GMO Safety

Dr. Steve Strauss is a distinguished professor of forest biotechnology in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. Dr. Strauss and his research team are doing genetic research on the eucalyptus tree in an effort to generate a modified species of Eucalyptus that has favorable qualities or traits. While he is a genetic researcher on trees, I asked his opinion on something else. "A plant geneticist with an emphasis on trees, let me ask you to just go to plant geneticist, forget about the trees, how does someone like you feel about genetically modified foods? I am totally comfortable with it. I actually work in that area extensively, I do outreach and lectures, I have had an outreach program here at the University for eight years, we bring in people to talk about it and so forth. It's kind of in hiatus right now because we are between funding sources. I am very comfortable with it. Safety reviews have been extremely thorough and may be too thorough because it has cost hundreds of millions of dollars to bring any new variety to market using that technique because it is regulated so intensively. I think that is actually impeding innovation and impeding the ability to use that technique to improve food and reduce the impact of agriculture. That is my opinion. I know quite a lot about it. It is not just from reading a newspaper article. I follow it closely.