Klaus Ammann

Klaus Amman is Director of the Botanical Garden, University of Bern, Switzerland. Amman together with John Beringer, Julian Kinderlerer, Alan McHughen and Mark Tepfer, founded the International Society for Biosafety Research (ISBR). Amman is an editor of Environmental Biosafety Research, the journal published by the ISBR.

Affiliations

• The European Science Foundation group -- board member
• Assessment of Impacts of Genetically Modified Plants (AIGM) -- board member
• Gensuisse, a GM promotion group funded by the pharmaceutical industry body
• Interpharma Internutrition - a lobbying group for GM foods funded/sponsored by the food industry (e.g. Nestle) and chemical/GM companies Monsanto, Hoffmann LaRoche, DuPont, and Syngenta -- board member
• European Federation of Biotechnology an organisation of scientists wishing to promote biotechnology, which has an extensive corporate membership^[1] -- Executive Board
• Bio-Scope -- co-editor; (it is a Frankfurt-Bern website, supported by GM industry group Europabio^[2].

Activities

Amman together with CS Prakash and others, Amman signed an 'Open Letter to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development'^[3] (April 2000). The letter warned the Commission against 'needless over-regulation' of GM on the grounds of "the very real threat that an overly-strict adherence to precautionary regulation could pose to both the environment and to the well being of human populations around the world."

Amman edits a pro-GM e-mail list and played a leading role together with CS Prakash in circulating and encouraging the attacks on Quist and Chapela and their paper on Mexican maize contamination published in Nature.

References

1. ^European Federation of Biotechnology Website About Us: Members Last Accessed June 16th 2007
2. ^ The European Association for Bioindustries Homepage Last Accessed 16th June 2007
3. ^ AgBioWorld 24th April 2000 An Open Letter to the United Nations Commissionon Sustainable Development Last Accessed 16th June 2007