance Against Hunger. Some 840 million people world-wide are chronically hungry - and by the end of today, more than 40,000 people, mainly children, will have died of hunger.

Speaking from Brussels, Jill Evans MEP, who represents the whole of Wales, said,

"It is a myth that there are too many people on this planet to be fed - more than enough food is produced, and with population rates falling, it is unacceptable that so many people remain hungry. Nowhere can population density be blamed for hunger. Food is always available for those who can afford it, with starvation only hitting the poor. In fact, 20% of the world's population, one billion people, are too poor to be able to obtain enough food."

“More foreign food aid is not the answer. Whilst emergency food aid can help in short term cases of famine, it can actually undermine local food production in the recipient countries. This was confirmed when I recently met world food expert Vandana Shiva from India. As she noted - when people are poor they are too poor to buy any sort of food - be that GM food or not. People must be empowered to be able to sustain themselves."

“Alarmingly, there have been recent cases of GM food aid being pushed on majority world countries (e.g. Zambia) that had pledged themselves free from unproven GM technology. This is an unacceptable example of the powerful pushing their own agenda at the expense of the weak and a blatant attempt at getting GMOs in through the back door. GM food will make huge profits for large multinationals, but will not feed the world's poor, a fact even admitted by one of the GM seed companies!"

“I call on governments and international leaders to commit as much effort and finance to this war against hunger as they do to far less justifiable 'wars' - only then will the lives of the chronically hungry be overturned. Freedom from hunger is one of the most basic human rights. But pushing potentially dangerous GMOs on those unable to resist is not the answer."

Ends.

Editor's Notes

World Food Day was established in November 1979 to commemorate the founding of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FOA) in 1945. It is celebrated in more than a 150 countries.

The International Alliance Against Hunger will strengthen political commitment for existing initiatives. It will help partners to develop a common vision and provide a forum for advocacy and facilitate information exchange. www.fao.org

In the Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders agreed to fight hunger, poverty and disease - the Millennium Development Goals.

At the 1996 World Food Summit, world leaders and the European Community agreed to halve the number of hungry people by 2015. But these words have not been translated into efforts, and it looks unlikely that this goal will be met. In fact, at the current rate of decline, the goal may not be reached until 2115.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a well-known, much-honored physicist, philosopher and is the ecofeminist director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, vice-president of the Third World Network, and author of several celebrated works

Head of Novartis Seeds, 2002