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Remarks On Regulating Genetically Modified Foods In The United States, L. Val Giddings

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Thank you. I’m glad to be here today. Before I launch into my prepared remarks, I do want to correct a couple of things that Greg has just told you. Just for full disclosure, Greg and I shared an office about eighteen years ago when we both worked for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. When I arrived in Washington, I spent five years working as an analyst on these sorts of issues. So as I’m about to pound on Greg for knowing a number of things that don’t happen to be true, please be aware that I’m not really …

Panel Remarks On Regulating Genetically Modified Foods In The United States, L. Val Giddings, Gregory Jaffe, David Hegewood, Kathleen Hart

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Thank you all. In my opinion, containment of pharmaceutical GM crops is essential and hard to do. The USDA just recently came up with some new guidelines for genetically modified pharm plants, but how can the public have an input into what’s going on if they don’t even know where the crops are growing, or what’s in the crops, because this is protected as confidential business information? Should the public have a say? How would we accomplish--giving the public a say about whether they want genetically engineered wheat, even aside from the export issues. Third, I understand GE salmon is …

Remarks On Genetically Modified Foods And International Regulation, Jean Halloran

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

I will try and be brief since everybody has heard from me already. I’m just going to talk about something which probably none of you have heard of. Ten or twenty years ago, people had really not heard of it but after GATT, the general arrangements for tariffs and trade, it acquired special status, which was that if you are using a food safety standard in which you can develop byproducts, then it is assumed that your standard is a legitimate one and you cannot be challenged by the World Trade Organization on that standard.

Panel Remarks On Liability: Liability For Farming?, Rachel G. Lattimore

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Good afternoon. To begin, I’d like to thank Ed Wallis and the Richmond Journal of Law & Tech- nology for inviting me to speak on such a distinguished panel. And I’d like to tell you one thing about myself that is not in my fancy lawyer biography. I grew up on a small family farm down in North Caro- lina, so I learned from an early age about the different types of genetic manipulations that go on a farm, from breeding cattle to grafting apple trees, which if you’re fourteen years old, consists of spending your entire Spring Break taking …

Panel Remarks On Liability: Liability Issues: Lessons From Starlink, Donald Uchtmann

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I have an enormous opportunity and challenge. Here I am, the final speaker, on this final panel, on this beautiful Friday afternoon, on this beautiful campus. Stay “tuned” for just a few more minutes to hear my remarks regarding liability issues and then we will adjourn to the great outdoors.

Remarks On Food Safety In Dealing With Genetically Modified Foods, Dallas Hoover

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

It’s nice to be here, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you all. It’s my first time in a School of Law and you certainly have more wood in your rooms than we do in laboratories, so this is a different experience for me. I’m a food microbiologist by training, so to me, food safety means Salmonella and cantaloupe and viruses in cruise ships. With genetically engineered foods, it’s a little bit different because the effects aren’t as dramatic as far as safety issues as what I see in my daily professional life. Also, it’s different because genetically …

An Introduction To Genetically Modified Foods, Kathleen Hart

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Thank you. I have been visiting a lot of bookstores since Eating in the Dark came out last year, including a wonderful bookstore, I should mention, which is right here in Richmond called the Fountain Bookstore. People often ask me if I’ve changed my diet as a result of what I learned while researching the book. Mainly, have I stopped eating genetically engineered foods? I always answer that I’m an American, so of course I eat genetically engineered foods because we have no choice in the matter. GM foods are ubiquitous in the processed foods, and they’re not labeled. But …

Regulating Genetically Modified Foods: Is Mandatory Labeling The Right Answer?, Gregory Conko

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Thank you. It’s a very common mistake to believe that consumers could only have a choice if the government requires mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food. My question back to you, Jean, is, exactly what kind of information do consumers get if all you do is label the product as “Genetically Engineered?” We can take this up later in the debate part of our panel discussion. I think the one thing that we can all agree on, however, is that the food label is a very important source of information to consumers.

