“Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises,” said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. “It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat.”

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as “the first real economic crisis of globalisation”.

The report “would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House.” The US government claims that biofuels only contribute to about 3% in increased food prices. Senior development sources have said that the report “has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.”

But it’s not just USA who should feel embarrassed by the findings in the report. The European Union is also a big player in the biofuel world.

Recently the European Environment Agency’s (EEA) Scientific Committee called for the suspension of EU’s target to increase the share of biofuels used in transportation to 10% by 2020. The committee has called for a new, “comprehensive scientific study on the environmental risks and benefits of biofuels” before any targets should be set.

And it wasn’t long ago Jean Ziegler, UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, called for the suspension of biofuels production saying biofuels are a “crime against humanity.” And before that, Finance Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said that “it is “outrageous” that developed countries are turning food crops into biofuels while billions of people in the developing countries are living on the edge and trying to cope with escalating food prices”.

And even more pressure is expected to come from the British governments own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report.

“The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have played a “significant” part in pushing up food prices to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released.”

Have our car-fetish really taken us this far? Do we actually approve and like the idea to transform food into fuel to keep our gas-guzzling cars running, no matter what the costs are?

Jean Ziegler, UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, yesterday called for the suspension of biofuels production saying biofuels are a “crime against humanity.”

“Biofuels, with today’s current production methods, are a crime against a great part of humanity. They’re an intolerable crime, and I requested the United Nations General Assembly in New York in my last report to the Human Rights Council that a moratorium be imposed as a five-year ban against this transformation.”

The comment was made during an emergency summit in Switzerland where the UN discusses ways to tackle the global food crisis.

Ziegler said later in an interview with Al Jazeera that “burning food today so as to serve the mobility of the rich countries is a crime against humanity”.

According to Jean Ziegler biofuels is a major cause for the food crisis that has thrown millions into poverty. And he is not alone in arguing this.

The European Environment Agency’s (EEA) Scientific Committee recently called for the suspension of EU’s target to increase the share of biofuels used in transport to 10% by 2020. The committee wants a new and “comprehensive scientific study on the environmental risks and benefits of biofuels” before any targets should be set.