St. Louis Post-Dispatch | December 19, 1999 | By Bill Lambrecht, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - For a big-time backer of biotechnology, Gordon Conway's approach sometimes seems curious.
Conway, president of the $3.5 billion Rockefeller Foundation, will lecture industry leaders on what he regards as their shortcomings and then irritate them by issuing a press release.
He raised a few eyebrows again last week when he won approval from his board of directors to spend $3 million to promote a global discussion of issues surrounding genetically modified food.
Chunks of that money already have a home: $200,000 to the Hastings Center in New York to look at ethical issues in the debate; $150,000 to the Colorado-based Meridian Institute to bring together people with different views for "constructive engagement."
Another $150,000 grant reinforces Conway's reputation for independent thinking: It will go to the Consumer Federation of America, whose support of mandatory labeling of genetic foods runs counter to the staunch opposition to labeling by the food industry and biotechnology companies.
More advocacy groups are lining up for Rockefeller money next year, and agribusiness interests might not like who gets it. Conway doesn't care.
As he sees it, the debate over biotechnology has gone astray in several ways, one of them by excluding the poor people of the world and scientists in developing countries. In the public's mind, he says, monumental issues about food and science are reduced to a "Monsanto vs. Greenpeace" debate.
"The problem at the moment is that this debate lurches from one extreme to another," he said. "The dominant voices are the multinational companies on one hand and the northern environmentalists on the other.
"We are very keen on a range of dialogues which bring everybody together to discuss the various issues. What we want is a coming together for a defining of what the problems are, and then an effort to work through these problems."
Widening debates
The gulf between anti-genetic food activists and the companies and scientists bringing the world this powerful new technology has carried on in noisy ways at year's end. For Conway, the challenge may be bringing the parties together before their views become too entrenched.
The tens of thousands of protesters who helped scuttle the recent World Trade Organization talks in Seattle included a potent anti-biotechnology force.
Food and Drug Administration hearings in Oakland, Calif., last week featured starkly divergent opinions inside and hundreds of protesters in the streets.
Looking back on the three meetings, James Maryanski, the FDA's strategic manager for biotechnology, said, "There's certainly a lot of interest and a lot of strongly held views out there right now."
The debate is likely to intensify. In Montreal at the U.N. Biosafety negotiations next month, Europe and developing countries will pressure the United States, Canada and a handful of allies to adopt global rules that could impede trade in modified food.
Meanwhile, in Congress, the engagement is taking shape over legislation to impose mandatory labeling on genetically modified foods. Such a bill would seem to have little chance of passage. But even considering it will bring Congress into the widening discussions.
To hear biotech critic Jeremy Rifkin tell it, the opposition to genetically modified food has entered the realm of a new global populism that is beyond the grasp of the Rockefeller Foundation or just about anyone else. Rifkin and a cadre of farmers engineered yet another venue for the debate when they sued Monsanto Co. last week in U.S. District Court on antitrust and other grounds.
"This isn't a question of mediation. This isn't a question of how do we all come together on the same page," Rifkin said. "There are different opinions about the future of agriculture here. There are different perceptions about how to use this new science in the marketplace and in society."
Conway's influence
If anyone can corral this Hydra-headed debate, it might be Gordon Conway. Working for 30 years on development projects in Africa and Asia, Conway, a British agricultural ecologist, made headway in developing biological controls to fight insects.
He operated against the grain then, too, when the general thinking in agriculture sectors held that chemical pesticides were the only way to protect crops.
With those solid environmental credentials, Conway, 61, now heads the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the nation's most prestigious philanthropies and one that has invested $100 million in developing genetically engineered rice.
He is resolute in his belief that biotechnology can increase crop yields in needy countries and do so without poisoning the land with chemicals. During an interview last week, he referred to studies showing that China had reduced its applications of insecticides on cotton fields from 12 to three per season by using seeds modified to resist pests.
"I want to see that in food," he said.
Conway is a man people listen to.
In June, he chided Monsanto's board of directors for failing to address international concerns about controversial "Terminator" gene technology, which renders seeds sterile so as to prevent farmers using them for free. Later, when Monsanto announced it was abandoning the technology, it did so in a letter to Conway.
Monsanto apparently listened to Conway even though company officials were irked that he had put out a press release regarding the closed-door meeting.
Conway's influence will be tested in his drive to persuade the industry to embrace the labeling of genetically modified foods.
"It's a public information issue," he said last week. "If the public wants to know about something in their food, then they have the right to know. It's as simple as that. If you pick up a can of Coke, you can read about many of the things that are in it."
Monsanto may be on the verge of disregarding another piece of Conway's advice. When he met with the Monsanto board, Conway cautioned against what he referred to as "a new offensive by a PR agency."
Since then, Monsanto hired the Burson-Marsteller public-relations firm and has been considering an advertising campaign. Some company officials believe that it is important to respond to its critics, who have been taking out full-page ads in leading newspapers.
Monsanto spokeswoman Lori Fisher said, "There's a whole variety of communications programs under consideration, of which an advertising campaign might be one."
Fisher said that Monsanto looked forward to hearing more about Conway's global dialogue.
"Given the fact that Monsanto has been quite public in the last several months about wanting to engage a variety of people ... this seems to be an appropriate thing for the Rockefeller Foundation to be doing," she said.
But the Grocery Manufacturers Association's Gene Grabowski said he believes that the Rockefeller money could work to derail biotechnology if recipients succeeded in their fight for labeling.
"I think the money is being spent with best intentions," he said. "But it's pretty clear that the anti-biotech people see labeling as a way to kill the technology."
Val Giddings, a strategist for the Biotechnology Industrial Organization, said of the Conway-inspired effort that he is "delighted to see them entering the fray. I think they are concerned about the potential disastrous impacts of the activists' hysteria."
As Conway sees it, the industry also must assume blame for a debate that has been so unenlightened that it threatens biotechnology's future. He does not believe, like some doomsayers, that biotechnology will go the way of nuclear power and founder because of intractable concerns by segments of the public.
"It's very muddled," he said, referring to biotechnology's future. "My sense is that it will survive in a way that is more cautious, more thoughtful and much more focused on real benefits."
