Fresh, pure Florida citrus will have become a GMO with added pork, if CRDF has its way.
Faced with Monsanto-Bayer backing out of his GMO solution unless he comes up with more cash, Rick Dantzler of the Citrus Research & Development Foundation wants to sweeten Florida frankenfruit with taxpayer-funded pork.
Dantzler said at the April 28 CRDF meeting that he’s going ahead with funding from Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and others to subsidize his Monsanto-Bayer GMO project for another six months.
That, he says, will be long enough for CRDF to get a grant from the Trump Administration to fund the German company to develop a GMO to replace Florida’s dying citrus groves.
Dantzler told CRDF in the livestreamed meeting that the foundation will apply to the US Department of Agriculture for a multimillion-dollar National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) grant.
That cash infusion, he said, hopefully will pay Bayer to continue its unprofitable GMO project “for the balance of its life, which we think is about three years.”
There’s a “wrinkle” in the CRDF application process “because there is a new requirement in that process that is going to necessitate the University of Florida vouching for our DUNS number,” Dantzler said.
Dantzler said that “Washington” doesn’t want letters of support for the Monsanto-Bayer subsidy, but that the support has to be written within a three-page application summary.
“With so much buy in from so many institutions and with so many private sector partners, the support is evident just from the application itself,” Dantzler said.
He didn’t explain why pork-barrel spending was needed when so much institutional and private sector support existed.
But he did appear to hint that the grant process was insider-driven: “I was also asked by Washington to give ten names of people who can participate on NIFA process review panel.”
