No GM on menu at food summit

At the World Summit on Food Security in Rome last week, hosted by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, global leaders, not surprisingly, called for additional aid to improve farming systems and help in mitigating the effects of climate change to solve the world's food crisis. But among all the speeches and discussions, one issue was noticeably absent from the meeting's agenda: genetically modified crops.

Image: Flickr/expatwelsh

"The FAO appeared eager to avoid any controversy at last week's summit," said linkurl:Robert Paarlberg,;http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Profile/mr/rpaarlberg.html a political scientist at Harvard University and author of the book, Starved for Science: How biotechnology is being kept out of Africa. "They wanted to convey an image of consensus, so they pushed increased aid levels as an alternative to short-term food aid solutions... while this is a worthy theme to push, technology also needs to be part of this plan." An estimated 1 billion people are...