conko, g

==

NO MERRI

CEI

demoted/recycled? now at donors trust 3 22

isnt gmu law school scalia?

GREGORY JUDGE DUDE RANCH ORIENTATION

Greg and Carrie Conko AAF AM’S FUTURE

CARRIE SPN

[### Carrie Conko's Post

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com › posts › carrie-conko-335ab0...](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/carrie-conko-335ab01_happy-to-be-representing-iron-light-and-undivide-activity-7387203444593410048-Huts)

Carrie Conko's Post ... Happy to be representing Iron Light and UNDIVIDE US Movie joining my friends at Heart+Mind Strategies, Mercatus Center at George Mason ...

off bs

https://cei.org/content/gregory-conko-returns-cei-senior-fellow

Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is pleased to announce the hiring of Gregory Conko as a senior fellow. This is the second stint for Conko at CEI, who previously served as a senior fellow and then executive director. Conko re-joins CEI from the George Mason University School of Law, where he served as deputy director of the Law and Economics Center. At CEI, Conko will work on issues related to health care, food and drug regulation, agriculture and agricultural trade, and nutrition and public health. 

Prior to working at CEI and George Mason University, Conko was a research associate at the Capital Research Center. Conko’s work has been published in scholarly journals including Nature Biotechnology, Transgenic Research, Health Matrix: Journal of Law & Medicine, and the Cumberland Law Review and newspapers like the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today.

Conko serves as a member of the working groups on regulatory process and FDA and health for the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project. He is also a Senior Affiliated Scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He graduated magna cum laudefrom the George Mason University School of Law and earned a BA in political science and history from American University.

“CEI is adding top talent with new senior fellow Gregory Conko. He brings strong law and economics experience to the issues of health policy, drug pricing, and reform of the FDA,” said CEI President and CEO Kent Lassman. “On top of that, it is a reunion. Conko spent much of his policy career with CEI, and we are delighted that he’s ready to engage on the critical regulatory issues of the day.”

Read Gregory Conko’s bio here: https://cei.org/content/gregory-conko

---

CARRIE?

Congress takes notice

Congress is also paying more attention to the Mercatus Center, which from 1999 to 2008 was mentioned by name 32 times in either the Congressional Record or congressional committee reports. Since 2009, it’s been mentioned 93 times, often in reference to Mercatus Center faculty who were testifying before Congress.

2015]

This year, Congress even cited Mercatus Center research in the text of budget bills. House Concurrent Resolution 27 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 11 note that a Mercatus Center study “estimates that Obamacare will reduce employment by up to 3 percent, or about 4 million full-time equivalent workers.”

Mercatus Center Vice President Carrie Conko, while declining to address critics’ “ad hominem attacks” of Charles Koch, stressed the institution’s work is the product of hard work and high standards — not the whims of some patron puppet master.

“As a university research center, our scholarship is independent and subjected to rigorous peer review,” Conko said. “Our researchers are interested in understanding what shapes societies and economies and that covers a spectrum of research from the history of economic thought to the application of economics to questions of public policy.”

Conko also noted that the Mercatus Center abides by a strong conflict of interest and research independence policy, which she described as “stronger than those of most found with typical academic centers or departments.”

Mercatus Center officials note that the center isn’t part of George Mason University the same way as, say, its chemistry or psychology departments. Instead, it’s organized as a stand-alone nonprofit, and as such, George Mason University isn’t directly responsible for it.

The Mercatus Center doesn’t receive direct funding from George Mason University, Conko said.

But George Mason University and its students do receive millions of dollars in annual financial benefit from the Mercatus Center, according to federal tax filings.

That alone is a major incentive for a public university in Virginia, where state funding of higher education is dwindling, to host a privately funded operation on its campus — today, a fairly common practice among public schools.

The Mercatus Center spent $3.64 million during that time to “support graduate students at George Mason University” by “training future scholars and decision-makers to advance and apply a research agenda for understanding institutions and change,” according to a tax filing.

The Mercatus Center helped fund $1.82 million worth of communication efforts that included promoting its research and ideas “to the media and opinion shapers.”

And it made a $10,000 grant to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which operates a “global network of more than 400 free market organizations.” They include several Koch-backed nonprofit groups such as Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council and Americans for Tax Reform.

McAuliffe mum?

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/03/21/the-dirty-dozen-the-biggest-nonprofit-funders-of-climate-denial/

In descending order, the leading nonprofit funders of climate science misinformation from 2014–20 are:

1. Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund — $20.6 million

Known as the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement,” DonorsTrust and its sister fund, Donors Capital Fund, have been the nonprofit funding vehicles of choice for the wealthy right wing for many years. They are both donor-advised fund sponsors, meaning that they manage the charitable donations of their clients. These clients “advise” the funds on which nonprofit charities should receive their money, but the funds decide on the recipients.

Between 2014 and 2020, the two funds gave the most money—$13.3 million—to the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free-market think tank and charity that “has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change,” according to DeSmog.

The institute has historically received significant funding from fossil fuel giants such as ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and Murray Energy, and in the 1990s it worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking second-hand smoke to health problems.

The funds bankrolled the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based free market advocacy group that also has a history of funding from tobacco and oil companies, with nearly $6 million. The institute’s former executive director, Gregory Conko, is senior director of programs at DonorsTrust.

In addition, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund funded these climate misinformation groups from 2014–20:

• Energy and Environment Legal Institute ($421,000)
• Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change ($400,000)
• Institute for Energy Research ($371,000)
• Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($122,000)
• Property and Environmental Research Center ($30,000)

Kimberly Dennis, cofounder and board chair of DonorsTrust, is on the board of the Property and Environmental Research Center (PERC), which was formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center. She’s also president of the right-wing Searle Freedom Trust.

Thomas Beach, a member of the DonorsTrust board of directors, also serves on the PERC board.

---

https://apps.publicintegrity.org/united-states-of-petroleum/venue-of-last-resort/

no lnx many

VENUE OF LAST RESORT [pun?]

