Monsanto’s Fraley debates benefits of GMOs

Dec 5, 2014, 1:39pm CST

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Dilip Vishwanat

Monsanto’s Robert Fraley

Reporter- St. Louis Business Journal
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In recent months Monsanto Company executives, and the corporation as a whole, have been making concentrated efforts to engage the public on the topic of genetically modified organisms.

This week Chief Technology Officer Robert Fraley joined the "pro" side in a mediated debate about the benefits of GMOs hosted by Intelligence Squared U.S., a nonprofit that focuses on civil discourse.

Fraley and his fellow pro-GMO debater, Alison Van Eenennaam, a biotechnology researcher at the University of California, Davis, won over the sold-out crowd of 450 gathered to hear the debate. Before the event, 30 percent of the audience said they were against GM crops, 32 percent were for it, and 38 percent were undecided. After the debate, 60 percent said they favored the technology, with those against the technology increasingly by 1 percent.

Fraley, who grew up on a farm and helped develop the first genetically modified plants during the 1980s, pointed to GMOs' role in reducing pesticide use across the world and leading more farmers to use no-till methods, which have helped reduce erosion and keep greenhouse gases in the soil and out of the atmosphere. "There's no farmer who would plant GMO crops if they didn't have a real benefit," Fraley said during the debate. He added that there has not been "one issue of food or feed safety ever associated with the technology."

"There is as strong a scientific consensus on GMOs as there is on the role of greenhouse gases in climate change," he said. Fraley also compared biotechnology with conventional methods of breeding new plants, saying "We've been moving genes around since the beginning of time."

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