National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) Past President Ryland Utlaut is one of 10 U.S. representatives recently named to the United States-European Union Consultative Forum on Biotechnology.

During President Clinton's trip to Europe late last month, the United States and the EU agreed to establish the Consultative Forum to review and assess the issues associated with biotechnology.

The panel includes 20 eminent individuals from outside government who represent a broad cross section of U.S. and European perspectives and interests. Members will meet twice - once in the United States and once in Europe - prior to the December 2000 U.S.-EU summit. At that summit, the forum will present a consensus report assessing biotechnology's benefits and risks, focusing on factors such as economic development, food security, food safety, health and the environment.

Utlaut farms 3,500 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat in a family partnership near Grand Pass, Mo. He has been active for nearly 20 years in both the Missouri and National Corn Growers Associations and currently serves as a member of the Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee (APAC), which consults with the U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. Department of Agriculture on agricultural trade issues. Utlaut has represented NCGA at various international meetings, including the World Trade Organization ministerials in Geneva and Seattle. During the Seattle meeting, he had the opportunity to become acquainted with Portuguese Association of Maize Producers President Luis Vasconcelos e Souza, his European counterpart on the Consultative Forum.

"Given the importance of biotechnology to the nation's corn growers and all of agriculture, I welcome the opportunity to serve on the Consultative Forum,'' Utlaut said. "I look forward to working with the distinguished members of this panel to address the many issues surrounding biotechnology, and I'm hopeful that our dialogue will foster broader awareness and acceptance of biotechnology's many benefits.''

Other U.S. members of the Consultative Forum, according the U.S. State Department, are: 

• Norman Borlaug, Ph.D., distinguished professor of international agriculture at Texas A&M University and winner of the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the "Green Revolution;"
• Gordon Conway, Ph.D., president of the Rockefeller Foundation and world-renowned agricultural ecologist;
• Rebecca J. Goldburg, Ph.D., senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund;
• Cutberto Garza, M.D., Ph.D., vice provost at Cornell University and chair of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies Institute of Medicine;
• Jennie Hunter-Cevera, Ph.D., president of the University of Maryland's Biotechnology Institute;
• Terry Medley, J.D., director of regulatory and external affairs for DuPont;
• Christopher Roland Somerville, Ph.D., director of the Carnegie Institute's Department of Plant Biology at Stanford University;
• Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute of the Consumer Federation of America; and
• Le Roy B. Walters, Ph.D., director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.

EU members, as identified by the U.S. State Department, are:

• Derek Burke, Prof., former professor of microbiology at Warwick University and retired chair of the U.K. Advisory Committee on Novel Foods;
• Susan Davies, principal policy advisor of the Consumers' Association;
• Noelle Lenoir, chair of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technology, European Union;
• Dan Leskien, advisor to Gesselschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit and permanent biotechnology advisor to Friends of the Earth;
• Mans Lonnroth, Ph.D., managing director of MISTRA, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, and former state secretary at the Swedish Ministry of the Environment;
• Ruud Lubbers, Prof., professor for globalisation and sustainable development at the Catholic University Brabant (Tilburg University) and former prime minister of the Netherlands;
• Pedro Puigdomenech Rosell, Prof., research professor at the department of molecular genetics, Instituto de Biologia Molecular de Barcelona;
• Leonardo Santi, Prof., president of the Advances Biotechnology Center, Genoa, and chairman of the National Committee for Biosafety and Biotechnology Presidency of Cabinet of Ministers, Rome;
• Luis Vasconcelos e Souza, president of the Portuguese Association of Maize Producers and vice president of the European Association of Maize Producers; and
• Eduard Veltkamp, Prof., senior vice president, Business Research Foods, Unilever Research Laboratory Vlaardingen.

NCGA represents the interests of producers of the nation's top crop. Membership includes more than 30,000 growers in 47 states, as well as hundreds of thousands of farmers who support the organization through their check-off investments. 

NCGA news release
N2791