In this space, I’ve frequently shown how GMO fear mongering plays out in the media. The latest frightful example aired Monday on CNN. It was a piece about the mysterious genetically modified (GM) wheat recently found in an Oregon farm field. First, some quick background: In the early to mid-2000s, Monsanto field tested GM wheat in…Continue Reading…
Guest post by Cami Ryan, a Canadian agricultural researcher: Last week, an executive with a biotech trade group asserted in an interview that it wasn’t too late to win the hearts and minds of consumers suspicious of genetically modified foods. Biotech advocates just need to do a better job of explaining the technology and its…Continue Reading…
Mark Bittman, the popular food writer for the New York Times, has written a column that is almost beyond parody for its unintentional irony. The only way to fully appreciate his lack of self-awareness is to stop and marvel at numerous passages. Let’s start at the top: Things are bad enough in the food world…Continue Reading…
Anti-biotech activists, like their fellow travelers in the anti-vaccine movement, are masters at pseudoscience. As I’ve previously discussed, the really clever GMO opponents put a veneer of science on their propaganda. One recent example that an anti-GMO website approvingly pointed to was so obviously absurd that I was sure it would be ignored by media.
Being a city boy (for all my adult life), my exposure to agriculture is woefully limited. I’ve parachuted onto actual farms in the Midwest during reporting trips for stories and every year around Halloween my wife and I take our kids to a farm in the outskirts to pick pumpkins, get lost in a corn…Continue Reading…
Adapted from the new book The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet by Ramez Naam What if there was a way to farm that spared the rainforests, cut down on toxins in our soil and waters, and provided healthier, more nutritious food? Sounds like organic farming, right? But actually, it’s GMOs….Continue Reading…
Once upon a time, long before a recent wave of ideological zealotry drove the Republican party to cleanse itself of moderates, appeals for GOP comity were often couched in Ronald Reagan’s eleventh commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican In liberal and environmental circles, a similar dictate seems to now hold, with respect…Continue Reading…
When it comes to evolution, no reputable museum would dare “teach the controversy,” a catchphrase used as a ploy by creationists some years back, when they tried to put “intelligent design” on an equal scientific footing with evolutionary biology. The biotech issue, which is a source of much controversy in environmental and food circles, is…Continue Reading…
Which is better for the environment: Grass-fed or corn-fed cows? The question is not as simple as you might think. Eco-minded meat eaters tend to assume that free-ranging cattle nibbling on grassy pastures is superior to herded cows fattened on corn in concentrated animal feeding lot operations (CAFO’s). Slate explored this assumption in 2010. (There is also a similar…Continue Reading…
Yesterday, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now devoted her program to a discussion on California’s Proposition 37, a voter initiative that, if passed on November 6, would mandate the labeling of many foods in the state’s grocery stores (restaurants are exempted) if they contained genetically modified ingredients. One of the guests on the program was Michael Pollan,…Continue Reading…