Academia in the Service of Industry: The Ag Biotech Model

E.Ann Clark, Plant Agriculture, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON
([email protected])
© 1999 E. Ann Clark

Industry agendas, including those of the "life" science companies, have assumed increasing prominence in academic research as traditional government support for nonproprietary research has diminished. At the University of Guelph, for example, from 1987 to 1997,

• NSERC funding declined by 27%,
• provincial funding decreased by 69%,
• Federal funding increased by 16% (primarily in Centers of Excellence, Research Chairs, etc.), while
• business/industry funding increased by 117%,

all expressed in 1987 dollars. Although the percentage directly derived from industry has more than doubled in recent years, from 7% in 1987 to 15% in 1999 – it is still a small fraction of the total external grants and contracts, as research administrators are quick to point out. However, as discussed below, through a variety of "matching" fund initiatives, both the federal and provincial levels of government are ensuring that industry priorities drive a much larger fraction of academic effort than is superficially apparent.

So, what is a Canadian academic to do if they don't accept the values implicit in industry funding? The withdrawal of meaningful levels of unconstrained¹ public funding for agricultural research in Canada has left academics with few choices:

1. sit on their hands
2. reconfigure their appointment to emphasize teaching at the expense of research
3. learn to ask different and less financially-demanding questions
4. take early retirement
5. suppress ethical, ecological, and other concerns and accept industry funding

The foregoing is hardly a revelation to anyone who has worked in Canadian universities for the last decade or two. But the time is now, if indeed we are not already too late, to seriously consider the implications of industry encroachment for the future relevance of academia to Canadian society. Accordingly, the goals of the present paper are:

• to review the evidence that government, via such surrogates as NSERC, has channelized and harnessed the public research capability of Canada to the service of proprietary (industrial) interests
• to consider some of the implicit and less tangible benefits awarded to industry by government funding priorities
• to challenge the implicit hypotheses underlying such government actions, and
• to raise awareness of the quite direct implications of industrial encroachment for the role of academia in Canadian society.

GOVERNMENT FACILITATES INDUSTRY ENCROACHMENT

Because this notion may be hard to swallow, let us first consider the steps government has taken over the past 15 or so years, which have effectively channelled Canadian researchers to the service of industry.

 

In the last 10 years alone, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) closed research stations and experimental farms in B.C.and at L'Assomption and La Pocatiere, Quebec, and reduced staff to just 1 or 2 scientists at Nappan, N.S., Indian Head, SK, and Beaverlodge, AB. Major cuts in both staff and funding were imposed at most other research stations. At Charlottetown, PEI, for example, the complement of research scientists was reduced from 24 in 1989 to 17 in 1999. Production agriculture in general and forages in particular were decimated, in favor of industry-friendly disciplines such as biotechnology.

• First, government diminished its own responsibility for conducting science in the public interest by divesting itself of a significant number of agricultural researchers and even whole research stations (sidebar).

• Next to go was the historic role of government as a source of competitive research funding for academics and others to engage in "nonproprietary research" – of the sort that benefits everyone, and hence, is of no interest to industry sponsors.

For example, Benbrook (1999) noted that essentially no progress has been made on IPM (integrated pest management) in the US since the 1993 goal/pledge "75% IPM by year 2000". As is acknowledged by the ERS (Economic Research Service), USDA (1999) in their new report entitled "Pest Management in U.S. Agriculture", the USDA has not even established criteria assessing the baseline level of IPM adoption in 1993, let alone monitored progress in the intervening years. Integrated pest management is a largely non-proprietary technology for pest control, and as such, is a direct competitor for new GE technologies with the same purpose. The 1993 IPM pledge coincided with the emergence of ag biotech issues which have effectively channelized the attention of USDA personnel ever since.

• The final hitch in the knot tying academic researchers to the service of industry was the requirement for matching industry funds to even apply for those government funds that still remained (e.g. NSERC Research Chairs; NSERC New Faculty Support Program; NSERC Industrial Research Fellowships; NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards; NSERC Strategic Grants; Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC); Matching Industrial Initiative (AAFC)).

