Experts
Jane Rissler
Senior Scientist & Deputy Director, Food & Environment ProgramExpertise
Food & Agriculture-Antibiotic ResistanceFood & Agriculture-Genetic Engineering
Profile
Jane Rissler is a senior scientist and deputy director of the Food & Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Dr. Rissler is one of the nation's leading authorities on the environmental risks of genetic engineering. Dr. Rissler provides firm scientific grounding for UCS's policy positions on agriculture, biotechnology and the environment, and also works to ensure that the public has opportunities to participate in regulatory decision making on biotechnology applications.
Dr. Rissler's passion for science meshes perfectly with her deep love of the natural world, gained from a childhood in rural West Virginia. She received her Ph.D. in plant pathology from Cornell's College of Agriculture and taught in the Department of Botany at the University of Maryland. But she always wanted to use science "in ways that were more directly relevant to public policy." She spent four years at the Environmental Protection Agency helping to formulate biotechnology regulatory policies before moving to the National Wildlife Federation. In 1993, Dr. Rissler and her colleague, Margaret Mellon, were invited to join UCS to establish our Agriculture and Biotechnology Program.
Dr. Rissler has published major reports on the environmental risks of transgenic crops and on crop-management plans to delay insect resistance to the Bt toxin, a valuable natural pesticide. She is a widely cited authority on biotechnology and frequently appears on NPR, CNN, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC World News Tonight, and many other media outlets.
