GM Industry Flak scheduled to speak May 20th at UC Berkeley Commencement

Dr. Wamugu was picked and trained by Monsanto for its GM virus-resistant sweet potato project. It is around this project that Wambugu has built her reputation, capturing massive positive publicity for GM crops in the process.

Since 1998 the Berkeley campus plant scientist have been wracked by dissent over research in genetic engineering. In that year UC Berkeley signed a lucrative deal with the Swiss-based firm Novartis (now Syngenta), giving the company privileged access to the university's plant scientists in return for $25 million.

Post-Monsanto Wambugu became the first Director of the AfriCentre of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), based in her native-country, Kenya. ISAAA is a U.S.-centered, GM promotion and ‘technology transfer’ agency funded by AgrEvo, Bayer, Cargill, Dow, Monsanto, Novartis, Pioneer, Syngenta, in addition to foundations and Western governmental funding agencies, including the BBSRC. Its Board of Directors has contained leading biotech industry executives from both Monsanto and Novartis (now Syngenta).

The AfriCentre's focus was projects that assisted the introduction of GM into Sub-Saharan Africa. As part of their mission, Wambugu and ISAAA spun off a number of innocuously named pro-GM fronts, such as the African Biotechnology Stakeholders’ Forum (ABSF), of which she is the Vice Chair, and the African Biotechnology Trust.

References:
May 20th, 2007 CNR Commencement Program
GM Watch profile of Dr. Wambugu
UC Department Torn Over Corn Research; Scientist’s Reputation May Be Damaged, Daily Californian, April 2002