Industry partnerships are clearly "the way to go" for government to support university research in Canada. Anyone doubting the degree to which government, including the much beloved and respected NSERC, has bought into this notion should have a look at the NSERC website (http://www.nserc.ca/indus_e.htm). For industry, NSERC promises:

NSERC affords numerous avenues for industry to "access" – some might argue "direct" – research at Canadian universities from top to bottom. For the major players, there are Industrial Research Chairs (IRCs), which are intended:

• "to assist universities in building on existing strengths to achieve the critical mass required for a major research endeavour in science and engineering of interest to industry" (N.B. emphasis added); and/or

• "to assist in the development of research efforts in fields that have not yet been developed in Canadian universities but for which there is an important industrial need" (N.B. emphasis added again) (http://www.nserc.ca/programs/resguide/irc.htm)

The goal is to attract outstanding senior scientists, whose positions are jointly funded by NSERC and industry for 5 years, and who then move into tenure-track positions at their host university. The intent is to fund research "that presents unique industrial opportunities and responds to industrial needs" (N.B. emphasis added, here and below). Outstanding scientists – who are also in harmony with industry-based research directions and values – are thus inserted into academia at the most senior levels. Three of the several Research Chairs thus-funded at Guelph in the last 10 years have focussed on plant and animal biotechnology.

The faculty position assumed upon termination of NSERC funding for an IRC need not have been, and of course often isn't, in the same research area as that which industry saw fit to fund. Thus, to access one of these prestigious IRCs, departments must be willing to sacrifice an existing position and discipline. The sacrificial position may come internally or can be extracted – with the help of sympathetic administrators – from another department.

For those somewhat less well endowed, there is the NSERC New Faculty Support grant program, where NSERC will match industrial contributions for up to three years, to bring highly qualified persons into junior-level, tenure-track faculty positions. Among the selection criteria, apart from the excellence of the individual, is the following: "Candidates must demonstrate significant potential to make, or have a proven track record of, important research contributions of industrial relevance".

Again, the discipline which industry chooses to support, and which then occupies one of the increasingly scarce tenure track positions in Canadian academia, has no necessary relationship to that which formerly occupied the same position. Plant biotechnology, for example, could displace pasture management.

The decision to fundamentally alter the discipline complement of a given department, which has profound implications for future research service to society, is unquestionably influenced by the opportunity to access fresh funding from industry – and hence, government. But to whose benefit?

For the next level of industry involvement, there is the NSERC Industrial Research Fellowship (IRF) or Industrial Postgraduate Scholarships (IPS) program to "provide what you are looking for". Industrial seekers are advised "Do you need a qualified scientist or engineer to carry out research in an area important to your future? Talk to us". To qualify for the latter, students "must spend at least 20% of their time working with you at the company facilities". Or, do you "need a top-notch research assistant, but can't afford one?" Not a problem, NSERC will provide funding for up to four months through the Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA) Program (http://www.nserc.ca/programs/industrial_e.htm). Selection of steady supply of youngstock with the requisite sympathy for industrial goals and values is thus ensured.

The net effect of these inspired government and NSERC funding programs is that industry agendas are systematically inserted into permanent tenure-track and support positions at every level of Canadian academia. So, what is wrong with that? Are those accepting industry funding more sympathetic to industry goals and values than those who don't? Can one whose very position originated with a particular industry sponsor objectively address the risks as well as the benefits of the technology owned by the industry?

HOW DOES INDUSTRY BENEFIT?

Apart from the clear value of directly inserting industry-responsive personnel into the ranks of academia, industry receives a variety of other benefits from current government policies on research funding.

Access to academia. The first and most obvious industry benefit is easy access to a supply of talented academic researchers. Professors can offer not just the energy and enthusiasm of a suite of graduate students, post-docs, and technical staff but a well-maintained research infrastructure, much of which is paid for by society. The government funding policy-imposed "hunger" of this population of academics greases the slippery slope of industry encroachment into academia. As noted above, both those with industry-based appointments and conventionally hired academics have little choice but to compete for industry funding – and accept the values implicit in the funding – if they want to access government money to do research.

