Profile: Gordon Conway

Dr. Gordon Conway, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, says in a speech before Monsanto’s board of directors: “The agricultural seed industry must disavow use of the terminator technology to produce seed sterility… The possible consequences, if farmers who are unaware of the characteristics of terminator seed purchase it and attempt to reuse it, are certainly negative and may outweigh any social benefits of protecting innovation.” [Conway, 1/24/1999]

Monsanto CEO Robert B. Shapiro says in an open letter to Gordon Conway, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, that Monsanto is “making a public commitment not to commercialize sterile seed technologies, such as the one dubbed ‘terminator.’” Conway had asked the company’s board of directors to “disavow use of the terminator technology” (see June 24, 1999). Shapiro says the company still intends to research other technologies that would help the company protect its intellectual property rights Such technologies would include ways to switch certain genetic traits vital to a crop’s productivity on or off. Critics have called this technology “traitor” and say that, like terminator seeds, this technology would also threaten biodiversity, food security, and the 12,000 year old practice of seed saving. [Shapiro, 10/4/1999; BBC, 10/5/1999]