If you follow public debate on genetically modified foods, you know that Monsanto is routinely portrayed as the devil’s spawn. The multinational agricultural company is the arch-villain in the GMO wars. In liberal and environmental media stories, Monsanto is the baddie that poisons the earth with impunity and monopolizes the global seed market. Indeed, as…Continue Reading…
To understand just how mainstream anti-GMO sentiment is within environmentalism, check out this event held several weeks ago at Audubon’s educational center in Greenwich, Connecticut. The promo: Two films and speakers about genetically engineered seeds; the history & future of farming; and why leading scientists think GMOs threaten human health and sustainabile food production systems. I really wanted to attend…Continue Reading…
Is this something that GMO-fearing foodies and greens can agree with?
I used to think, as I wrote in Slate last year, that nothing rivaled the amount of misinformation that has so badly muddied climate science: Then I started paying attention to how anti-GMO campaigners have distorted the science on genetically modified foods. You might be surprised at how successful they’ve been and who has helped…Continue Reading…
British newspaper journalism is an odd creature. The Daily Mail, as I discussed here, is a freakish beast that continues to willfully (how else to explain it?) mangle climate science and misrepresent climate scientists. Myles Allen is the latest victim of David Rose’s crazy-ass reporting on climate change. And yet what to make of Allen’s…Continue Reading…
My favorite environmental heretic continues to be in the news. Earlier this month, the best profile of him yet appeared in the Observer. This week, Macleans publishes an interview with Mark Lynas, the UK environmental writer who is doing more than anyone these days to challenge greens on their ideological resistance to biotechnology. Here’s an…Continue Reading…
One of the staples of immersion journalism are gimmicky stunts that lead Esquire’s A.J. Jacobs to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z and follow every single rule in the bible for one year. The genre has its classics, such as George Plimpton’s Paper Lion, Ted Conover’s Rolling Nowhere and Newjack, and one of my favorites, Nickel…Continue Reading…
Several weeks ago, Whole Foods, the organic supermarket chain many people have a love/hate relationship with, announced that by 2018 any of its products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) would be labeled. A Bloomberg Businessweek article called the move “clever marketing” and said: Transparency is something worth paying for these days. I find it amusing…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…
In October, Dan Charles, NPR’s food and agriculture correspondent, wrote an excellent piece headlined: Top Five Myths of Genetically Modified Seeds, Busted There is one myth, however, that should have been included because of its widespread dissemination and emotive power. It is the one GMO myth that exploits real human tragedy and for that reason, I…Continue Reading…