Leverage. What is arguably the single greatest benefit afforded to industry arises through leveraging. With so little alternative (e.g. unconstrained) funding available, even a little bit of operating money effectively mobilizes or leverages a sizeable amount of university infrastructure. University infrastructure – not just buildings and light bulbs but research capability – was established by and is maintained at public expense. Thus, the roughly $10 million (1998 figures) which industry invests annually to support proprietary research at Guelph allows it to leverage a healthy chunk of the much larger (roughly $250 million) taxpayer investment at the university.

As stated by Smith (1997):

"What corporations desire is a form of socialism in which an exceedingly small level of investment allows them to leverage a vast amount of public funds, thereby displacing the financial risks associated with basic research to the public. But this is a perverse form of socialism, combining the socialization of risks, the privatization of rewards, and the imposition of profound social costs. The more university research is integrated into this perverse socialism, the more pressure will be put on the university as a place of rational inquiry."

Consider the magnitude of what government funding policies have handed to industry: the ability to cherry-pick from a platter of willing academics trained and refined at public expense those individuals who meet your immediate purpose, but without the bother of employing them.

Ownership. Findings and outcomes are very often proprietary, meaning that a newly discovered protocol in genetic research cannot be used even by the lab which discovered and refined it under contract, let alone by colleagues in neighboring labs, without the express permission of the contractor. Careful research administration can ensure that the results are publishable in a reasonable timeframe in at least some cases, although the hunger issue pertains to research administrators as well as to researchers. There is always another school that can be approached if one is too demanding of academic privilege. And the fact remains that the direction and flow of scientific knowledge are driven, as explicitly intended in the wording of NSERC and government funding policies, not by human imagination, the spark of collegial discourse, or even by perceived societal needs – e.g. what we in academia are paid to do – but by industry interests.

Control: disincentives for nonproprietary research. The vacuum of industry sponsorship for technologies that reduce dependence on industrial products is understandable. As a result, however, the requirement for matching industry funds has sharply reduced research into non-proprietary approaches to achieve the same ends (e.g. pest or weed control) which industry claims can best be accomplished through purchase of proprietary products (see IPM above). Compare the $700 million currently spent annually by the federal and provincial governments to support genetic engineering with the virtually undetectable amounts allocated to support

• organic farming as an alternative to capital- and resource-intensive production practices (including herbicide-tolerant crops)
• management-intensive grazing as an alternative to growing annual grains (e.g. corn and soybeans) to support confinement feeding systems, or
• the design of small-scale production cooperatives to supply local foodsheds as an alternative to dependence on long distance transport of imported foods

One contemporary example would be the superficially compelling rationale that genetically engineering crops to produce their own pesticide, e.g. Bt corn, cotton, and potatoes, is a superior alternative to the use of chemical insecticides which are known to be harmful to health. Such pronouncements – if factually correct (see box below) – frame the issue as an "either/or" argument. Reducing the options to either pesticides or genetic engineering ignores the variety of IPM (integrated pest management) and organic approaches potentially available to do the same thing. However, as noted in the ERS report referenced above, the commercial attractiveness of nonproprietary approaches is weakened by the paucity of both basic and applied research – because non-proprietary strategies are not attractive to industrial sponsors, and hence, to government funding sources.

Thus, industry benefits in a variety of ways from societal investment in Canadian universities. The question is, does society also benefit?

DUBIOUS ASSUMPTIONS

Implicit in all of the various permutations of "industrial partnerships" is the very clear and unambiguous assumption that "what is good for industry is good for society", a premise that seems to have been accepted uncritically, at best, in agriculture. A corollary to the "good for business" assumption is the even more dubious presumption that the goods and services best suited to supporting contemporary agriculture in Canada are necessarily proprietary (e.g. industry-driven). This unvalidated assumption is, at least arguably, a key contributor to both the low returns routinely received by primary producers and the environmental degradation associated with some aspects of contemporary agriculture (e.g. surface- and groundwater contamination; loss of biodiversity; exposure to endocrine disruptors).

