Dive Summary:
- Monsanto Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Robert T. Fraley was announced Wednesday as a winner of the World Food Prize.
- The World Food Prize Foundation says the presigious award and its $250,000 cash prize will be shared with two other scientists, Belgium's Marc Van Montagu and the United States' Mary-Dell Chilton.
- The organization credits the scientists' development of a method for inserting foreign genes into plants with producing insect, disease and climate-resistant crops with higher-yields.
- Though such crops are shunned in some countries, the award will have PR value in the bio-engineered food world.
From the article:
... Eric Holt-Giménez, executive director of Food First, a food policy research organization in Oakland, Calif., said the World Food Prize’s “growing obsession” with biotechnology “ignores the documented successes” of nonindustrial methods of farming.
Kenneth M. Quinn, the president of the World Food Prize Foundation, defended the choice, saying that crop biotechnology had “met the test of demonstrating it would impact millions of people and enhance their lives.” Mr. Quinn, a former United States ambassador to Cambodia, said that contributions had no influence on the selection of winners. ...
