Oregon Humanities

Inside Food Fray

A Portland State University professor makes science more accessible to the general public.

Liz Crain

Between 2002 and 2004, Lisa H. Weasel, associate professor of biology at Portland State University, traveled the globe, from Zambia to Switzerland and from India to Thailand. Along the way, she met with biotech industry officials, agriculturalists, and horticulturalists, and researched everything from conventional plant breeding to the ethical dilemma of patenting genes from living organisms—all field work for her new book Food Fray: Inside the Controversy over Genetically Modified Food. But a passport wasn’t always required for her research.

In 2008 Monsanto began pushing genetically modified sugar beet seeds to farmers in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Since then many farmers and concerned community members throughout the state have been pushing back, concerned that cross-pollination will contaminate their organic sugar beets, table beets, chard, and other vegetables. This is a particularly sensitive issue since Oregon produces 90 percent of the nation’s beet seeds. A lawsuit is currently in motion as Oregon farmers and citizens ramp up awareness of Monsanto’s actions. This is one of several cases that Weasel writes about in her book.

Weasel isn’t your stereotypical sequestered scientist—always in a lab coat conducting highly specialized research published in esoteric scientific journals. Although she has training in molecular biology and developmental biology, she also has a very strong social perspective that she brings to her work. According to Michael Murphy, biology department chair at PSU, what sets Weasel apart is that her “multi-dimensional approach really encompasses a wide range of topics. I’d say she forces people to think a little more broadly than they maybe otherwise would.”

Since moving to Portland in 2000, Weasel has taught PSU courses on everything from an introduction to general biology, to an advanced course on food ethics and sustainability, to a popular class for non-majors on genes in society. Describing this last course, Murphy says, “This is one of those courses where you take a lot of important issues in biology and place them in the context of society. It deals with real issues that confront people on a daily basis.”

Although Weasel clocks in plenty of hours at the lab and in the field, she also loves to garden, write, cook, and support local grocery cooperatives. Her well-rounded life has led to a grounded and, in many ways, socially enlightened approach to science.

Weasel arrived at Harvard in the mid-1980s as an undergraduate in the wake of the recombinant DNA debates. Five years later, as a newly matriculated molecular biology graduate student at the University of Cambridge in England, the human genome project was just beginning to foment. She’s been confronted with hard-hitting scientific ethics and equity issues since she set out to study biology. “As a result, I’ve done a lot of work with gender issues in science and feminist science studies,” she says, “particularly looking at how we can broaden science both in terms of who participates and the kinds of questions that we ask.”

After receiving a National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award (a prestigious long-term NSF grant for junior scholars) in 2001, Weasel plunged headlong into research on global ethical debates surrounding biotechnology. Her initial NSF research was concerned mainly with human cloning and stem cell research, but once Zambia made worldwide headlines in 2002 by refusing genetically modified food aid, she shifted gears.

It’s not too common for highly regarded scientists to broadcast what they don’t know, but Weasel isn’t afraid to. “When I started this research [for Food Fray] I really didn’t even know which foods were genetically modified,” she says. “I had familiarity with the techniques and background but I didn’t know how they were being used. I think it’s important that throughout all levels, people learn more [about genetically modified food]. I would really like to see some truly objective, unbiased public interest awareness campaigns run by the USDA or the EPA with the intention of informing people.”