Law Journal at University of Richmond Will Sponsor Symposium on Genetically Modified Foods
February 27, 2003
Did you know the milk on your breakfast cereal, the fast-food fries on your lunch tray and the taco shells you had with dinner all may have been genetically modified (GM)? Did you also know the Food and Drug Administration requires no safety or environmental tests for GM foods?
If you answered, "Yes," you're among the 43 percent of Americans aware of GM food. But you might not know GM products have been introduced into as much as 70 percent of grocery-store food, including snacks, cereals, vegetable oils, soft drinks and other products.
The editors of the student-published Richmond Journal of Law & Technology at the University of Richmond School of Law believe GM foods are a growing problem. They will bring together a national panel of experts for a free symposium on food biotechnology on March 14 in the Moot Courtroom at the law school. They also will provide from 11 a.m. - noon two free lunch buffets - one each of GM foods and non-GM foods.
Environmental journalist Kathleen Hart, author of the book "Eating in the Dark," will kick off the symposium with a noon speech, "An Introduction to GM Foods." Hart calls GM foods a public health "nightmare." GM corn, for example, is engineered to produce toxins to kill insects. On a 1997 trip to England, Hart discovered that Europeans and Japanese debated the issue thoroughly, and both rejected GM foods, while in the U.S. there was almost no debate and consumers had little access to information.
Dallas Hoover, professor of food microbiology at the University of Delaware, will talk at 12:30 p.m. on "Food Safety: An Overview." Other afternoon sessions will include three panel discussions: "Is Mandatory Labeling the Right Answer?" at 2:30 p.m., "GM Foods and International Regulation" at 3:15 p.m. and "A Glance at Liability Issues" at 4 p.m.
Other participants will include: Michael Rodemeyer, executive director of the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology; Greg Jaffe, director of the Project on Biotechnology for the Center for Science in the Public Interest; and Gregory Conko, director of food safety policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Tony Van der haegen, minister-counselor for agriculture, fisheries and consumer affairs, Delegation of the European Commission to the United States, also will appear. "In Europe, food is not mere sustenance but has a cultural aspect," Van der haegen says. "Consumer confidence was destroyed due to some food scares and also the way the U.S. biotech industry had handled the issue there, concentrating on the farmer and totally neglecting the retailer and the consumer."
"After terrorism," Van der haegen says, "food safety is political issue number one."
Also scheduled are Jean Halloran, director of the Consumer Policy Institute, a division of Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports magazine; David Hegwood, counsel to the U.S. secretary of agriculture; Mark Mansour, attorney with the Washington law firm Keller and Heckman LLP; Rachel Lattimore, attorney with the Washington law firm Arent Fox; and Tom Sleight, Virginia Department of Agriculture.
Other panelists will include law professors Jonathan Adler, Case Western Reserve University School of Law; Drew Kershen, University of Oklahoma School of Law; and Donald Uchtman, professor of agricultural law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
For more information, contact Ed Wallis at (804) 357-5974 or ed.wallis@richmond.edu.