Obama: no fundamental changes expected in GM policy

 (20 January 2009) The newly inaugurated US President Barack Obama will not be making any fundamental changes to his country’s genetic engineering policy. This is implied by the appointment of Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, as US Secretary of Agriculture. Nina Fedoroff, science adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now has criticised Europeans’ “hysteria” towards green gene technology.

In a recent interview with the German SPIEGEL magazine, Nina Fedoroff, Professor of Life Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, says she advises the new government to turn to genetically modified plants in the fight against climate change. She warned of “renouncing genetic engineering methods”. In order “...to feed nine billion people in times of substantial climate change”, it is necessary to quickly breed new varieties that are “resistant to new types of pests and drought”. According to the professor, this is not possible with exclusive reliance on conventional methods.

Fedoroff, who is also known in the USA as an author of popular science books on green gene technology (“Mendel in the Kitchen”), criticised Western countries that have “invested too little in agricultural research in developing countries” in recent years. The Obama Administration has announced that it will be doubling subsidies to international agricultural research centres.

Obama already had appointed the former Democratic governor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack, as US Secretary of Agriculture in December. Opponents of genetic engineering, as well as organic farmers' associations, claim that he is too close to agricultural concerns such as Monsanto. As governor, Vilsack promoted agricultural mechanisation and the production of bioethanol.

The state of Iowa in the American Midwest is predominantly agricultural. In 2008, an area of 9.2 million hectares there was cultivated with maize and soy alone. GM varieties constituted seventy-eight per cent and as much as ninety-four per cent respectively of the maize and soy in question.

See also on GMO-Compass:

• USA 2008: GM cultivation almost at 60 million hectares

Further information:

• German language: "Gentechnik Gegner richten großen Schaden an." SPIEGEL-Interview mit Nina Fedoroff