It may seem plausible that governments with a mandate to serve their citizenry, including their farmers, would be motivated to investigate production technologies that are both less damaging to the environment and less dependent upon costly proprietary inputs. In reality, production approaches which may be both more profitable and more environmentally benign – such as organic farming (Sholubi et al., 1998) and management-intensive grazing – are essentially untouchable in today's research environment.

One example will suffice to challenge the assumption that what is good for business is good for society. Recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) is the flagship product of the life science industry, and one which was expected to be sufficiently profitable as to warrant an enormous investment by both industry and government.

How might rBST be "good" for society?Recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) is a genetically engineered peptide hormone² which purports to force yet more milk out of high producing dairy cows³. A variety of arguments have been proposed to rationalize the use of rBST.

Health and welfare? Does use of rBST promote the health and welfare of cows and humans? On the contrary, use of rBST leaves dairy cows so stressed as to compromise rebreeding and create a whole range of related herd health problems (Kronfeld, 1993; CMVA Expert Panel on rBST, 1998). One of these – increased incidence of mastitis, an infection of the udder, that worsens with increasing milk yield – exacerbates overuse of antibiotics, and hence, risk of carryover of antibiotic resistance into the human food chain. Another risk to human health comes from elevated levels of Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1) in milk from rBST-treated cows. IGF-1 has been associated with increased risk of prostate cancer (Chan et al., 1998). Other risks were revealed in the course of the expert committee deliberations which ultimately led to the rejection of rBST in Canada early this year (CMVA Expert Panel on rBST, 1998). For example, a pivotal Monsanto-run 90-day rat feeding trial, which Monsanto had interpreted as indicating "no toxicologically significant responses" actually found that 20-30% of the rats exhibited immunological reactions. Some male rats exhibited cyst formation in the thyroid, a warning signal for cancer.

Therefore, evidence available to date suggests that use of rBST to stimulate milk production from dairy cows is not consistent with the health and welfare of either the cows or the humans.

Running out of milk? Perhaps there is some compelling need to increase milk production? With North American milk production capacity well in excess of demand, how can a product which stimulates yet more milk – and with so many unacknowledged costs not simply to herd health and profitability (Butler, 1999) but to human health – be of service to society? Yet hundreds of industry-funded papers have been published on rBST – many by academics employed at universities with a mandate to "serve the public". And the net effect is a product that no major industrialized country – with the exception of the US – will allow. From a societal perspective, the problem is not scarcity but getting rid of what we do produce.

The "cheap food" argument is widely used to justify a range of capital-intensive, power-concentrating approaches to increasing production, of which rBST and other GE technologies are just one example. Cheap food policies, including a variety of approaches that have served to drive down prices by increasing supply in an inelastic demand market, may have been a valid approach to freeing up labor for factories in town several decades ago. Today, however, with less than 2% of the population in farming and a populace which spends the second lowest percent of its disposable income on food of all nations in the world – this is a specious, disingenuous, and self-serving argument. Producers commonly receive less than 10% of the dollar value paid by consumers for foods. Thus, the premise that rBST, in particular or genetic engineering in general, is somehow essential to keep food cheap is a groundless but curiously compelling dogma. Everyone likes a bargain.

Environmental sustainability? Is rBST, or genetic engineering, somehow needed to protect the environment? Indeed, much evidence is available to suggest just the opposite. Rayburn (1993) compared management-intensive grazing vs. rBST as vehicles for increasing milk production in New York state. He contrasted the acreage needed for "pasture" and "barn" feeding (rBST) systems, where each was designed to produce the same amount of milk. Each ration, whether pasture or barn-based, was balanced using NRC nutrient requirements (Rayburn, 1993).

