ANN VENEMAN NAMED NEW USDA SECRETARY:
EMPHASIZES "FREE TRADE" AND GENETIC ENGINEERING
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12/21/00 THE AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER #100 PART II:
ANN VENEMAN NAMED NEW USDA SECRETARY
EMPHASIZES "FREE TRADE" AND GENETIC ENGINEERING
Ann Veneman, 51, no stranger to "free trade," genetic engineered crops
and
corporate
agribusiness, has been named by George W. Bush to be his administration's
new
Secretary
of Agriculture.
Beginning with the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) in 1986, she
rose
to deputy
undersecretary for international affairs and commodity programs. She also
was
one of the
early negotiators of the North American FreeTrade Agreement (NAFTA) and
from
1991 to
1993 served as the deputy undersecretary which at the time was the highest
post
at the
department ever held by a woman.
In 1995 California Governor Pete Wilson selected the Modesto, California
native
to head
California's Department of Food and Agriculture, after the previous
director
resigned over
charges he did not report hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm
income.
Numerous press reports on Veneman's nomation to be USDA Secretary have
claimed
that
she was the first woman in California to hold that high position in the
state,
however, such
claims are erroneous and dishonor the memory of Rose Bird.
Appointed to that position by former Governor Jerry Brown, Bird served
with
distinction until
being named Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. Later, she
was
denied further
service on the court due to a well-financed corporate agribusiness
recall
campaign in
retaliation, due in large part for her progressive initiatives while
heading
the state's Food
and Agriculture department.
While Veneman has considerable experience within the USDA bureaucracy,
her
appointment is also a political reward for the Central Valley, where
Bush
concentrated his
California campaign and received much of his financial support. She was
an
early Bush
supporter and was among six California Republicans named in mid-1999 to
his
exploratory
committee in the state. At the GOP convention last summer, she was on
the
national
steering committee of Farmers and Ranchers for Bush.
Veneman's parents were peach growers in Stanislaus County in the San
Joaquin
Valley
south of Sacramento. Her father, John Veneman, was a Republican state
assemblyman and
undersecretary of health, education and welfare in the Nixon
administration.
Currently she is
an attorney with Nossaman, Guthner, Knox and Elliott in Sacramento where
she
specializes
in food, agriculture, environment, technology, and trade related issues.
Regarded by many as a protege of Richard Lyng, who was agriculture
secretary
during
President Ronald Reagan's second term, Veneman will now oversee the
department's 42
agencies, with a budget of more than $60 billion and a workforce of
111,000
employees.
Between her service with the FAS, during which time she help negotiate
the
Uruguay round
talks for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and
California's
Department
of Food and Agriculture she worked for the influential lobbying and law
firm of
Patton, Boggs
and Blow. Among her clients was Dole Foods Co., the world's largest
producer of
fruits and
vegetables.
She also has served on the board of directors of Calgene, a Davis,
California
company, later
acquired by Monsanto, which pioneered genetically altered tomatoes and,
in
1987, was the
first company to obtain a USDA permit to field test a genetically
engineered
crop.
Veneman is a strong advocate of high tech's role in farming, from
e-commerce
over the
Internet to genetic engineering. She told an agricultural biotechnology
conference this year:
"We simply will not be able to feed the world without biotechnology."
Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Consumer Federation of America's
Food
Policy
Institute and former lobbyist for Monsanto, has praised the pick of
Venemen as
"a really
good start" for the Bush administration. She said Venemen "will bring a
modern
view of the
Department of Agriculture into that job."
Veneman’s emphasis on trade has drawn strong praise from individuals like
Bill
Pauli,
president of the 90,000-member California Farm Bureau Federation. "What
we're
really
encouraged by is not only does she understand California agriculture,
which is
really
important to us, but she understands national agriculture," Pauli told
the
Associated Press.
"When you talk to agriculture people about what government can do to help,
it's
`help us
open markets that are closed to us,'" Veneman said in a 1995 interview.
"I
think that's a real
legitimate role that we can play."
Veneman is expected to be easily confirmed as the new USDA Secretary owing
to
the fact
that she enjoys "bipartisan" support in the Congress and because of her
known
expertise in
international agricultural trade.
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