Obama appoints junk-food exec to top agriculture position.

[Courtesy Flush]

Earlier this month, Congress approved Obama's nomination of Catherine Woteki, the USDA's undersecretary for research, education, and economics. The appointment drew little attention in the press, including the sustainable-food blogosphere. That's surprising, because Woteki comes to her new position after a five-year stint as global director of scientific affairs for Mars, Inc., the multinational junk-food giant.

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-10-01-obama-taps-food-industry-exec-to-top-ag-research-post/

[xchrom]

1. Multi-national rears it's ugly head. Nt

[LaurenG]

2. Maybe her strength will be as an expert on what not to eat..

His picks are strange to me. I wander around wondering what I missed with him a lot.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. when we grow up we will get a seat at the table too

[Nuclear Unicorn]

5. Not if...

...you keep eating all the junk food.

We'll be too huge to fit!

[unhappycamper]

4. This 'Team Of Rivals' shit really needs to stop. n/t

[SpiralHawk]

6. Obama's maintained a Genetically Mutant HFCS-deranged Regime in place at USDA

A few exceptions, but they are ultimately irrelevant.

As far as Big Government is concerned, the future of food is Big Ag, Big Chem, Big Pharma, and Big Mutant.

Ptooooey.

[SidDithers]

7. She's clearly unqualified...

'cause all she's ever done was make chocolate bars.

Catherine E. Woteki, Nominee for Under Secretary for Agriculture for Research, Education and Economics, Department of Agriculture
Dr. Catherine E. Woteki currently serves as Global Director of Scientific Affairs for Mars, Incorporated, where she manages the company’s scientific policy and research on matters of health, nutrition, and food safety. From 2002-2005, she was Dean of Agriculture and Professor of Human Nutrition at Iowa State University. Dr. Woteki served as the first Under Secretary for Food Safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) from 1997-2001, where she oversaw U.S. Government food safety policy development and USDA’s continuity of operations planning. Dr. Woteki also served as the Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics at USDA in 1996. Prior to going to USDA, Dr. Woteki served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as Deputy Associate Director for Science from 1994-1996. Dr. Woteki has also held positions in the National Center for Health Statistics of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1983-1990), the Human Nutrition Information Service at USDA (1981-1983), and as Director of the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences (1990-1993). In 1999, Dr. Woteki was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, where she has chaired the Food and Nutrition Board (2003-2005). She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Human Nutrition from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (1974). Dr. Woteki received her B.S. in Chemistry from Mary Washington College (1969).

Nice spin, changing the title of the grist article, btw.

Sid

[speppin]

9. She is very qualified in the major of "corporatists"

[SidDithers]

11. Sure, if you ignore the 25 years she spent in public service...

and education.

But hey, she spent 5 years making sure that Mars bars, and chewing gum, and pet food, and your Uncle Ben's rice was safe to eat.

Fucking corporatist.

Sid

Edit: spelling

[speppin]

8. "Woteki epitomized the adm...gung-ho attitude toward genetically modified (GM) seed".

during the Clinton adm. It seems like we have more of the same. !!!


..........



Woteki's new post represents a return to, not her debut at, the USDA (bio here). She held a variety of high-level positions in the agency under Bill Clinton, including a stint in the same position she now holds. The Clinton administration was generally quite friendly to the interests of Big Food. Woteki epitomized the administration's gung-ho attitude toward genetically modified (GM) seed industry in a 1996 paper she co-wrote on "The Administration's Responsibility to the Consumer" in regards to GM seeds. The paper never mentions potential ecological or public-health issues around GM seeds; it concludes, in essence, that the government's only responsibility to the public concerning the technology is to support it vigorously.

Before taking the Mars job in 2005, she served as dean of agriculture and professor of human nutrition at Iowa State University, a prominent ag-research university with multiple ties to agribusiness. To get a sense of Woteki's tenure at ISU, I called a former colleague of hers there: Fred Kirschenmann, former president and current distinguished fellow at ISU's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and president of New York-based Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture.

Kirschenman's time as president of the Leopold Center coincided with Woteki's deanship of the ag department, which oversees the center. Kirschenman was forced out of the presidency of Leopold in 2005, at the behest of Woteki's successor, interim dean Wendy Wintersteen. Kirschenmann's ouster as president of Leopold drew widespread outrage in the sustainable-ag world; it was widely read, by Kirschenmann himself and others, as a purge executed by industrial-ag interests.

In a phone interview this week, Kirschenmann told me that Woteki's time as ISU ag dean started promisingly and ended with a thud. "When she first came on board, she asked me to cowrite a white paper about the possibility of starting a new 'Center for Agricultural Ecology,'" Kirschenmann told me. The idea was to create a counterweight to the ag department's heavy involvement in GM research.

..............

[anarch]

10. Brawndo's got what plants crave

it's got electrolytes.