Wave of climate lawsuits threatens the future of Big Oil

Fossil-fuel interests are working to seed the courts, long viewed as apolitical

Illustration by Robert Fresson

by Jie Jenny Zou, Chris Young

December 12, 2017

In early October, 22 state and federal judges hailing from Honolulu to Albany got a crash course in scientific literacy and economics.The three-day symposium was billed as a way to help the judges better scrutinize evidence used to defend government regulations.

But the all-expenses-paid event hosted by George Mason University’s Law & Economics Center in Arlington, Virginia, served another purpose: It was the first of several seminars designed to promote “skepticism” of scientific evidence among likely candidates for the 140-plus federal judgeships President Trump will fill over the next four years.

Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr.

Robert Fresson

Read more about how air quality is the new frontier for climate-change skeptics long tied to API »

The lone science instructor was Louis Anthony Cox Jr., a risk analyst with deep industry ties whose recent appointment as chair of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee drew condemnation in public-health circles.Since 1988, Cox has consulted for the American Petroleum Institute, a lobby group that spent millions to dispute the cancer-causing properties of benzene, an ingredient in gasoline, and is now working to discredit the science on smog-causing ozone. He’s also testified on behalf of the chemical industry and done research for tobacco giant Philip Morris.

For a $4,000 honorarium, Cox delivered two closed-door lectures at George Mason: “a primer on the scientific method,” followed by a session aimed at “understanding what science can and cannot do.”  Included in his presentation were slides urging judges to be wary of EPA science on fine particles — a pollutant he has been researching for API. 

The symposium included a “mandatory” dinner at Capitol Hill’s upscale Charlie Palmer Steak, whose website says it “moves the political power meetings out of the back room and into private dining spaces.” Events such as the symposium are one way Big Oil is trying to impart free-market values to judges and attorneys general as the industry gears up for legal battles on multiple fronts.

Based in George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School,the Law & Economics Center espouses a free-market approach to policy. A 2013 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that the libertarian think tank hosted more judicial conferences than any other university program in the nation, fueled by conservative and big-business donors. Over the past two years, roughly $4.5 million of $18.6 million in contributions to the Law & Economics Center came from oil and gas interests, including Koch Industries, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and API, which represents more than 650 corporations.

The center claims to have trained more than 5,000 state and federal judges, including three sitting Supreme Court justices. Almost 1,000 state attorneys general and their staff attorneys have attended its programs. Its advisory board includes three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, widely considered the nation’s second-most powerful court and, often, the final arbiter for federal administrative law cases.

In a White House riven by discord and staff departures, judicial appointments have been a bright spot.  Senate Republicans have embraced the chance to fill a glut of vacancies, helping Trump install more conservative judges and potentially transform the legal landscape for decades to come. Once confirmed, a federal judge can serve for life, presiding over an average of 500 to 600 cases a year.

A Washington trade group with 300-plus employees, APIhas spent more than $40 million to lobby Congress since 2013. But the courts have also been a focal point for API, which has spent the better part of a century helping the oil and gas industry pivot from being a prime antitrust target to being a proactive litigation force. The institute, along with other free-market trade groups, has routinely injected itself into cases in an attempt to shape policy or stall government initiatives. API officials did not grant interview requests from the Center for Public Integrity.

“Time is on industry’s side.”

With a new era of environmental deregulation under way, issues ranging from the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan to offshore drilling in the Arctic are landing in the courts for final say. The stakes are enormous for the industry, which is simultaneously confronting a wave of lawsuits that seek billions of dollars in damages for climate-change impacts. Among the defendants areAPI members such as ExxonMobil.

Unlike government and the public, industry can afford to wait. “In many of these matters, litigation goes on decades and decades,” said Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “Time is on industry’s side.”

American Petroleum Institute, et al.

Time has worked to API’s advantage. The institute was founded in 1919 amid congressional demands to nationalize the oil industry during World War I, forcing competing companies to band together for survival. In the near-century since, API has helped thwart regulations by tying them up in court.

An exterior shot of the Lenexa Federal Records Center, an annex of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Center for Land Use Interpretation (licensed CC NC-SA)

Archives at the Lenexa Federal Records Center are located 60 feet below ground in limestone caves.

NARA

Buried in limestone caves 60 feet below Lenexa, Kansas, is an esoteric slice of API history. Yellowing records at the National Archives annex there are all that remain of a 1940 lawsuit so expansive that three pages of the complaint simply list defendants — all 379 of them.

United States of America v.American Petroleum Institute,et al. alleged widescale collusion and price-fixing by 22 major oil companies and their 300-plus affiliates, which controlled a total of $9 billion in assets (the equivalent of $160 billion today). The U.S. Department of Justice charged that the industry was unlawfully consolidating — with the institute’s help — and vowed to take the antitrust case all the way to the Supreme Court.

“The industry is dominated and controlled by the 22 defendant majors who transact more than 85 percent of the total business of the industry,” the Justice Department wrote in its complaint. “Where normal competition once flourished, the rapid development of the completely integrated defendants has substantially destroyed competition.”

Read more about Big Oil's unlikely alliance with the White House ]

American Petroleum Institute, et al. never made it to trial.The case was neutered early on by 11 oil executives working closely with the White House to ensure an Allied victory in World War II. The executives — nine of whom were affiliated with defendant companies — asked the attorney general to strike from the complaint a provision that would have forced companies to divest assets such as pipelines. This, the men warned, could hamper the war effort and “becloud relationships between the government and industry.”

After languishing in the courts for years, the lawsuit was dismissed in 1951 by the Justice Department, which found it to be a logistical nightmare. Gone, too, was the government’s interest in dissolving API as a monopolistic tool of industry. This year, API wriggled out of public scrutiny once more. In yet another potentially landmark case, lawyers suing the U.S. government for inaction on climate change tried to compel the institute to turn over decades of internal records. API had joined the case to help defend the government but dropped out rather than reveal what it knew about global warming, and when.

