Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a huge topic and there's no way we're going to do justice to even a part of it. I'll comment on a few issues, as well as some that I'm simply not qualified to comment on. Of the ones I'm aware of, one is the regulatory process Dr. Yada has refer

Agriculture committee  I would just comment that there's no published evidence so far of negative health effects from the current generation of GM crops. There is certainly a series of studies out there about environmental changes that have occurred as a result of large-scale GM crop deployment. Just t

Agriculture committee  [Inaudible--Editor]...touching that one.

Agriculture committee  Well, I mean, it's a political question; it has nothing to do with science. I'm a scientist. Do you as a government want to take on Monsanto? By and large, I think it's a tough battle. They have more lawyers than they have scientists--

Agriculture committee  --and I mean literally. So yes, it's not an easy answer. Is it a problem? At the present time it is a problem, but part of it's also a perception problem. There are countries in the world that do not want to touch this technology because they see the corporate lock on the techn

Agriculture committee  I think it's fair to say that the precautionary principle has not been the mainstay of the regulatory system. I would also say that I have not seen any credible scientific reports—I mean reproduced in other labs and confirmed—of health effects, even at the laboratory level. Thos

Agriculture committee  Are you asking whether those studies that have reported deleterious effects have not been—

Agriculture committee  I haven't seen any studies that have confirmed deleterious effects on human health or animal health.

Agriculture committee  It's presumably one of them, yes.

Agriculture committee  No.

Agriculture committee  The government presumably wants to do what the citizens ask.

Agriculture committee  Yes, but you have to realize that the safety record is the result of 10 years' of deployment. It's a historical record, not a projection forward.

Agriculture committee  I think the industry could do a better job, and I think the regulators could do a more transparent job. I'm not faulting the regulators for what they do, however. I think they do it well.

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  Do you mean the number of approvals or the number of crops?