Bill Gates wants to do public good with the immense profits of his IT empire, and over the past few years his foundation has given more than $6.5 billion to global causes. The money has been well-received as socially useful and, generally, sensibly directed.

But this week the Gates Foundation, the largest philanthropic organisation in the world, was strongly criticised when it gave $25 million to Genetically Modified (GM) research to develop vitamin and protein-enriched seeds for the world?s poor.

In scientific terms, this is not a lot of money, but it is expected to be just a first tranche and to stimulate what the GM companies say is the second generation of GM crops ? those that are potentially of some real use to ordinary people.

Gates was bitten hard by international charities, farmers? groups and academics in Europe, India and elsewhere, who argued that the money would not go to addressing poverty, the root cause of worldwide hunger, but would promote an agriculture that was of little use to the very poor.

He was further accused of being captured by an industry now using the hungry as a ?Trojan horse? to get its biotech into poor countries.

The foundation, and the research organisations who will spend his money, deny all charges, saying that the poor are in desperate need of vitamins and micro nutrients, and arguing that GM will give the poorest a choice.

But there are reasons to believe that the Gates food agenda is now being shaped by US corporate and govern ment interests. The Gates Foundation has recently appointed a Kenyan ex-Monsanto scientist to one of its boards, and last year joined Kraft foods, a subsidiary of Philip Morris, the world?s largest and most profitable tobacco corporation, in a programme to add vitamins to conventionally grown foods.

Gates, moreover, has chosen for his latest venture to partner the US Department of Agriculture and USAID, Washington?s overseas aid organisation - two of the most active pro-GM organisations in the world. Also helping with money or research, are several US government groups and universities who have benefited from government biotechnology grants.

The other major financial partner is the World Bank, which is reviewing the costs and benefits of GM to poor countries.

The Gates money, however, is directed at some of the least known but most controversial organisations on the global stage. The research will be done mainly by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture and the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Both are part of the little-known Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (Cgiar). This family of 16 global public institutes forms the world?s largest public plant-breeding effort for poor farmers and has immense say on the direction of world agriculture. But Cgiar is widely accused of being a creature of its two major funders - the US and the World Bank. The bank, dominated by the US, not only houses its secretariat, but provides its current chair. (?)

With hundreds of millions of small farmers around the world already in crisis because they cannot compete with US or EU subsidies which mainly go to corporate farmers, the Gates donation is seen to be supporting something irrelevant to most farmers ? another kick in the teeth for those in poverty and an endorsement of a widely questioned technology dominated by vested big science interests. (?)

Bill Gates?s foundation appears the innocent newcomer to the mucky world of global malnutrition and food security. The trouble may be that his foundation?s increasing influence on the world stage makes it a prime target for those who have an agenda well beyond the public good.

John Vidal