“They're a highly sophisticated, integrated political operation,” said Bob Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Drexel University. API’s effectiveness, Brulle said, lies in its partnerships with like-minded groups such as the American Chemistry Council, the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — amplifying its message “in a very directed, coordinated way.” In 2016, the institute absorbed its only real competitor, America’s Natural Gas Alliance.

With ample resources at their disposal, groups such as API — which employs a full-time legal staff and can also tap into the legal teams of its member companies — can quickly blunt federal regulatory efforts or simply wait for the political winds to change.

On November 30, 1999, for example, representatives of more than 20 lobby groups met at the institute’s Washington, D.C., headquarters to muster opposition to an EPA plan to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Leading the meeting was API lobbyist Phil Cooney. In a memo, the institute offered to coordinate on the alliance’s behalf, pushing out the message to politicians and the news media. But by 2001, the political climate had changed. Cooney had become head of environmental policy for George W. Bush’s White House, where he altered federal reports to sow doubt on climate change. Under Bush, the EPA retreated from its earlier position, claiming it didn’t have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases after all. Cooney could not be located for comment.

The issue came to a head in 2003 when 12 states sued the EPA to force its hand. Coming to the agency’s defense was the CO2 Litigation Group, a newly formed coalition of 14 trade associations — including API.  The coalition represented a spectrum of fossil-fuel companies, which argued that the EPA had “oversimplified” and overstated the certainty of climate change’s effects.

The case, Massachusetts v. EPA, was decided in the states’ favor by the Supreme Court in 2007. But the matter continued to be tied up in the courts and the EPA bureaucracy, and it wasn’t until 2011 that the agency finally began regulating greenhouse gases. This gave rise to Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, which targeted carbon dioxide emissions and became mired in litigation before the Trump administration marked it for extinction.

‘Irreparably harmed’

The back-and-forth of politics can be dispiriting. For that reason, James Hansen has staked his family's future — and the planet’s — on the courts. His granddaughter, Sophie Kivlehan, is one of 21 child and teenage plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States, a 2015 lawsuit that faults the government for failing to address climate change over half a century.

Dr. James Hansen, Columbia University

YouTube

Sophie Kivlehan, granddaughter of James Hansen

YouTube

“What we want is a plan — just for the government to have a plan,” said Hansen, a former NASA scientist who now directs the Earth Institute at Columbia University and is acting as a scientific expert in the case. Last year, industry groups including API became parties to the case.

It was Hansen’s congressional testimony as director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in the sweltering summer of 1988 that elevated global warming from simmering concern to boiling reality. With “99-percent” certainty, Hansen explained that the trend was a side effect of fossil-fuel combustion that would worsen without swift action. Months later, a group that would come to include 170 scientists from 25 countries united to confront what it called “the greatest global environmental challenge facing mankind.”

When Hansen returned to Capitol Hill in 1989, he found his testimony heavily edited by the White House Office of Management and Budget under President George H.W. Bush. The office softened his conclusions, tacked on a paragraph qualifying his findings and otherwise stirred uncertainty about man-made causes of climate change.

While many have focused on what, and when, companies such as ExxonMobil knew about climate change, Julia Olson — a lawyer with Our Children’s Trust, a legal aid group representing the Juliana plaintiffs — is making a case for government complicity.

After years of litigating environmental cases, Olson realized she was dealing with symptoms of a disease,  not the disease itself. “We were just playing a game of Whac-a-mole. One new part of our fossil fuel energy system would pop up, and we’d challenge it, and then it’d pop up somewhere else.”

She turned her attention to the government, which “chooses the winners and losers” and has long abetted fossil fuels, she said, allowing the industry to drill, mine and build. “Everyone wants Exxon to be the enemy,” Olson said, but, “every administration has made that decision to perpetuate fossil fuels.”

After digging through presidential archives, her researchers found what they believe is the earliest White House reference to climate change: a 1961 letter from Sen. Clinton Anderson of New Mexico to President John F. Kennedy, recounting a meeting a day earlier at which they discussed a Fortune article warning of sea-level rise from a warming climate.

Lyndon B. Johnson was the first president to publicly acknowledge such warming. In a speech in January 1965, he described how “a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels” was permanently altering the planet. By year’s end, his science advisory board had delivered a detailed report on the “invisible pollutant” capable of melting ice caps and raising sea levels.

Despite these early warnings, little has been done, Olson said. Since Hansen’s 1988 testimony, there have been more excessively hot years than at any other time on record. Two international accords tackling climate change have been brokered, with the United States conspicuously absent on both.

Though not named in Juliana, API , the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers quickly intervened in the lawsuit,asserting their right to protect their members’ economic interests. The move awkwardly put the fossil-fuel groups on the same side as the Obama administration.

Their involvement in Juliana was short-lived. In late February, plaintiffs filed a detailed 21-page discovery request for API alone, seeking decades of internal communications, policies and reports related to climate change. By late June, all three trade groups had exited a case they had voluntarily joined. A judge allowed them to drop out after they were unable to agree on the causes and effects of greenhouse gases. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., suspects the groups “fled to avoid having to make the disclosures.” A vocal supporter of the Juliana action, Whitehouse believes the courts will hold industry accountable. “You have a judge and you have sanctions for not telling the truth, and that is a combination that for decades the fossil fuel industry has sought to avoid like Kryptonite."

Other climate-related lawsuits have followed Juliana, which is set for trial in 2018. Last summer, three California coastal communities filed suit against 37 fossil-fuel companies, blaming their greenhouse-gas emissions for rising sea levels. In September, San Francisco and Oakland became the first major U.S. cities to sue oil companies to cover past and future flood damage. In November, a Pennsylvania lawsuit alleged that the Trump administration is using “junk science” to roll back climate policies. A lawsuit pitting Portuguese schoolchildren against 47 European nations for failing to act on climate is in the works.

George Mason University’s Law & Economics Center is located in this Arlington, Va., building.

