Advocate for British Famine Policy Confronted on Cartel Seed Control

February 21, 2010 (LPAC) — At the plenary of the 83rd annual conference of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, guest speaker Dr. Nina Fodoroff, a State Department science adviser, who co-authored a recent Science article re-stating British globalist food (famine) policy, was challenged by EIR's Marcia Merry Baker on the point that patenting of food genetics—a hallmark of globalization—was always against the American System, and explicitly opposed by the FDR Administration's Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace. Private food-seed patenting should be rolled back now.

Fodoroff, whose speech and Science article, called for the opposite—namely for a new worldwide "regulatory framework" to give even more power to the private GM (genetically modified) seed patent-holders—sternly replied to Baker, that the issue is "intellectual property protection." Fodoroff was referring, to "protection" for the tight circle of GM seed patent-holders: Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer, Cargill, Syngenta and very few others. She said that no roll-back of privatized patenting is to happen. "The train has left the station."

Fodoroff's reaction is strictly in line with that of the new Obama Administration appointee for the top position of Science Adviser to the USDA, Dr. Roger Beachey, who is directly associated with Monsanto. Appointed to the USDA in October 2009, Beachey, a plant geneticist, came from being Director of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, which he founded in 1998 with Monsanto Foundation funding. Monsanto President and CEO Hugh Grant is on the board of trustees.

The Baker-Fodoroff exchange took place as the first question of the 1600 person webcast USDA "food security" plenary. Baker spoke of the economic breakdown today, the potential for turnaround to re-build national economies through the right emergency measures, and referred specifically to the surge of commitment to nuclear power in Asia, citing Russia, China, India and others. "Going nuclear" is a policy shift. She said that we must unleash real scientific research, have vast agriculture expansion, and end the wrongful practice of the last 40 years, of private patenting of food genetics. She also joked at the fact that, "in any case, Monsanto and DuPont are suing each other over patent rights," referring to court fights now underway in St. Louis.

In reply, Fodoroff referred to the (infamous) 1970 U.S. Plant Variety Protection Act, which for the first time ever, allowed "patenting of life forms," in terms of bacteria modification and food. She said that "we would lose more than we would gain," by returning to "public sector" rights.

Fodoroff said that she was in India last week, where "they are ambivalent" on the matter of GM seed rights, because of their history of "public sector" involvement. (In fact, it was India's public sector implementation of the Green Revolution that allowed the nation to become food self-sufficient in 1974.) But, Fodoroff insisted, there is no doubt that a nation should NOT revert to the "public sector," because it is "inefficient."

Her article in Science (Feb. 12 issue), "Radically Rethinking Agriculture for the 21st Century," includes among its co-authors, Dr. Beachey, and another Monsanto scientist, D.A. Fischhoff. It is part of a special Science feature on, "Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People," co-authored by two officials of the British Government Office of Science.