Food Crisis Is 'Mass Murder': UN Envoy

A UN envoy called the world's food crisis "silent mass murder" today and blamed multinationals for "monopolizing the riches of the Earth," Reuters reports. Jean Ziegler, UN food rapporteur, chalked up surging food prices in poorer nations to biofuels, commodities markets, and EU subsidies—meaning the West is responsible for this "horror."

"Market traders, speculators, and financial bandits have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror," Ziegler told an Austrian daily. "We have to put a stop to this." He also warned that the hungry may one day rebel. "It's just as possible as the French Revolution was," he said. (More biofuel stories.)