Ron Cogswell (licensed CC BY)

‘Unwarranted and exaggerated’

WhenGregory Conkobegan organizing the October judges’ symposium at George Mason University, he wanted to ensure that participants left knowing science’s limitations. “Even good science cannot always answer the questions regulatory agencies ask,” he wrote to Louis “Tony” Cox, the risk analyst, in a May email obtained by the Center for Public Integrity through a records request. “Even the best science is not capable of yielding normative judgments about whether something is necessarily good or bad, safe or dangerous, etc."

Conko headed the Competitive Enterprise Institute — a libertarian think tank known for fostering climate-change denial — before joining Mason’s Law & Economics Center last winter. Before Conko settled on Cox to lead the seminar, Nancy Beck, a former policy director for the American Chemistry Council who is now the EPA’s top official on toxic chemicals, was a candidate, emails show. So was Michael Gough, a toxicologistwith ties to the tobacco industry and oil-backed climate-change denial groups. Conko declined requests for an interview.

“Even good science cannot always answer the questions regulatory agencies ask.”

Like Beck and Gough, Cox has championed narratives amenable to industry’s bottom line but not supported by mainstream science. In 2015, Cox said that “no detectable public health benefits” would result from a stricter EPA ozone limit. His testimony was cited in an op-ed by API President Jack Gerard, who ended the column with a warning: “Economic recovery is far from complete, and saddling the nation’s job creators with burdensome new restrictions threatens to deal another blow to the middle-class economy.”

What Gerard didn’t mention was Cox’s history with the institute, which spans decades. At the time the column was published, Cox was receiving funding from both the institute and the American Chemistry Council,which also represents petrochemical companies.

In an interview, Cox denied that industry funding influences his findings. He criticized EPA science as flawed, saying it assumes links that haven’t been proven.

“I see a tremendous lack of clarity when agencies say there’s reason to believe X causes Y,” Cox said. “The proposition that the science is settled — ‘We don’t need to look at this’ — it’s a bad proposition.”

Cox holds a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science and a master’s degree in operations research, which focuses on decision-making — both from MIT.

Asked about his involvement in the George Mason symposium, Cox said that “judges in particular should have a healthy skepticism, especially about claims of causality.”

Fellow risk analyst and friend Adam Finkel counts Cox among an elite few who have the credentials for risk analysis, an amalgam of health sciences, economics, policy-making and statistics. But their views on what should or shouldn’t be regulated couldn’t be further apart.

A former director of health standards programs at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Finkel has spent his career trying to strengthen worker protections against toxic substances. “It’s disappointing to me that someone as smart as he is can make such a stupid mistake,” Finkel, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan, said of Cox. “I don’t ascribe evil intent to him; he’s just lost his way.”

:{

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The weight of evidence, Finkel said, isn’t on Cox’s side. “He’s not just saying, ‘We should wait for the right answer.’ He’s saying, ‘We should be more protective of the economy than of human health.’”

==

AG GMU LEC

talk

2018

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spn bs PR

Gregory P Conko

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Free Market Advocates Confront Eco-Terrorism | Competitive **...**

https://cei.org/news.../free-market-advocates-confront-eco-terrorism

==

Greg Conko is the Director of Food Safety Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) where he "specialises in issues of food and pharmaceutical drug safety regulation, and on the general treatment of health risks in public policy".^[1]

He is described as being

particularly interested in the debate over the safety of genetically engineered foods and the application of the Precautionary Principleto domestic and international environmental and safety regulations.^[2]

Although Conko's leading role in CS Prakash's AgBioWorld campaign has only lately been acknowledged by AgBioWorld, the CEI has been more open, describing him as

the Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of the AgBioWorld Foundation, [which] he co-founded with Tuskegee University plant genetics professor CS Prakash.^[3]

Given Conko's leading role in AgBioWorld, it would be interesting to know his exact relationship with Monsanto's PR team, particularly Jay Byrne - Monsanto's chief Internet strategist at the time AgBioWorld was established. Byrne has ackowledged giving AgBioWorld "advice and information" and both Monsanto and its Internet PR company the Bivings Group have played a covert role in shaping and supporting AgBioWorld's online campaigning. Monsanto is among the companies funding the CEI (see U.S. FACING TOUGH BATTLE FOR GE CROPS by Bob Burton, IPS-Inter Press Service April 1, 2004)

Conko's many publications include papers promoting GM foods and free trade and attacking the precautionary principle, co-authored with CS Prakash, Henry I. Miller, Fred Smith and Kendra Okonski. Among these is "Cloudy horizons in a brave new world", originally published on the European Science and Economic Forum website. In it Conko suggests that concerns about the safety of GM food are merely a cover for "trade protectionism" and "anti-science fearmongering".^[4]

In March 2003 Conko took part in a debate on 'GM food: should labelling be mandatory?' held at the London office of PR agency Hill and Knowlton and organised by Spiked and the International Policy Network. Conko argued against any requirement to label GM foods, saying:

mandatory labelling will merely raise the cost of GM products, and add to many consumers' groundless fears about GM foods.^[5]

In May 2003, Conko was at the press conference at which the US Trade Secretary formally announced a US WTO case against EU restrictions on GM imports. This was followed by a CEI seminar on the negative impact of the EU moratorium on the developing world, addressed by Conko, Norman Borlaug, CS Prakash, and TJ Buthelezi.

In April 2004 Conko went on a lobbying trip to Australia at a time when Australian States were considering large-scale GM crop trial proposals from Monsanto and Bayer. The trip was organised by the U.S. embassy and financed by theNational Centre for Food and Agricultural Policy, which receives funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the Council for Biotechnology Information, CropLife America, the Grocery Manufacturers of America and Monsanto, as well as Aventis, Bayer, DuPont, and Syngenta.

