The legislation would reduce U.S. dependence on oil imports and boost demand for corn and other plant-based materials used to manufacture ethanol. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat and senate minority leader and by Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican who heads the Senate Agriculture Committee. The problem is that the chemical most frequently used to meet the oxygen requirement, MTBE, has polluted drinking water in California and the Northeast, and environmentalists want it banned. Although many experts say the oxygen rule does little to promote air quality, Congress has not dropped it because many lawmakers, especially those from farm states, like the other chemical used to add oxygen, ethanol, which is made from corn. Diversity is disappearing as species popular with fishermen and cooks are introduced where they do not occur naturally, fish ecologist Frank Rahel reports in today's issue of the journal Science.
Native species become extinct while popular food and game fish are spread by humans.
William Brown, a science adviser to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, said the department was concerned that some new genetically altered organisms could inadvertently harm the environment, much like invasive plants. For example, the less than 200 remaining Atlantic salmon living in Maine rivers could be quickly wiped out if transgenic fish grown in nearby aquaculture farms escape their pens, Brown said. The Clinton administration's new initiative to step up oversight of gene-spliced foods and publish more scientific data on the Internet is a first step certain to be followed by other regulatory actions, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said on Thursday. I do not think it is the last step. The White House plan seeks to reassure American consumers that genetically modified foods are safe by requiring developers to meet with Food and Drug Administration regulators who will publish research and safety data on the Internet.