He concluded that more acreage would be needed to support the pasture option, particularly at higher levels of per-cow output. However, the type of crop grown in the pasture option would also include a larger proportion of soil conserving (less erosive) crops. The net effect was that while pasture-based milk production required more total acres to produce the same amount of milk, total potential soil loss would be about 30% less on pasture than on from barn-feeding (rBST). The greater proportion of concentrates needed to stimulate high per-cow production on rBST comes from row crops (corn and soybean) which are more vulnerable to both soil erosion and degradation. Thus, rBST and other GE offerings (largely corn and soybean) cannot be justified on the basis of environmental soundness, particularly if pasture and forages are included in the equation.

In sum, if rBST doesn't promote the health and welfare of either cows or humans, fill a compelling need for more milk, keep milk cheap, or enhance the environment, how can it be argued that rBST is "good" for society? While the premise that "what is good for industry is good for society" would have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, it would be difficult to make a convincing case that any of the current ag biotech offerings (herbicide-tolerant crops; plant pesticidal crops) are "good for society". And if they are not demonstrably "good for society", how can government justify expending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars each year to develop and promote them?

THE UNEASY MARRIAGE OF INDUSTRY AGENDAS AND ACADEMIA

The mutually beneficial and symbiotic relationship between universities and society is in jeopardy. The burgeoning presence of industry on campus, filling the vacuum created by short-sighted government funding policies and deregulation, has created an irreconcilable conflict. Academic freedom to provide objective and independent insight bearing on societal issues is in direct conflict with the demands of fueling proprietary technologies. The inherently unstable balance between fulfilling these two competing demands has already shifted in favor of the latter, with grave implications for society, and for the institution of the university as a whole.

The objectivity and credibility of academics is increasingly suspect, and not simply because of the "academics-for-hire" that seem to blossom in such circumstances. The perceived conflict-of-interest for publicly funded institutions and individual faculty in receipt of large amounts of industry funding (e.g. Novartis at Berkeley; Monsanto at Davis) is tainting public perceptions of our reliability and professionalism.

But does industry funding actually compromise researcher objectivity? One of the few studies specifically looking at this uncomfortable question was a survey reported by Stelfox et al. (1998), a group of Toronto medical researchers. In a paper in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, they explored the objectivity of sources of published information on the use of calcium-channel blockers, which are used to treat high blood pressure. The controversy over this particular treatment arose because the potential for increased risk of heart attack death from the use of one channel blocker was already known to and reported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in 1995.

In a study of 70 published articles on channel-blockers, Stelfox et al. (1998) used a panel of independent reviewers to categorize the authors of each paper as "supporters", "neutral", or "critical" of channel blockers, and then sent the authors questionnaires to answer questions relating to funding sources (Table 1).

Table 1. Evidence of impact of funding source (from Stelfox et al., 1998)

The evidence presented is consistent with the hypothesis that the outcome of the research can be influenced by the funding source. Authors having a history of financial ties to industry, including but not limited to this proprietary product, were most associated with research outcomes favorable to the proprietary product. Conversely, authors with a more limited history of financial support from industry for this or other products tended to reach conclusions critical of the proprietary product. Such a finding, if substantiated in other disciplines, would bode ill for the credibility and reputation of researchers with substantial industry funding, or who had the misfortune of working in an institution with strong industrial linkages.

What place have industry values in academia? Who will society turn to for objective and independent opinion, as we increasingly absorb industry values – such as those below – within academia?

1. Bigger (and fewer) is better; in other words, consolidation is power (Table 2). Ten companies, including the life science giants, now control 32% of the $23 billion seed trade and 85% of the $30.9 billion agrochemical market worldwide (RAFI, 1999). Not surprisingly, the same companies controlling the seed trade also control the proprietary chemicals required to employ many of the GE crops marketed by the same companies.

Table 2. Recent trends in consolidation within the Life Science companies (adapted from RAFI, 1999)

The scaled down academic version of consolidation is the forced merger of disparate departments and even colleges which has been underway for a number of years in many Canadians school. And to whose benefit?