Notes

1. ↑ Liam Baldwin, "NZ must meet demand for GE produce", Straight Furrow, 6 April 2004, accessed February 2009.
2. ↑ "Greg Conko Biography", AgBioWorld website, accessed February 2009.
3. ↑ "Greg Conko Biography", AgBioWorld website, accessed February 2009.
4. ↑ Gregory Conko, "Cloudy Horizons in a Brave New World", Financial Times, 7 March 2000, archived on the CEI website, accessed February 2009.
5. ↑ Gregory Conko, "Mandatory Labelling Is A Bad Idea", Capitalism Magazine, 23 March 2003, accessed February 2009.

:{Categories: 

• GM
• Far-Right Think-Tanks (GM)
• Corporate Science (GM)
• Pro-GM Lobbyists
• Industry-Friendly Experts
• Think Tanker

}:

==

Greg Conko and CEI

Industry Lobbying for Genetic Engineered Crops in Australia

GM WATCH daily 4mar04

Last week Greg Conko of the U.S. "think tank", the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), was in Australia on a U.S.-government funded tour, lobbying unsuccessfully for GM. The tour was also backed by the US's National Center for Food and Agriculture Policy, which pumps out scientific studies showing remarkable benefits from GM farming (see the profile below).

Greg Conko

source 4apr04

While in Australia Conko admitted to journalist Bob Burton that CEI takes funding from Monsanto. Conko and CEI, it may be remembered, co-founded CS Prakash's AgBioWorld campaign. Indeed, the CEI describe Conko as "the Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of the AgBioWorld Foundation, [which] he co-founded with Tuskegee University plant genetics professor C.S. Prakash". CEI also says that it played "a key role in the creation" of Prakash's petition for "agbiotech" as part of its wider campaign against "death by regulation" - a campaign that also takes in attacking restrictions on smoking. Philip Morris is another of the CEI's sponsors.

GM WATCH research has also shown that AgBioworld has intimate links to Monsanto's Internet PR firm, The Bivings Group, and that AgBioWorld and its listserv AgBioView have been used as a conduit for Monsanto/Bivings-inspired dirty tricks campaigns involving poison pen attacks on Monsanto's scientific and environmental critics - most infamously, a campaign of smears and attacks on the Berkeley researchers Quist and Chapela.

1. Conko down-under
2. CEI - GM WATCH profile
3. Greg Conko - GM WATCH profile
4. National Center for Food and Agriculture Policy - GM WATCH profile [see links for sources in the profiles]
5. Time for the GM Moratorium to Go - GREGORY CONKO and C.S. PRAKASH / Wall Street Journal 13may03

For a profile of CS Prakash and AgBioWorld see: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=106

1. Conko down-under

AUSTRALIA: U.S. FACING TOUGH BATTLE FOR GE CROPS

Bob Burton IPS-Inter Press Service April 1, 2004,

CANBERRA: For the last week, Gregory Conko from the conservative U.S. think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), has faced an uphill battle in selling the benefits of genetic engineering (GE) to Australian governments and farmers.

That is because a string of decisions in the last two weeks by Australian state governments -- banning or placing a moratorium on the planting of genetically modified (GM) canola in order to prevent the loss of markets for wheat as well as non-GE canola -- has made Conko's U.S.-government funded tour appear obsolete.

"My understanding from some of the state officials in Tasmania and Western Australia is that they would prefer not to allow any GM crops so the entire state can have a reputation of being GM-free," Conko said. "In the short term this may be a rational marketing decision but in the long term I don't see that that is necessarily going to hold up."

While the U.S. Embassy organized Conko's tour in an attempt to shore up fading support among farmers for genetically engineered crops, the cost is being covered the National Centre for Food and Agricultural Policy, which in turn is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Asked whether companies with genetic engineering interests fund the CEI, Conko said: "We do get a small amount of money from one biotech firm and a couple of food companies." While saying that less than a quarter of the CEI's agriculture programme funding comes from corporations, Conko confirmed that Monsanto is the biotechnology sponsor of the institute.

A genetic engineering campaigner with Greenpeace Australia, Jeremy Tager, believes Conko's tour is another signal of how desperate the U.S. government and companies like Monsanto have become.

"They have effectively lost the debate in the bulk of Australia and this is a desperate attempt to shore up their fading support," he said.

The Australian government's Federal Gene Technology Regulator has licensed for both Bayer and Monsanto the unconditional release of genetically engineered canola varieties. But strong opposition from farmers, agricultural marketing agencies and environmentalists has blocked the commercial release of the crops.

The last week has seen a stunning series of setbacks in the determination of the pro-genetic engineering proponents to press ahead with the commercial release of GE canola in Australia. Last week, Victoria decided to legislate for a four-year ban on the crop, and the Western Australian government legislated to keep the whole state free of genetically engineered crops indefinitely. This week the South Australian parliament is debating legislation to impose a moratorium on genetically engineered canola, and a similar bill is before the Australian Capital Territory parliament.

Colleen Ross, the National Farmers Union of Canada spokeswoman on genetically engineered crops, is also touring Australia, but with the support of environmental and anti-GE farmers groups. Ross, who farmed in Australia for many years before moving to Canada, has a word of warning for Australian farmers and governments considering the use of genetically engineered crops.

"I don't want Australian farmers to go through what we have gone through six or seven years down the track. We have Monsanto taking our farmers to court, we have complicated intellectual property rights and trade disputes. Far better just to say no," she said.

When Victorian Agriculture Minister Bob Cameron announced the state government's four-year ban last week on genetically engineered canola, he cited a market survey undertaken by the Australian Wheat Board. This, he said, "found that 30 percent of its wheat markets would have concerns if GM grain of any type was commercially grown in Victoria".

Tager of Greenpeace welcomes the decisions by the state governments, but sees as the next critical decision the imminent decision by the New South Wales government on whether it approves a massive 3,500-hectare 'trial' of GE canola.

"Unless there is intervention by the Premier or at Cabinet level, I don't think there is much doubt that the Minister for Agriculture will say yes to the planting," he said.

The implications of a go-ahead, he argues, are potentially massive.

