CONFERENCES: Excerpt
The following excerpt shows the level of detail provided in conference reports.
Canadian Agri-food Marketing Council Conference
Delta Halifax, September 26, 2000
"Life Sciences", Dr. Ray Goldberg, Harvard Business School
Over the years Canada has participated in much of our teaching and research at Harvard, provided us with studies on Loblaws, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, etc. Over the years we have benefited from your input. I'm pleased to have lived long enough to see this genetic revolution. I think it is the most important economic event in the history of mankind. This is a momentous occasion. In this year alone we've mapped the human genome of man, woman, fruitfly, and moss.
The convergence of industries is a reality. The joint ventures between Dupont and General Mills is not of the future. It's here today. What does that economic convergence mean? Every function that we have performed in our lifetime has been changed. We have the opportunity to change every aspect of our work activities and our lives. But the environment is not conducive to accepting this revolution. There's an agricultural depression, concerns about testing and procedures, questions about intellectual property rights.
For my research I had to take a multidisciplinary approach to understand the complexity of what I was studying. I went to many of the different departments. We're talking about bioethics and issues of mankind. We put this group together and many of the people ended up reviewing this science. This report gave a tentative clean bill of health to the science, but cautioned much more had to be looked at.