Regulating Genetically Modified Foods: Is Mandatory Labeling The Right Answer?, Jonathan Adler

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here, and I appreciate the invitation. What I want to talk about are some legal issues relating to labeling and, in particular, constitutional issues relating to mandatory labeling for genetically modified foods or food products that may contain genetically modified components. This is a separate issue from whether or not the FDA, or some other agency, has sufficient statutory authority at present to mandate labeling, and that is something worth discussing. Even if they do have such authority, or even if Congress tomorrow were to give the FDA such authority or were to …

Panel Remarks On Regulating Genetically Modified Foods: Is Mandatory Labeling The Right Answer?, Michael Rodemeyer, Jonathan Adler, Greg Conko, Jean Halloran

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Thank you to all of our speakers. I can assure everybody in the audience that you will not be specialists on this topic after today, since we can easily spend a whole afternoon on this topic. Let me ask Jean first of all, do you want to respond to anything you’ve heard from the speakers after you?

Panel Remarks On Liability: Liability For Refusing To Use Agricultural Biotechnology, Drew Kershen

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Good afternoon. I’m very pleased to be here. I appreciate the offer and the invitation from the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology to speak at this conference. This final panel is really about liability issues related to genetically modified foods or transgenic crops. Now I just want to quickly introduce these three people, and I’m going to start on my far side with Rachel Lattimore. Rachel Lattimore is a lawyer with the firm of Arent Fox in Washington D.C., and she is going to focus her talk – and we’ve sort of agreed among ourselves so we don’t step …

Remarks On Genetically Modified Foods And International Regulation, Mark Mansour

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

First of all, I want to thank you all for having us here for a wonderful program. To start out, I had intended to address some issues that Jean Halloran has raised. The first point regarding the Committee on Food Labeling, why the United States is opposed to regimes and the considerations of the past couple of years, is very simple. It’s not a matter at looking at trade cases rather because the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, as Dr. Hoover stated before, does not provide a consumer’s right to know.

It’s not to say the consumer’s right to know …

Remarks On Genetically Modified Foods And International Regulation, Tony Van Der Haegen

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Thank you. I certainly don’t want to interfere in the American debate about labeling, since I have already enough problems with European consumers, but what I would like to do today is not only to talk about our legislation a bit, because it’s so detailed and complex, but also to talk about the European/ American trade relations, in particular as it relates to biotechnology. First of all, I would like to say there is a strong trans-Atlantic relationship as far as trade is concerned between the EU and the U.S. We have to realize that we have a trade level …

Remarks On Genetically Modified Foods And International Regulation, Thomas N. Sleight

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

I’m going to speak on a slightly different perspective here. I guess the first question I have is how many farmers do we have in the audience? Val, I marked you down as an organic farmer here today, as I learned that today. I don’t think we have many, and I’m going to take a fantastic leap of judgment saying that the students that are here at the University of Richmond School of Law are not preparing for careers in agriculture. So, I’m going to come from a farmer’s point of view. I will jump back and forth between my …

Regulating Genetically Modified Foods: Is Mandatory Labeling The Right Answer?, Jean Halloran

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

hank you. Consumer Union, which is the organization that I work for, favors labeling genetically engineered food. At the base of our view on this issue is the view that genetically engineered food is different than regular food. I know some of our previous speakers have spoken about how this is all just one big continuum from conventional crops, but when you look at spider- silk goats, which are goats genetically engineered to produce spider silk in their milk that do in fact exist already on a test farm, the ordinary persons sees something different. To the ordinary person, a …

Remarks On Regulating Genetically Modified Foods In The United States, Gregory Jaffe

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Thank you very much for inviting me here today. I’m going to use PowerPoint here, but I will try to keep my comments brief. I’m going to spend just a minute or two introducing my organization to you and our biotech project. Then I’m going to talk a little about the regulatory system and what I see are some of the inadequacies in the current regulatory environment for agricultural biotechnology.

Remarks On Regulating Genetically Modified Foods In The United States, David Hegewood

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

I would like to thank the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology for inviting me this afternoon and for organizing this forum. I’ve never been on Crossfire, and it’s easy to see why Val has, so I probably won’t be quite as entertaining. In fact most of what I wanted to say this afternoon has already been said in one form or another. Val just stole the last one with the Watson and Crick Fiftieth Anniversary. What I want to do is maybe give you more of a sense of perspective and then go over some of the facts.