"The estimate we have is that 3,500 hectares would contaminate 250,000 hectares of land at risk of contamination, that is a pretty conservative estimate based on fairly short distances of contamination occurring.

If you took the UK figure of contamination across 26 kilometers -- they can't explain it, but they found that there is nothing in NSW at all left GE-free," he said.

Conko argues that while there is often opposition to the introduction of GE crops, farmers largely learn to co-exist. "We found in North America that we can have GM agriculture and conventional agriculture and even organic agriculture co-exist more or less peacefully. There are some rough edges and its not foolproof but we have found a way to manage the problems that come about from coexistence," he said.

Ross dismisses the claims by supporters of GE that co-existence is possible. In January she was in court supporting Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, who is being sued by Monsanto over his contaminated crop that the company claims was in fact the unauthorized use of its technology.

"Farmers who are growing GE in Canada and the United States say 'it's our right to grow GE crop' but when they grow GE crops, us non-GE farmers lose our right to grow our non-GE crops because of the contamination," she pointed out.

Ross has a blunt message for Australian farmers and governments: "Why is Australia even considering it? My message to Australia is 'what the heck are you thinking?' "

[In fact, the New South wales government rejected the Monsanto and Bayer-backed large-scale GM trial]

2. CEI - GM WATCH profile

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=30&page=C

'Advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government' is the declared mission of the Washington DC based Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), launched in 1984 and claiming 'the largest free-market environmental policy program in Washington'. However, according to PR Watch , CEI in reality is 'a well-funded front for corporations' that attacks environmental, health and safety regulations.

CEI's President and Founder is Fred Smith. Its staff include Gregory Conko who is CEI's Director of Food Safety Policy. Via Conko CEI has played a key role in CS Prakash's AgBioWorld campaign .

The launch-pad for Prakash's campaign was a petition supporting the use of GM agriculture in developing countries. Prakash presented this as a Third World scientists' rallying point for fellow academics. However, CEI in its annual report (2000) says that it played 'a key role in the creation' of the petition as part of a wider campaign against 'death by regulation' - the same CEI campaign that has been directed against government efforts to discourage smoking because, according to the CEI, 'there are things more valuable than health'. More recently, Greg Conko has been acknowledged in AgBioWorld press releases as the co-founder of AgBioWorld .

Among CEI's long list of known sponsors are Philip Morris, Pfizer and Dow Chemicals. In 2000 CEI had a turnover of $3M+ a year with another million in assets.

CEI's 'Adjunct Scholars' include Henry Miller of the Hoover Institution and Fran Smith of Consumer Alert. Fran Smith is also on CEI's Board of Directors. She is also the wife of CEI's President and Founder. Another CEI 'Adjunct' is Roger Bate of the International Policy Network - a group whose Washington address is the same as that of the CEI.

Kendra Okonski of IPN also used to work for CEI. When ABC-TV's 20/20 program presenter John Stossel came under fire in August 2000 for citing nonexistent scientific studies in a 20/20 report attacking organic foods, Okonski organised a Save John Stossel website for the CEI to help Stossel keep his job.

Another CEI 'Adjunct' is Ronald Bailey, the science editor of Reason magazine and the first recipient of CEI's Warren T. Brookes Fellowship in Environmental Journalism.

In March 2001, CEI joined the American Council on Science and Health, Steve Milloy, Dennis Avery, and Consumer Alert in an open letter criticizing Starbucks for its decision, in response to protests, to stop serving milk products from cows treated with Monsanto's genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH aka BST), which is banned in all the main industrialised countries in the world other than the United States. 'Your action is unfounded, and harms consumers and the environment', they stated. The CEI's Kendra Okonski , wearing her 'counter protest' hat, organised a counter-demonstration outside Starbucks in Washington.

In March 2002 CEI, exploiting the concerns raised by September 11, co-sponsored a conference for journalists and corporate executives on 'eco-extremism' with CDFE-connnected PR firm Nichols Dezenhall. (You too might be a terrorist. The war on the greens)

3. Greg Conko - GM WATCH profile

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=31

Greg Conko is the Director of Food Safety Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) where he he 'specialises in issues of food and pharmaceutical drug safety regulation, and on the general treatment of health risks in public policy'. He is described as 'particularly interested in the debate over the safety of genetically engineered foods and the application of the Precautionary Principle to domestic and international environmental and safety regulations'.

Although Conko's leading role in C S Prakash's AgBioWorld campaign has only lately been acknowledged by AgBioWorld, the CEI has been more open, describing him as ' the Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of the AgBioWorld Foundation, [which] he co-founded with Tuskegee University plant genetics professor C.S. Prakash'.

Given Conko's leading role in AgBioWorld, it would be interesting to know his exact relationship with Monsanto's PR team, particularly Jay Byrne - Monsanto's chief Internet strategist at the time AgBioWorld was established. Byrne has ackowledged giving AgBioWorld 'advice and information' and both Monsanto and its Internet PR company Bivings have played a covert role in shaping and supporting AgBioWorld's online campaigning.

Conko's many publications include papers, promoting GM foods and free trade and attacking the precautionary principle, co-authored with CS Prakash, Henry Miller, Fred Smith and Kendra Okonski. Amongst these is 'Cloudy horizons in a brave new world', originally published on the European Science and Economic Forum website. In it Conko suggests that concerns about the safety of GM food are merely a cover for 'trade protectionism' and 'anti-science fearmongering'.

In March 2003 Conko took part in a debate on 'GM food: should labelling be mandatory?' held at the London office of PR agency Hill and Knowlton and organised by Spiked and the International Policy Network. Conko argued against any requirement to label GM foods. In May 2003, Conko was at the press conference at which the US Trade Secretary formally announced a US WTO case against EU restrictions on GM imports. This was followed by a CEI seminar on the negative impact of the EU moratorium on the developing world, addressed by Conko, Norman Borlaug, C. S. Prakash, and T.J. Buthelezi.

