BIODEVASTATION ORGANIZER KEYNOTES AT ST. LOUIS PESTO FEAST

Michael Dorsey was on the International Planning Committee for the May 16-18, 2003 Biodevastation 7 conference on genetic engineering which became a target for intimidation by the St. Louis Police Department. Mr. Dorsey will return to St. Louis on September 6 to give a keynote address on "Who Will Control Agriculture?" St. Louis environmentalists who organized Biodevastation 7 will compare their experiences to harassment of biotechnology critics throughout the world. The discussion and keynote will be part of one of the best annual vegetarian dinners in St. Louis:

What: Thirteenth Annual Great Green Pesto Feast
When: 5-10 pm, Saturday, September 6, 2002 (Keynote at 7 pm)
Where: Eden Theological Seminary - Commons Bldg Dining Hall

Eden is at 475 East Lockwood Ave (across from Webster University, at the corner of Lockwood and Bompart. Enter Eden from Bompart or Lockwood)

There will be a children's corner from 5 pm to 9 pm. There will be several varieties of gourmet pesto (including vegan) which started as basil grown organically in Missouri. Tomato sauce will abound for non-pesto eaters.

$15 for tickets purchased by August 31 (314-727-8554)
$20 at the door
The Pesto Feast is a benefit for the Gateway Green Alliance.

About MICHAEL DORSEY

[To arrange an interview with Mr. Dorsey contact Don Fitz at fitzdon@aol.com or 314-727-8554.]

The only black man to be on the Sierra Club's Board of Directors, Michael Dorsey is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment; Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. He is finishing the doctorate in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, where he has taught about and researches struggles over biodiversity in Ecuador's upper Amazon basin. His primary research is on the political-economy of biodiversity conservation and management, as well as the development and deployment of biotechnologies. Currently, he holds the Thurgood Marshall Fellowship in Geography and Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH, USA).

Mr. Dorsey is currently researching the concentration of power by biotechnology companies, which will be the focus of his September 6 keynote. He is concerned that "Only six corporations control 98% of the world's market in genetically modified crops" and that those companies typically have histories of producing dangerous chemicals and suppressing evidence of their toxicity. Mr. Dorsey charges that "there is something fundamentally and systematically wrong with the 'life science' industry as a whole. The very relevance and necessity of the large transnational firm needs to be reconsidered." He fears that biotechnology companies have undo power to control what we eat: "These firms have a tremendous influence over knowledge, information and public perception of GMOs, GM crops and foods."

Mr. Dorsey was the youngest NGO representative on the US State Department Delegation to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED or the Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Following the Earth Summit, in 1993, he was a lecturer in the University of Michigan's College of Literature Science and the Arts, where he taught the seminar: Environmental Justice: Issues of Race, Poverty and the Environment. Later that year he was a visiting scholar at the World Resources Institute (WRI). After a short stint with WRI he continued to Africa, per the direct request of Calestous Juma (former Secretary General of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity), were he served as a Research Fellow with the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), under then Executive Director Juma, in Nairobi, Kenya. At ACTS Mr. Dorsey conducted research on the environmental consequences of World Bank sponsored economic policy reforms.