EAST LANSING, MI, April 2, 2007 — Steve Holcombe, CEO of Pardalis, Inc., presented today at the Third International IFAS Conference on Nanotechnology held on the campus of Michigan State University. The conference, entitled ‘What is Agrifood Nanotechnology?’ was structured as a workshop and sponsored by the Institute for Food and Agricultural Standards (IFAS) at Michigan State University, The National Science Foundation, the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, and the Consulat General de France. Organizers were Dr. Lawrence Busch and Dr. Paul Thompson, co-principal researchers for the IFAS. Opening statements were given by Dr. Busch, Dr. Thompson, Dr. Steve Pueppke, Director, Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, Michigan State University, and Jean-Pierre Toutant, Attache’ Scientifique, Consulat General de France, Chicago, Illinois.
“A panel of well-qualified panelists brought focus to how developments in nanotechnology are already changing food and agricultural systems," said Dr. Paul Thompson who, in addition his research at the IFAS, is the W. K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University. “We were pleased to enlist Mr. Holcombe’s participation and hear his presentation regarding the suggested, coming effects of granular information ownership to the beef livestock supply chain.”.
“Information ownership on the Internet is both a technological and a political issue,” said Steve Holcombe. “Both of these issues can be dynamically addressed with new technological choices for livestock producers to privately bank and granularly use livestock information like they privately bank and granularly use their money.”
Also presenting were Dr. Hongda Chen, National Program Leader, Bio-Processing Engineering, USDA/CSREES, Washington, D.C.; Steve Bjerklie, Contributing Editor, Meat & Poultry Magazine; Masashi Tachikawa, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries, Tokyo, Japan; Shane Roberts, Policy Advisor on Futures & Forecasting, Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness, Ontario, Canada; Dr. Lynn Frewer, Professor, Food Safety and Consumer Behavior, University of Wageningen, The Netherlands; Dr. Norman Scott, Biological and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Dr. Jennifer Kuzma, Center for Science, Technology & Public Policy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Dr. Susanna H. Priest, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina; Ayaad Assaad, DVM, PhD, Office of Pesticide Programs, Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C.; Dr. Rickey Yada, Canada Research Chair in Food Protein Structure, University of Guelph, Ottawa, Canada; Dr. Mickey Gjerris, Danish Centre for Bioethics and Risk Assessment, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Dr. Monique Axelos, Dept. for Science and Process Engineering of Ag Products, Centre d'Etudes pratiques d'Informatique et Automatique, Paris, France; Hope Shand, Research Director, ETC Group, Carrboro, North Carolina; Dr. Susan E. Selke, Professor & Associate Director, School of Packaging, Michigan State University; Jeffrey T. Barach, PhD, Vice President & Center Director, Center for Technical and Laboratory Services, Grocery Manufacturing Association/Food Products Association, Washington, D.C.; and Gary Maki, PhD, Center for Advanced Microelectronics and Biomolecular Research, University of Idaho, Post Falls, Idaho.
Also participating as moderators were Dr. Brady Deaton, Jr., Assistant Professor, Food, Agriculture, and Resource Economics, University of Guelph; Dr. Jack Lloyd, Distinguished Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Michigan State University; Dr. Kenneth David, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University; Dr. Les Bourquin, Associate Professor, Institute for International Agriculture, Michigan State University; and Dr. John V. Stone, Research Associate, IFAS, Michigan State University.
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.