4. National Center for Food and Agriculture Policy (NCFAP) - GM WATCH profile

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=31

The National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy (NCFAP) describes itself as 'a private non-profit non-advocacy research organization'. However, an article in the science journal Nature describes NCFAP as 'a pro-GM industry group' and, looking at the invariably industry-supporting claims emerging out of NCFAP stiudies, it may seem difficult to be certain where reseach ends and advocacy begins.

NCFAP conducts studies in four areas: biotechnology, pesticides, international trade and development, and farm and food policy.

NCFAP's Program Director and Senior Research Associate is Leonard Gianessi. Curiously, Gianessi's only academic qualification appears to be a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Affairs from George Washington University.

Prior to joining NCFAP in October 1993, Mr Gianessi spent seventeen years as a researcher at Resources For the Future (RFF), a Washington-based 'conservation' research organisation with funding from major US corporations. Sponsors include Dupont and Union Carbide as well as a number of oil companies. RFF's Director of Risk, Resource, and Environmental Management is Michael R. Taylor, Monsanto's former vice-president for public policy who was at the centre of a major controversy over conflicts of interest in relation to Monsanto's genetically engineered cattle drug rBGH (Revolving doors: Monsanto and the regulators). Resources For the Future turned their attention to agriculture in 1984 with funding from the Kellogg Foundation.

NCFAP was spun out of RFF as an independent organization in 1992 and Gianessi moved with it. Gianessi's focus was particularly on pesticide use though not exclusively so. In 1999 he was cited as 'a water quality scientist and the developer of the water quality modeling method used to measure feedlot and confinement livestock waste' when he took the Environmental Protection Agency to task for what he called 'a bad case of shoddy data' in their concern over the impact of livestock waste. (The problem with pigs, August 1999)

Mostly though, Gianessi has been involved in defending pesticides - speaking on The Value of Pesticides in US Crop Production, expressing concern about the loss of organophosphate and carbamate insecticides on minor crops, and touting the benefits of herbicide use. CropLife America (CLA), a trade organization representing agro-chemical manufacturers, is among those that have commissioned studies which have inspired often evangelical farm press coverage: 'thank God for the chemicals that beat back the ever threatening, yield-sapping tide of weeds. Because of such chemicals there's food available to feed the world... according to the data compiled in the [NCFAP] report, there's no going back to the good, old, pre-chemical days.'

Gianessi has shown a talent for producing eye-catching figures, arguing for instance that herbicide-free agriculture would require 'up to 7 million workers to hand remove weeds' while still causing the loss of '300 billion pounds of food and fiber'. Organic agriculture on anything but the smallest scale is a non-starter. Herbicides, Gianessi says, are absolutely essential for maintenance of high yields and, 'If we truly wanted to maintain current yields and do away with herbicides, 70 million additional hoe-toting farmhands would be patrolling fields. That would mean one of every four U.S. citizens chopping weeds for a month every year. There just isn't a future for a vast expansion of organic agriculture,' says Gianessi. (NCFAP study touts herbicide benefits)

NCFAP began to focus on GM crops in 2000. Its main biotechnology research programme was launched in the spring of 2001 with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Biotechnology Industry Organisation, Monsanto, the biotech-industry funded Council for Biotechnology Information (CBI), the Grocery Manufacturers of America, and CropLife America.

According to NCFAP, 'researchers began an ambitious project to estimate the realized and potential impacts of 40 separate case studies of biotech crops.' NCFAP's findings were as usual eye-catching. According to the report, during the 2001 crop year, eight GM crops in production had increased crop yields by 1.8 billion kg (4 billion lb), saved growers US$1.2 billion by cutting production costs, andreduced pesticide use by 21 mil. kg (46 mil. lb).

The NCFAP report did not stop there but looked to the future, considering the potential of 27 GM crops in the U.S., some of which were still being developed, to increase annual production, improve farm income, and reduce pesticide use. (PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY: CURRENT POTENTIAL IMPACT FOR IMPROVING PEST MANAGEMENT IN U.S. AGRICULTURE, AN ANALYSIS OF 40 CASE STUDIES, NCFAP, June 200)

The report drew enthusiastic press coverage. One article, National Study Finds Biotech Does It All, told its readers the report showed GM crops meant farmers could 'sharply increase crop production', 'significantly reduce' pesticide use and 'generate truckloads of additional cash' - 'It's a win-win-win combination that reads like a proponent's wildest hope, but is, in reality, the prediction of an expert group based on extensive results from 40 studies of 27 biotech crops all across the U.S.A.' The article described NCFAP's summary report as 'eye-popping', its predictions for the future as 'visionary' and the predicted pesticide reductions (70 mil. lb plus) as 'whopping'. (emphasis added)

Gianessi followed up his 'eye-popping' report with a U.S. speaking tour. The Associated Press reported, 'Leonard Gianessi... has been barnstorming across the country promoting the benefits of geneticallymodified crops.' (Biotech-advocate Leonard Gianessi meets with Opposition in Sacramento)

Gianessi's findings, however, have been notably at odds with those of the independent agronomist Dr Charles Benbrook, who in a series of studies has shown significant yield losses with GM soya - the main GM crop grown in the U.S.. Benbrook's own calculations suggest farmers are barely breaking even financially, although they are attracted by the ease of the weed management. (Fields of gold? - Biotech's cash benefits may not be what they seem, New Scientist, June 22 2002)

As regard NCFAP's claim of decreased usage of pesticide, a 2003 technical paper by Dr Benbrook analysed all the publicly available US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data on pesticide use in the US since 1996 when GM crops were first introduced. Like the NCFAP report it looked at pounds of pesticides applied and found that, while they initially led to a reduction in pesticide use, in the period 2001-2003 GM crops increased use of over all pesticides by over 73 million pounds. This directly contradicts the NCFAP estimate for 2001, as well as undermining its 'visionary' predictions of 'whopping' pesticide decreases in the future.

