Roundup Ready - Monsanto

HEALTHY CHILDREN, HEALTHY FUTURES
One-third of the people of Brazil, some
58 million people, live on less than a dollar a
day. Because of this poverty, many Brazilian
children suffer from hunger and exposure
to disease. For the past four years, the
Monsanto Fund has collaborated with
INMED, a nonprofit organization that helps
communities educate and improve the lives
of children in Brazil.
Healthy Children, Healthy Futures (HCHF)
is an INMED educational program that
treats children for diseases and nutritional
deficiencies. It also teaches them health,
hygiene, and nutrition behaviors. In turn,
the children help their families and
communities to adopt these behaviors.
During the past four years, the Monsanto
Fund has provided grants to INMED totaling
$542,000. The HCHF project has served
17,000 children annually in seven Brazilian
cities near Monsanto operations: Camaçari,
Dias D’Ávila, Goiatuba, Morrinhos, Santa
Helena de Goiás, São José dos Campos,
and Uberlândia. This year, the project
expanded to serve 23,000 children.
In addition, Monsanto Brazil’s agricultural
engineering staff worked with INMED to
introduce a “school gardening” module
for children in the HCHF program. The
participatory agricultural activity has taught
children to practice good nutrition and to
cultivate gardens in 11 schools.
In February 2004, the Monsanto Fund
made a commitment to provide INMED with
$684,000 over the next three years to expand
the school gardening program. With the
Monsanto Fund’s ongoing commitment and
with the assistance of Monsanto people in
Brazil who have helped to find other partners,
INMED has secured an additional $1 million
in grants to extend the school garden program
throughout Brazil.
Monsanto Pledge Award Winner
Touch n’Taste: the First
Biotech Product in Restaurants
and Supermarkets in Sweden
Faced with consumers wary of genetically-modified crops,
biotechnology industry leaders in Europe have been seeking
innovative ways to move discussion of biotech products out
from the circle of scientists, politicians, and nongovernmental
organizations and closer to the public. Together with
Bioteknikcentrum, the Swedish branch of the European
agricultural biotech industry association, the Monsanto team
in Sweden worked with master brewer Kenth Persson to
develop a beer containing biotech maize. The beer, Kenth,
was introduced in early 2004 at Swedish pubs, restaurants,
and the state-owned liquor stores, Systembolaget.
The team’s launch campaign,
“Touch n’ Taste,”
provided consumers
with an opportunity to
touch, taste, and feel a
real biotech product, so
that they could become
more familiar with
biotech products.
“I want people to be able to try this beer,” said Persson,
“because, as a brewer, I’m excited about the environmental
benefits of Bt maize.”
Indeed, when people try Kenth beer and learn about
the advantages of the biotech maize used in it, they react
enthusiastically.
By building public interest in the beer directly, the team
hopes retailers and politicians will realize that public
openness to biotech products in Europe is stronger than
consumer polls have suggested. Allowing labeled products
such as Kenth on supermarket shelves gives consumers
the freedom to choose among all types of products.
The team’s efforts led to a successful launch of Kenth in
Sweden mainly because of the excellent communication
and transparency about how the beer is produced.
The team expects the beer to be introduced in the
United Kingdom in 2004.
{ MONSANTO COMPANY 2004 PLEDGE REPORT: PAGES 44-45 }