SAN FRANCISCO, CA, February 16, 2007 — Steve Holcombe, CEO of Pardalis, Inc., presented today at a symposium held at the Hilton San Francisco during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The symposium, entitled ‘What is Agrifood Nanotechnology?: Technical, Ethical, Legal, and Social Questions’ was sponsored by the Institute for Food and Agricultural Standards at Michigan State University. Organizers were Dr. Lawrence Busch and Dr. Paul Thompson, both of Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
“Nanotechnology is repeatedly hyped as a the next revolutionizing technology, but informed discussion of exactly what products and processes are likely to be affected is often left out of the mainstream discussion,” said Dr. Lawrence Busch, co-principal researcher at the Institute for Food and Agricultural Standards at Michigan State University. “A panel of well-qualified presenters brought focus to how developments in nanotechnology are already changing food and agricultural systems. We were pleased to enlist Mr. Holcombe’s participation and hear his presentation regarding the suggested, coming effects of granular data ownership to the beef livestock supply chain.”
“What I suggested in my presentation are the benefits of a previously unmatched flexibility and control in the granular ownership and sharing of information along a very complex agricultural supply chain,” said Steve Holcombe, CEO of Pardalis, Inc. “There is an ever increasing usage of unique identification, driven by the ubiquity of the Internet, and by the increasing application of RFID systems and nanotechnology. These events are raising the level of consciousness among supply participants about efficiently balancing information confidentiality with the desire for new sources of reliable, traceable, and accessible information about the safety of our food supply.”
Holcombe was one among a panel of eight presenters on the symposium panel. Also presenting were Dr. Susan E. Selke, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; Mark Bunger, Lux Research, San Francisco, California; Dr. Jennifer Kuzma, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Dr. Susanna H. Priest, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina; Amy K. Wolfe, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee; Dr. David H. Sparling, Director of the Institute of Agri-Food Policy Innovation, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada; and Dr. John V. Stone, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
About the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Founded in 1848, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) serves some 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Its publication, Science, has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million. For more information, visit http://www.aaas.org.
About the Institute for Food and Agricultural Standards
The mission of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Standards (IFAS) at Michigan State University is to raise fundamental issues with respect to equity, fairness and transparency of food and agricultural standards at the local, national and international levels. For more information, visit http://www.ifas.msu.edu.
About Pardalis, Inc.
Pardalis' mission is to promote the sharing of confidential, trustworthy and traceable data along complex and poorly coordinated supply chains with innovative Common Point Authoring™ methods for protecting the ownership rights of information producers. For more information, call 877-OWN-DATA or visit http://www.pardalis.com.