As a former Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture of the U.S. National Academyfor seven-years, Benbrook represents an authoritative voice on agricultural science and some see the funding of NCFAP's biotechnology research as driven by a need to to contradict the findings emerging out of Benbrook's research as well as to provide the industry with positive data.

In fact,one of Gianessi's first interventions in the biotech arena came in October 31, 2000, when he circulated via the Internet a critique of Benbrook's review of the benefits assessments on genetically engineered Bt crops developed by the EPA as part of the reregistration of Bt crops. Benbrook in responding to some of the major points raised in Gianessi's critique considered some of the criticisms both 'disingenuous and unfounded'.

NCFAP's eye-popping statistics have not only been brought into question by Benbrook. In the same month that the NCFAP report was published, the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its own extensive analysis of the economic performance of GM crops in America. This revealed a completely different picture. The USDA report went so far as to conclude, 'Perhaps the biggest issue raised by these results is how to explain the rapid adoption of GE crops when farm financial impacts appear to be mixed or even negative.' (more on the USDA report)

There has been no shortage of funding for NCFAP's biotechnology studies. In 2002 NCFAP's funders once again included the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the Council for Biotechnology Information, CropLife America, the Grocery Manufacturers of America and Monsanto, as well as Aventis, Bayer, DuPont, and Syngenta.

And Gianessi and his team have also been funded to look beyond the U.S.. NCFAP received funds from Monsanto, Syngenta, EuropaBio and the Biotechnology Industry Organisation to estimate the potential impacts of GM crops on European agriculture. According to the UK-based biotech-industry lobby group ABC , 'NCFAP's proven methodology and strong ties to European researchers made it an ideal organization to conduct the first comprehensive study of how biotechnology could impact European agriculture.'

Despite the fact that only Spain has any commercial GM crop acreage, and there appears to be no market for GM foods amongst European consumers, NCFAP's study reported that the 'widespread adoption of plant biotechnology in maize, oilseed rape, wheat, rice, tomatoes, potatoes, sugarbeets and stone fruit in Europe would result in significant yield increases, savings for growers and pesticide use reductions. All together, the nine biotech crops would increase yields by 8.5 billion kilograms per year, increase grower net income by 1.6 billionEuro per year and reduce pesticide use by 14.4 million kilograms per year, compared with existing practices that would be replaced.' The 'same methodology that NCFAP researchers used in its U.S. work' is apparently employed in the European study. (Plant Biotechnology: Potential Impact for Improving Pest Management in European Agriculture)

Many thanks for sending this file to GM Watch http://www.gmwatch.org4apr04

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:{Gregory:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:600;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}: :{Conko:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:600;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}: | Competitive Enterprise Institute:{:(style="margin:auto;padding:0px 1em;border:0px;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:middle;transition:opacity 0.3s ease-in-out 0s;border-radius:1em;visibility:hidden;opacity:0;display:inline-block;position:absolute;height:2em;z-index:200;bottom:2.5em;left:-0.95em"):}:

Gregory Conko; Gregory Conko ... Genetically Modified Foods are as Safe as Conventional Ones. ... Competitive Enterprise Institute. 1899 L St NW, 12th Floor.

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Greg Conko and CEI Industry Lobbying for Genetic Engineered Crops in Australia GM WATCH daily 4mar04 . Last week Greg Conko of the U.S. "think tank", the Competitive ...

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Gregory Conko is Director of Food Safety Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) where "where he specializes in issues of food and ...

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FACTSHEET: Gregory Conko DETAILS. CEI Senior Fellow and Director of Food Safety Policy Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of the AgBioWorld Foundation

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The Cost of Regulating Biotechnology and Genetically-Engineered Food. By Gregory Conko, CEI, March 24, 2014. This spring, legislators in more than 20 U.S. states will ...

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:{CEI:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:600;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}: Today: :{GMO:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:600;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}: labeling, US #1 oil/gas producer, and ...:{:(style="margin:auto;padding:0px 1em;border:0px;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:middle;transition:opacity 0.3s ease-in-out 0s;border-radius:1em;visibility:hidden;opacity:0;display:inline-block;position:absolute;height:2em;z-index:200;bottom:2.5em;left:-0.95em"):}:

Letters to the Editor. LTE Registration. Front Page

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:{CEI:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:600;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}: Today: :{GMO:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:600;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}: labeling, failure in financial regs and ...:{:(style="margin:auto;padding:0px 1em;border:0px;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:middle;transition:opacity 0.3s ease-in-out 0s;border-radius:1em;visibility:hidden;opacity:0;display:inline-block;position:absolute;height:2em;z-index:200;bottom:2.5em;left:-0.95em"):}:

CEI Today: GMO labeling, failure in financial regs and climate change models, and the danger of alarmism. Tuesday, October 29, 2013 at 09:21AM ...

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:{CEI:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:600;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:: Anti-:{GMO:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:600;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}: Farm Bill Amendment 'Uncommonly Silly':{:(style="margin:auto;padding:0px 1em;border:0px;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:middle;transition:opacity 0.3s ease-in-out 0s;border-radius:1em;visibility:hidden;opacity:0;display:inline-block;position:absolute;height:2em;z-index:200;bottom:2.5em;left:-0.95em"):}:

CEI: Anti-GMO Farm Bill Amendment 'Uncommonly Silly' As more states consider anti-GMO food labeling legislation, U.S. Senate Farm Bill amendment would open gate to ...

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WTO-:{GMO:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:600;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}: Ruling: Independent Academic Experts Available:{:(style="margin:auto;padding:0px 1em;border:0px;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:middle;transition:opacity 0.3s ease-in-out 0s;border-radius:1em;visibility:hidden;opacity:0;display:inline-block;position:absolute;height:2em;z-index:200;bottom:2.5em;left:-0.95em"):}:

WTO-GMO Ruling: Independent Academic Experts Available ... Gregory Conko, Senior Fellow Competitive Enterprise Institute

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Gregory Conko of CEI explains that people have no reason to fear genetically modified Arctic Apples.

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