2. "If brute force doesn't work, you aren't using enough of it" (courtesy William McDonough, Dean of Architecture, Univ. of Virginia). Case in point is the sorry spectacle of Monsanto prosecuting a Saskatchewan farmer, Percy Schmeiser for saving his own canola seed. Farmers purchasing Monsanto GE seed must sign a binding agreement which precludes, among other things, the right of the farmer to withhold some of his own seed for planting next year. Percy apparently never bought the proprietary, herbicide tolerant "Roundup Ready" (RR) seed, and claims that stray RR pollen from neighboring GE canola fields was responsible for conveying the trait to his crop – through what is known as genetic pollution. The science is clearly on Percy's side, but Monsanto says that no matter how the proprietary genes arrived at the farm, the farmer is still liable. A $10 million countersuit is pending.

Is this so very different from the intense pressures applied by colleagues and others to force research into acceptable disciplines, subject areas, and even....outcomes? Consider the appalling treatment of Dr. Arpad Pusztai, an imminent senior scientist and world authority on lectin with a reported 270 publications to his credit. His 35-year career ended shamefully at the hands of his own colleagues at the Rowett Institute in Scotland, which had recently received a grant worth 140,000 British pounds from Monsanto. His entire program was shut down, all his research grants were withheld (including those not related to the subject research), his longstanding research team was disbanded, and he was ordered to remain silent for 7 months or risk losing his pension.

And what heinous crime warranted this punishment from his peers? Winning a $2.4 million grant over 28 other tenders to study health impacts of GE-lectin on rats, and then reaching – and even worse, publicly reporting (not once but twice, each time with his Director Philip James' permission) – conclusions that challenged the assumption of substantial equivalence in the food safety of GE foodstuffs.

His work, recently reported in the Lancet, suggested that feeding transgenic potatoes modified to express snowdrop lectin (GNA)⁴ affected the immune response and reduced the size of the liver, heart, and brain of rats. In contrast, unmodified potatoes spiked with GNA had a much lesser effect. From this evidence, he tentatively attributed the adverse responses to the transgenes themselves – not the GNA – and was forced to retire ignominiously two days later.

According to Dr. Ronald Finn, past president of the British Society of Allergy and Environmental Medicine, "Dr. Pusztai's results, at the very least, raise the suspicion that genetically modified food may damage the immune system" (Lean, 1999).

So what are we seeing here? An incompetent bumbler or merely an objective scientist, trying to do his job, in a collegial environment that is genuinely hostile to objective enquiry? And what of academic integrity? When scientists have to put their jobs – their careers – at risk just to do their job, then academic integrity is already in question. As industry-driven stakes get higher and higher, financially and professionally, the pressure to conform, to ask the "right" questions, and to publish the "right" results can only increase – to the detriment of us all.

3. Progress means increasing technological complexity. In essence, if it doesn't bring increased income to the company, it is not worthy of study. Technology costs money, which justifies extracting yet more "rent" from those adopting the technology.

Research supporting capital-intensive, power-concentrating technologies for agricultural production have facilitated consolidation at the farm level, depopulating the countryside and disenfranchising generations of farm families. Because the cost of the inputs needed to stimulate yield are rising much faster than the value of the commodities, Canadian farmers retained less than 15% of the farmgate value of their produce in 1992 (below 10% now). Roughly 75% of the farmgate value of produce goes to input suppliers. In effect, the benefits of higher yield have been diverted from the farm to the supplier of the inputs needed to produce the higher yields.

Little to no evidence exists that larger, high tech farms are inherently more efficient, environmentally sound, profitable, or capable of supplying the needs of society for safe and sufficient food. Indeed, the capability of the mega-farm approach to production which is now in vogue can and should be challenged on several grounds. But no, this is where the funding is, so we continue to pursue scale-dependent research of dubious benefit to society or the environment? This is one of the inevitable by-products of short-sighted government funding policies that force dependence on industry funding.

Conclusions

Universities are intentionally structured, through the vehicle of tenure, so that academics will pursue novel research directions and will freely share their findings for the good of society, irrespective of external forces. To a very real extent, academics are expected to challenge societal directions, including the status quo, to continue the quest for new knowledge, and to open up new avenues for enlightenment. That is our job. It follows that to the extent that we fail to perform this function for society – for whatever reason – then we are not doing the unique and privileged job for which we are paid.

The role of academia in informing public opinion is of paramount importance when the issue is a potentially very lucrative, proprietary technology. There can be no better example of this than genetic engineering, which is promoted with exceptional power and influence by the self-proclaimed life science companies.

The decline of government funding for research, coupled with the obligation to obtain matching funds from industry to access what remains of government funding, is reshaping Canadian academia. The focus on industry objectives has permeated even so respected an authority as NSERC, such that NSERC funding is now used to systematically insert industry agendas, and people comfortable with industry values, at every level of academia. Industry benefits handsomely from this gift which is given freely and intentionally, but with little apparent cognizance of the deleterious implications it is having – both on academia and on society, including farmers. The premise that what is good for industry is good for society is unvalidated, and indeed, should be critically analysed and challenged. The example of rBST illustrates some of the many harmful effects of a technology which was heavily supported not simply by industry, but by government via academic researchers.

Industry values, as reflected in actions taken by the life science and other agribusiness industries, are difficult to reconcile with the mandate to serve those who pay our salaries – the citizenry of Canada and the environment which supports them. Evidence that such values are already becoming commonplace is not hard to find. But it is not hard to see that the credibility and objectivity of academics is correspondingly compromised by the degree to which we accept – indeed welcome – industry on campus. Is this to our benefit? To society's benefit? Who is minding the shop?

References

Benbrook, C. 1999. Internet communication entitled Important New USDA Report on IPM dated 17 October 1999 on [email protected] (archived). Benbrook Consulting Services, Sandpoint, Idaho and former Chair of the Board on Agriculture, U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Butler, L.J. 1999. The profitability of rBST on U.S. dairy farms. AgBioForum 2(2) Spring 1999 (http://www.agbioforum.missouri.edu/AgBioForum/vol2no2/butler.html)

Chan, J.M. et al. 1998. Plasma Insulin-Like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1) and prostrate cancer risk: a prospective study. Science 279: (23 January 1998).

CVMA (Canadian Veterinary Medical Association) Expert Panel on rBST. 1998. Report of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association Expert Panel on rBST. Prepared for Health Canada, November 1998 (http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/archives/rbst/)

Duffy, M. and M. Ernst. 1999. Does planting GMO seed boost farmers' profits? (http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/99-3gmoduffy.html)

Kronfeld, D.S. 1993. Ch. 2. Recombinant bovine growth hormone: cow responses delay drug approval and impact public health. pp. 65-112. In: W.C. Liebhardt (ed) The Dairy Debate. Consequences of Bovine Growth Hormone and Rotational Grazing Technologies. Univ. of California SAREP, Davis, CA.

Lean, G. 1999. How I told the truth and was sacked. Independent (8 March 99).

RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International). 1999. The Gene Giants. Masters of the Universe? March/April 1999 (http://www.rafi.org/communique/19992.html)

Rayburn, E.B. 1993. Ch. 6 Potential ecological and environmental effects of pasture and BGH technology. In: W.C. Liebhardt (ed). 1993. The Dairy Debate. Univ. of California SAREP, Davis, CA.

Sholubi, O, D.P. Stonehouse, and E. Ann Clark. 1997 Profile of organic dairy farming in Ontario. Amer. J. Altern. Agric. 12(3):133-139.

Smith, T. 1997. Some remarks on university/business relations, technological development, and the public good. (http://grad.admin.iastate.edu/bioethics/forum/forum/smith.html)

Stelfox, H.T. et al. 1998. Conflict of interest in the debate over calcium-channel antagonists. New England Journal of Medicine 338(2):101-106.

Footnotes

© E. Ann Clark. This text is the property of the author, E. Ann Clark. It may be downloaded or reproduced in whole or in part by any member of the academic community for the purposes of discussion, debate and quotation and may be placed on web sites or on chat lines so long as this copyright notice is included. It may be reproduced on the Internet so long as no charges are levied for its use. It may not be reproduced for sale in any form anywhere without the express written permission of the owner.